suggestion from Heidi:
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Fiction *531pages
This novel is a Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times Best Seller. The story is set in France and Germany during WWII about the lives of a 14 year old blind French girl who flees to the countryside when her father disappears from Nazi-occupied Paris and a gadget-obsessed German orphan whose skills admit him to a brutal branch of the Hitler Youth. Their paths don’t cross until late in the novel but you will read this book for the incredible writing and the powerful examples of the way average people in trying times must decide daily between morality and survival.
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Suggestions from Janice:
Fiction
The Invention Of Wings Sue Monk Kidd 359 pages
This book is based loosely on the real-life story of Sarah Grimke, a Southern aristocrat whose father is a big shot judge on South Carolina's Supreme Court, where Sarah wants to be, eventually. She is given a slave(Handful)for her 11th birthday, which strikes her as ridiculous. She doesn't want the gift but is forced to accept it.
Story of two strong women struggling against the societal norms of pre-Civil War days in the South.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena Anthony Morra 384 pages
A harrowing account of survival and redemption during war in a small village, Chechnya,. while the Russian Feds and Chechnyan Rebels fought over independence.
Centered on two doctors in Chechnya, one a Russian, hoping for news of her missing sister, the other a Chechen trying to hide his 8 yr. old neighbor after Russian Security forces come for the father
Orphan Train Christina Baker Kline 278 pages
This is a story of resilience in the face of tremendous odds and oppressive loneliness. Meticulously researched and yet full of the breath of life. this novel takes us on a historical journey where survival depends on ones's own steely backbone and the miracle of a large and generous heart.
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry Gabrielle Zevin 288 pages
A perfect book club book. Lots of room for discussion. Indie book shops, publishing reps, readers-non-readers, e-books literary authors ,two automobile deaths, one suicide, one death from cancer, one major theft, one abandoned child, an inter-ethic marriage.
Sounds like fun. We could make it a selection for a busy month. It's short.
Non-Fiction
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace Jeff Hobbs 400 pages
A heartfelt biography of the short life of a talented young African American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale university, only to succumb to the dangers of the streets and of ones own nature when he returns home. It is about poverty and the struggle to find male role models in a community were a man is more likely to go to prison than to college.
The Slave Next Door Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter 336 pages
In this book we hear the voices of survivors who are fighting everyday for freedom. A Slave Next Door exposes slavery in today's America in all it's forms and sounds.
Riding The Bus With My Sister Rachel Simon 293 pages
Rachel Simon's sister, Beth, is a spirited woman, despite her intellectual disability. Beth spends her days riding the buses in her Pennsylvania city. The drivers are her mentors, her fellow passengers, her community. One day Beth asked Rachel to accompany her on the buses for an entire year, the book is a chronicle of that remarkable time. Here are life lessons from which every reader can profit, how to live in the moment, how to pay attention to what really matters, how to change, how to slow down and enjoy the ride
The Boys In The Boat Daniel James Brown 370 pages
In 1936 nine working-class American boys burst from their small towns into the international limelight, unexpectedly wiping the smile off Adolph Hitler's face by beating his vaunted German team to capture the Olympic gold medal.
The Boys in the Boat is an exciting blend of history and Olympic sport.
God's Bankers The History Of Money and Power At The Vatican Gerald Posner 521 pages
Revealing a history of mysterious deaths, shady characters and moral and political tensions. Posner exposes the inner working of the Catholic Church to trace how the Vatican evolved form an institution of faith into an extremely wealthy corporate power.
Suggestions from Doris:
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suggestions from Robert:
THE LADY IN GOLD by Anne-Marie O’Conner Non-fiction 349 pages
“The Lady in Gold” is a fascinating work, ambitious, exhaustively researched and profligately detailed. Anne-Marie O’Connor traces the convoluted history of Gustav Klimt’s dazzling gold-leaf portrait of the Jewish society beauty Adele Bloch-Bauer from its commissioning in 1903 to its sale to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder in 2006. But the book’s title does not do justice to O’Connor’s scope, which includes the Viennese Belle Epoque, the Anschluss, the diaspora of Viennese Jews, the looting of their artwork and legal battles over its restitution, and thorny questions facing the heirs of reclaimed art.
SAVING CAPITALISM: FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW by Robert Reich
Non-fiction 240 pages
From the author of Aftershock and The Work of Nations, his most important book to date—a myth-shattering breakdown of how the economic system that helped make America so strong is now failing us, and what it will take to fix it.
Perhaps no one is better acquainted with the intersection of economics and politics than Robert B. Reich, and now he reveals how power and influence have created a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the “free market” is, and how it has masked the power of moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit.
