Discussion and decisions (based on ballots) at the July 21
meeting.
FICTION (20 titles)
The Autobiography of
Mrs. Tom Thumb (F)
|
Melanie
Benjamin
|
This is a tale of an
irrepressible, brawling, bawdy era and the remarkable woman who had the
courage to match the unique spirit of America’s Gilded Age. She was only two
feet, eight inches tall, but more than a century later, her legend reaches
out to us. As a child, Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Warren Bump was encouraged to
live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the
immortal impresario P. T. Barnum, married the tiny superstar General Tom
Thumb in the wedding of the century, and became the world’s most unexpected
celebrity. Vinnie’s wedding captivated the nation, preempted coverage of the
Civil War, and even ushered her into the White House. But her fame also
endangered the person she prized most: her similarly sized sister, Minnie, a
gentle soul unable to escape the glare of Vinnie’s spotlight. A barnstorming
novel of the Gilded Age, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is the irresistible epic of a
heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams—and whose
story will surely win over yours.
|
It just sounds like
a good read.
Janice Cervantes
|
Hottest Dishes of
the Tartar Cuisine
(F)
|
Alina Bronsky
(trans. from German
by Tim Mohr)
|
Rosa Achmetowna is
the outrageously nasty and wily narrator of this rollicking family saga from
the author of Broken Glass Park When she discovers that her seventeen-year-old daughter,
“stupid Sulfia,” is pregnant by an unknown man she does everything to thwart
the pregnancy, employing a variety of folkloric home remedies. But despite
her best efforts the baby, Aminat, is born nine months later at Soviet
Birthing Center Number 134. Told with sly humor and an anthropologist's eye
for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three
unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that
is at turns hilarious and tragic.
|
Recommended by a
friend in an International Book Club who said her club had lots to say after
reading it. We haven’t read much
in the way of humorous novels, nor about the Tartar culture.
|
Teri
Titus
|
The Tin Roof Blow
Down (F)
|
James Lee Burke
|
HURRICANE KATRINA
has reduced the Big Easy to the level of a medieval society. Now, with looters
descending and violence erupting in the streets, Iberia Parish Sheriff’s
Detective Dave Robicheaux combs the apocalyptic landscape for a quartet of
criminals who hijacked a rescue boat from a drug-addicted ex-priest at the
height of the storm, and then scooped up a gangster’s hidden fortune. In a
world without order or sanctuary, revenge will come swift and easy.
|
Ever since Hurricane
Katrina ravaged southern Louisiana in August 2005, James Lee Burke's fans
have been waiting for this book. Outraged and eloquent, the two-time Edgar
Award-winner delivers a gut-wrenching portrayal of the storm's ferocity and
devastating aftermath, venting the frustration at the human incompetence and
greed that magnified nature's destructive fury. The book is evocative, with
heartfelt prose, sympathetic characters, and intricately interwoven plotlines
grip the reader from the first page.
|
Judy
Robertson
|
Ender’s
Game (F)
|
Orson
Scott Card
|
In order to develop
a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government
agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young
boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents,
his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else,
his sister Valentine.
|
Themes
include: morality, murder, deception, isolation, rules of engagement in battle,
abuse, the sacrifices behind genius.
|
Andrea
V. Brambila
|
Little Bee: A Novel
(F)
|
Chris Cleave
|
Taken from
Amazon.com:
“We don't want to
tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't
want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just
say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The
story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward
that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone
about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic
is in how it unfolds.”
|
Taken from
Amazon.com
“The publishers of
Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by
revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much
about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach
is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who
calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying
to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed
behind their resort's walls.
|
Karen L. Marino
*This book is
strongly recommended by Peggy Kennedy, the author who participated in
our book club discussion of her book
“Approaching
Neverland”.
The murder investigation of her sister Joan has
been re-activated and she has been asked by the police to stop her work on
the book she is planning to write.
Peggy asked me to wish you all well and fondly refers to our book club
as her favorite of the 35 book clubs she has attended.
|
Ready Player One
(F)
|
Ernest
Cline
|
|
Looks geeky but
fun... Reviews are mixed, but still is one I want to read. Lots of discussion potential in
author’s view of the future.
Booklist = starred
review; … Mind-twisting
settings, nail-biting action, amusing banter, and unabashed sentiment make for
a smart and charming Arthurian tale that will score high with gamers, fantasy
and sf fans, and everyone else who loves stories of bumbling romance and
unexpected valor.
|
Teri
Titus
|
Room (F)
|
Emma Donoghue
|
In many ways, Jack
is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games
with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life
in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an
unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only
world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a
normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the
confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and
extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue's
Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to
live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel
of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as
though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time.
|
Room is a tale at
once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in
harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and
her child.
|
Robert
Council
Heidi
Louwaert (Heidi recommended this book last year).
|
A Visit from the
Goon Squad (F)
|
Jennifer Egan
|
Bennie is an aging
former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled
young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts,
along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths
intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the
Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and
redemption.
|
Unusual narrative
structure. An inventive
investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age
|
Robert
Council
Heidi
Louwaert (Heidi recommended this last year)
|
Leaving Pico (F)
|
Frank X. Gaspar
|
a beautifully written
coming-of-age-in-ethnic-America novel set in the Portuguese community of
Provincetown, Massachusetts. For narrator Josie Carvalho, a single summer
brings great loss and abrupt change, but also a new understanding of his
place in the world.
In the insular
Portuguese fishing community of the Cape, Josie's life has been shaped by the
annual influx of summer tourists (who are largely oblivious of the locals),
and his great aunt Theophila's fervent if idiosyncratic Catholicism (she has
visions and keeps a private shrine to the saints). The community is also
sharply divided between the Picos like himself (whose ancestors hailed from
the Azores) and the Lisbons (whose forebears came directly from the old
country). The counterweight to these forces has been the boy's relationship
with his grandfather John Joseph, a drunk, clam-poaching old man who is
nevertheless a sly and master storyteller.
Josie's shaky
religious faith receives a jolt when he prays that his unwed mother might
find a husband, and a stranger named Carmine arrives from New Bedford and
begins to call on her. His mother's relationship with the Lisbon Carmine soon
disrupts the family's equilibrium and throws their lives into conflict.
|
If this book is not
selected I will take it personally!
|
Janice Cervantes
|
Book of
Negroes/Someone Knows My Name (F)
|
Lawrence Hill
|
Kidnapped as a child
from Africa, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during
the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the
British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned
freedom in Nova Scotia.
But the hardship and
prejudice there prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to
London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her
life and a whole people
|
An opportunity to
learn more about the slave trade that devastated many lives.
|
Robert
Council
|
The Lacuna
(F)
|
Barbara Kingsolver
|
An epic journey from
the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of
Pearl Harbor, FDR and J.Edgar Hoover.
The story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their
modern identities.
|
Great characters,
politics, art, history. You get
a real sense of the time and place, the smell of food, the colors of the buildings,
it is a very vivid novel.
|
Heidi
Louwaert
|
Defending Jacob (F)
|
William Landy (a
former DA)
|
Andy Barber, an
assistant district attorney in Massachusetts, must defend his 14 year old son
who is charged with the murder of a fellow student. His son claims his innocence (and his father believes him)
except as the trial progressives damning facts and revelations surface.
|
Several themes lend
themselves to book club discussion: a family embattled in crisis, the
relationship between husband and wife, and the murder/courtroom /legal
aspects. Andy faces loyalty and
justice, truth vs. allegations, and the terrifying speed at which our lives
can change.
|
Karen L. Marino
|
The Secrets of Mary
Bowser: A Novel (F)
|
Lois Leveen
|
Based on a
remarkable true story, The Secrets of Mary Bowser is an inspiring tale of one
daring woman's willingness to sacrifice her own freedom to change the course
of history
All her life, Mary
has been a slave to the wealthy Van Lew family of Richmond, Virginia. But
when Bet, the willful Van Lew daughter, decides to send Mary to Philadelphia
to be educated, she must leave her family to seize her freedom.
Life in the North
brings new friendships, a courtship, and a far different education than Mary
ever expected, one that leads her into the heart of the abolition movement.
Posing as a slave in the Confederate White House in order to spy on President
Jefferson Davis, Mary deceives even those who are closest to her to aid the
Union command.
|
This is a true story
about a very brave woman in our American History.
|
Janice
Cervantes
|
Home (F)
|
Toni Morrison
|
A black Korean War
veteran returns home where there is little help for a deeply traumatized
man. It is a story of a man
struggling to reclaim his roots and his manhood.
|
Toni Morrison’s
writing has challenged us in the past and will probably do so again with this
book. The discussion of her last
book was incredibly interesting and I believe this one will be similar.
|
Ann Parks-Council
|
The Poe
Shadow (F but
borderline NF)
|
Matthew Pearl
|
Baltimore, 1849. The
body of Edgar Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. Poe’s family and friends accept the conclusion that he was a second
class writer and a drunkard, but Quentin, an ardent admirer of Poe, puts his
reputation at stake to uncover the truth about Poe’s death.
|
This novel, through
subtle craftsmanship wit, and devious twists, does uncover material never
published before now. Its
literary history, intrigue, mystery, betrayal, romance, and brilliant writing
MADE ME LOVE THIS BOOK!
|
Judy
Robertson
|
Sarah’s
Key (F)
|
Tatiana
de Rosnay
|
Paris, July 1942:
Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as
they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night.
Sarah locks her younger brother in a bedroom cupboard and promises to come
back for him as soon as they are released.
Sixty Years Later:
Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist
investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of
secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own future.
|
This
is a remarkable historical novel, a book which brings to light a disturbing
and deliberately hidden aspect of French behavior towards Jews during World
War II.
Andrea
V. Brambila
|
The Human Stain (F)
|
Phillip Roth
|
It is 1998, the year
in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of
a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor,
Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a
racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have
astonished even his most virulent accuser.
Coleman Silk has a
secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four
children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan
Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to
reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as
an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously
contrived life came unraveled.
|
It is difficult for
many people to acknowledge their ancestry. The consequences of denying your history.
|
Robert
Council
|
Dreams of Joy
(F)
|
Lisa See
|
In Dreams of Joy,
continuing the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and
Pearl’s strong-willed 19 old daughter, Joy.
Joy runs away to
Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist. Blinded by
idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China,
heedless of the dangers in the communist regime and the Great Leap Forward
|
Shanghai Girls ends
with the suicide of Pearl’s husband Sam and the shattering discovery by Joy
that May is really her mother, Pearl is her aunt, and Z.G., the famous
Chinese artist, is her father.
See’s novel uses
Mao’s China as her background, but her story focuses on the change and growth
of her main characters – Pearl, Joy, Z.G., and May.
I LEARNED SO MUCH
FROM THIS BOOK TOO!
|
Jennifer Paras
|
Bright and
Distant
Shores (F)
|
Dominic Smith
|
A sweeping
historical novel set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung
islands of the South Pacific.
In the waning years
of the nineteenth century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning
collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one
such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the
South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper—the
world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian
weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood.
Caught up in this
scheme are two orphans—Owen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicago's South
Side who has recently proposed to the girl he must leave behind, and Argus
Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides who longs to be reunited with his
sister. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a
collision course between the tribal and the civilized, between two young men
plagued by their respective and haunting pasts.
|
The number one
reason could be that I have 15 free copies. Additionally, the author and the
book have received favorable reviews.
Dealing as it does with the intersections of cultures, including
exploitation, there should be lots to discuss.
excellent read will
appeal to those who enjoy literary historical fiction with a touch of exotic
adventure.
PW: Smith expertly
combines well-drawn characters with a complex narrative that moves smoothly
to the dawn of a
|
Teri
Titus
|
Cutting for Stone
(F)
|
Abraham Verghese
|
The story is a
riveting saga of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, born of a tragic
union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission
hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and
their father's disappearance, and bound together by a preternatural
connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the conjoint twins come of
age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. But it's love, not
politics -- their passion for the same woman -- that will tear them apart and
force Marion to flee his homeland and make his way to America, finding refuge
in his work at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the
past catches up to him, wreaking havoc and destruction, Marion has to entrust
his life to the two men he has trusted least in the world: the surgeon father
who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
|
An outstanding piece
of storytelling.
|
Robert
Council
|
NON-FICTION (22 titles)
The New Jim Crow
(NF)
|
Michelle Alexander
|
In the era of
colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly,
as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet,
as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to
discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was
once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a
felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing
discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational
opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion
from jury service—are suddenly legal.
|
This just sounds
like a good read on an interesting subject.
|
Janice Cervantes
|
The
Great Influenza (NF)
|
John M. Barry
|
This is the epic
story of the deadliest plague in history. No disease the world has ever known
even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to
have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and
mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded
across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in
twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a
year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled
from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that
felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies
were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people
died of influenza as in the First World War.
|
Within this book
unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its
research, and spellbinding as it weaves multiple narrative strands together.
In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as
society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward,
risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William
Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at
Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized
American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to
crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.
|
Judy
Robertson
|
Maman's homesick pie
: a Persian heart in an American kitchen /
(NF)
|
Donia Bijan
|
For Donia Bijan's
family, food has been the language they use to tell their stories and to
communicate their love. In 1978, when the Islamic revolution in Iran
threatened their safety, they fled to California's Bay Area, where the
familiar flavors of Bijan's mother's cooking formed a bridge to the life they
left behind. Now, through the prism of food, award-winning chef Donia Bijan
unwinds her own story, finding that at the heart of it all is her mother,
whose love and support enabled Bijan to realize her dreams. From the Persian
world of her youth to the American life she embraced as a teenager to her
years at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris (studying under the infamous Madame
Brassart) to apprenticeships in France's three-star kitchens and finally back
to San Francisco.
|
Another take on the
immigrant experience and there is a local angle, plus this looks like a very
pleasant read.
“In Bijan’s skillful
hands ... recipes become a storytelling medium, and Maman’s Homesick Pie is
at once a compelling portrait of her remarkable Iranian parents, a chronicle
of her culinary career from a stagiaire (an unpaid apprenticeship) in France
to award-winning chef and restaurateur in Palo Alto, and a lavish taste of
Persian culture and cuisine... A compelling, poignant and most delectable
book.” —BookPage online
|
Teri
Titus
|
Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart
in a Dumbed-Down World
(NF)
|
Lisa Bloom
|
OMG –Did you know
that 1 out of every 4 American women would rather win America’s Next Top
Model than the Nobel Peace Prize? This book is full of disturbing statistics
and makes a case for women to give themselves permission to be inspired to
use their brain.
|
I think the book
will be a real eye-opener for most of us in the book club. It will encourage us to have a
thoughtful discussion about this timely topic.
|
Ann Parks-Council
|
Plan B 4.0
Mobilizing
To Save
Civilization (NF)
|
Lester R. Brown
|
Explores the transition
of solar, wind and geothermal energy in replacing coal, oil and natural
gas. Talks about the new economy
and how our lives will be effected.
|
It’s a complicated
subject that I feel we need to explore.
This book is supposed to make it easy…
|
Heidi
Louwaert
|
Havana Nocturne - How The Mob Owned Cuba...And Then Lost
It To The Revolution
(NF)
|
T.J. English
|
In
modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—the old
hotel-casinos, vintage American cars, and flickering neon signs speak of a
bygone era that is widely familiar and often romanticized, but little
understood. This is a riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime,
political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and international
conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana and the event
that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution.
As the
Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the
1950s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned
their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope
for the future of the American Mob in the post-Prohibition years of
intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move,
it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having
cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government and in particular the brutal
dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his
ambitious business plans in motion.
|
Bringing
together long-buried historical information with English's own research in
Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to
Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders.
English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana
Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Albert
Anastasia—and Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at
how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—and how Fidel Castro
trumped it all with the Cuban Revolution.
|
Judy
Robertson
|
The Storytelling
Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (NF)
|
Jonathan Gottschall
|
The author argues
that we never grow out of our need to make believe. All that changes is the format (cave painting, novels,
video games). Stories, the author purports, have a purpose in human
development.
|
As a book club
member we spend a lot of time reading books. I’d like to explore the process of what we do and why, as
well as the content.
|
Ann Parks-Council
|
The Swerve: How The
World Became Modern (NF)
|
Stephen Greenblatt
|
A provocative book
arguing that an obscure work of philosophy, discovered nearly 600 years ago,
changed the course of history by anticipating the science and sensibilities
of today.
|
It is interesting to
discover how the past continues to influence the present.
|
Robert
Council
|
Steve Jobs Biography
(NF)
|
Walter Jacobson
|
Based on more than
forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews
with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors,
and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the
roller-coaster life and seemingly intense personality of a creative
entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized
six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet
computing, and digital publishing.
|
Based on more than
forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews
with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors,
and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the
roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative
entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized
six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet
computing, and digital publishing.
|
Jennifer Paras
|
Orange is the New
Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison
(NF)
|
Piper
Kerman
|
Sent to prison for a
10 year old crime, Piper Kerman is not the same reckless person she was back
then. She tells the story of 13 months in prison with the special codes of
behavior, the hierarchies, the relationship between prisoners and between
prisoner and jailer.
|
Curiousity about
what it was like. I had a sister
in prison and she doesn’t talk about it much.
|
Heidi
Louwaert
|
In the Garden of
Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (NF)
|
Erik
Larson (author of “Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the
Fair that Changed America”)
|
In the Garden of
Beasts is a vivid portrait of Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s
reign, brought to life through the stories of two people: William E. Dodd,
who in 1933 became America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s regime, and his
scandalously carefree daughter, Martha. Both become players in the
exhilarating (and terrifying) story of Hitler’s obsession for absolute power,
which culminates in the events of one murderous night, later known as “the
Night of Long Knives”.
|
Suffused with the
tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the
bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister—Goebbels,
this book is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about
why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until
Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.
|
Andrea
V. Brambila
Karen
L. Marino
Teri
Titus
Jennifer
Paras
|
Cinderella Ate My
Daughter (NF)
|
Peggy Orenstein
|
Author looks at the
whole princess-themed merchandise and advertising. She expands on the theme and explores child beauty
pageants, American Girl stores and looks at girls’ self-esteem and the
sexualization of girlhood.
|
Almost all my nieces
have been influences by the Disney princesses. I would like to explore the
impact this has on our children through a thoughtful discussion from the
group.
|
Ann Parks-Council
|
Lots of Candles,
Plenty of Cake (NF)
|
Anna Quindlen
|
In this irresistible
memoir, the New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna
Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead—and celebrating it all—as she
considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in
our closets, and more.
|
I need help
adjusting to being in the last 1/3 or ¼ of my life. I like the author’s wit and wisdom and think it will spur
a lot of discussion.
|
Ann Parks-Council
|
The Stranger Beside
Me (NF)
|
Ann
Rule
|
This true crime
novel defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived
among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill
that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning
awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one
of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing
at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually
executed for three of those cases.
|
Drawing from their
correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking
a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a
crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and
charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of
true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.
|
Jennifer Nelson
|
The Invisible Thread
(NF)
|
Laura Schroff
|
A true story of an
11 year old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive and an
unlikely meeting
with Destiny. A heartwarming
story that has spanned 30
years.
|
We need a feel good
inspirational book at least once a year.
|
A Paradise Built in
Hell
(non-fiction)
|
Rebecca
Solnit
|
Investigates 5
disasters & touches on others
in the ways that
resourcefulness, generosity
and moments of
altruism arise amid grief and
disruption.
|
Always interested in
reading about disasters. Like
stories about hope and heroes and people doing good
|
Heidi
Louwaert
|
Five-Finger
Discount: A Crooked Family History
(NF)
|
Helene Stapinski
|
With deadpan humor
and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable
New Jersey family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In
the memoir Mary Karr calls “a page-turner,” Helene Stapinski ingeniously
weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City—a place known for
its political corruption and industrial blight—with the tales that have
swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic
waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once
heartbreaking and hysterically funny.
|
I don’t remember our
Book Club reading
about the Mafia.
This book is more
about “Wise Guys” but it sounds interesting and fun.
|
Janice Cervantes
|
Charles Dickens: A
Life
(NF)
|
Claire Tomalin
|
|
As 2012 is the
bicentennial of Dickens’ birth, this seems like a good year to read about him
(or read one of his novels...) This recent biography seems like it would be a
good introduction to Dickens as well as being an entertaining read.
|
Teri
Titus
|
The
Guns of August (NF)
|
Barbara
Tuchman
|
This is about the
turning point of the year 1914--the month leading up to the war and the first
month of the war. This was the last gasp of the Gilded Age, of Kings and
Kaisers and Czars, of pointed or plumed hats, colored uniforms, and all the
pomp and romance that went along with war. How quickly it all changed, and
how horrible it became.
|
Winner of the
Pulitzer Prize. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense
knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the
first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped
but wasn't.
|
Andrea
V. Brambila
|
Blood
Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution
(NF)
|
Holly
Tucker (historian)
|
In
1667, a renegade physician named Jean Denis transfused calf's blood into one
of Paris's most notorious madmen. In doing so, Denis angered not only the
elite scientists who had hoped to perform the first animal-to-human
transfusions themselves, but also a host of powerful conservatives who
believed that the doctor was toying with forces of nature that he did not
understand. Just days after the experiment, the madman was dead, and Denis
was framed for murder.
|
Blood
Work gives us a vivid glimpse of a particularly fraught period in history--a
time of fire and plague, empire building and international distrust, when
monsters were believed to inhabit the seas and the boundary between science
and superstition was still in flux. Some believed blood transfusions might
jeopardize human souls, pave the way for monstrous hybrid creatures, or even
provoke divine retribution.
Issues: religion vs. science, morality, class.
|
Andrea
V. Brambila
|
A Disposition to be
Rich : how a small-town pastor's son ruined an American president, brought on
a Wall Street crash, and made himself the best-hated man in the United States
(NF)
|
Geoffrey Ward
|
Ferdinand Ward was
the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. Through his unapologetic villainy,
he bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and ran roughshod over the entire world of
finance. Now, his compelling, behind-the-scenes story is told—told by his great-grandson,
award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward.
Ferdinand Ward was
the Bernie Madoff of his day, a supposed genius at making big money fast on
Wall Street who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme—one
that ultimately collapsed in one of the greatest financial scandals in
American history.
|
Review in SF
Chronicle, May 21, 2012 made me want to read this. It will be interesting to compare this with current
financial scandals.
This bravely candid
biography of a notorious ancestor successfully balances the truth about
Ferdinand Ward's personal life with his scandalous role in this
all-too-familiar American rags-to-riches-to-criminality saga. Essential for
anyone interested in American financial history
|
Teri
Titus
|