Perhaps no one is better acquainted with the intersection of economics and politics than Robert B. Reich, and now he reveals how power and influence have created a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the “free market” is, and how it has masked the power of moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit.
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suggestions from Robert:
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins Fiction 323 pages
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything changed. When Rachel learns in the newspaper that 'Jess' has gone missing. She has to come forward to the police with what she knows, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. How involved was Rachel to begin with? And has she done more harm than good?
THE CELLIST OF SARAJEVO by Steven Galloway Fiction 235 pages
The novel is set during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s and explores the dilemmas of ordinary people caught in the crisis. The title references the true story of Vedran Smailović, a cellist who played Albinoni's Adagio "dressed in evening tails and perching on a fire-scorched chair" every day for 22 days, "always at the same time and location", to "honor the 22 people killed by a mortar bomb while they queued for bread on May 26, 1992". The novel follows the lives of three fictional citizens of Sarajevo as they struggle to survive the war, including one who seeks to protect the cellist: He has said he will do this for twenty-two days. People see him. The world has seen him. We cannot allow him to be killed. The novel examines the gentleness found in humanity and the lasting and healing power of art.
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan Fiction 273 pages
Most of the stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad concern Bennie Salazar, an aging rock music executive; his old assistant, Sasha; and their various friends and associates. The book follows a large cast of mostly self-destructive characters as they grow older and life sends them in directions they did not intend to go in. The stories shift back and forth in time, moving from the late sixties to the present and into the near future.
THE CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen Fiction 567 pages
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.
The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man-or so her mother fears.
The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man-or so her mother fears.
THE CAT’S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje Fiction 269 pages
The central character and narrator named Michael, an unaccompanied 11-year-old boy, boards an ocean liner, the Oronsay, in Colombo en route to England via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. For meals on board Michael is sat at the "cat's table" (the one furthest from the Captain's table) with other boys Ramadhin and Cassius and other misfit characters. The book follows the adventures of Michael and these boys while they are aboard the Oronsay, and Michael's later perspective as an older man looking back on this boyhood voyage.
The ocean liner, a world unto itself, is like all literary ships—a microcosm of the larger world. The voyage serves as a metaphor for passage between the childhood the boys left behind in Sri Lanka and the young adults they will become in England.
THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett Fiction 120 pages
The title's "uncommon reader" (Queen Elizabeth II) becomes obsessed with books after a chance encounter with a mobile library. The story follows the consequences of this obsession for the Queen, her household and advisers, and her constitutional position.
THE BEAUTY OF HUMANITY MOVEMENT by Camilla Gibb Fiction 310 pages
The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption and renewal of love. The story of these characters is tinged with longing for worlds and loved ones lost but also filled with the hope that faith can heal the pain of their shared country's turbulent past. This is the distinct and complex story of contemporary Vietnam, a country undergoing momentous change, and a story of how family is defined-not always by bloodlines, but by heart.
THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain Fiction 324 pages
A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
TO THE END OF THE LAND by David Grossman Fiction 575 pages
From one of Israel’s most acclaimed writers comes a novel of extraordinary power about family life—the greatest human drama—and the cost of war.
Never have we seen so clearly the reality and surreality of daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens that fall on each generation anew.
Grossman’s rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great anti-war novels of our time.
==================from Teri:
Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee
Fiction * 288 pages
Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch -- Scout -- struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.
With all the publicity surrounding this, and the popularity and importance of its predecessor, seems like this is a ‘must read’. Maybe we could even watch the film of To Kill a Mockingbird before the discussion.
A God in Ruins
Kate Atkinson
Fiction * 468 pages
Ursula Todd's brother Teddy is an old man trying to come to grips with his post-War life and with a modern world and family. Switching back and forth in time between memories of his childhood and his present, Teddy is an oblivious husband, a rueful father. He never quite got over the War and part of him never adjusted to having a future. Would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather, Teddy navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world; his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have.
This is described as a ‘companion’ more than a sequel to the author’s Life After Life, a book I really enjoyed, so I look forward to reading this one. I also really enjoy the author’s Jackson Brodie titles.
Black Chalk
Christopher J. Yates
Fiction * 346 pages
One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game. A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round.
The author has a background in puzzle writing, and I enjoy books with twists and turns. One review described this as “an ideal book group title: who knows better than your best friends, what would break you?”
Contagious; Why Things Catch On
Jonah Berger
Non-fiction * 244 pages
LJ: ‘Berger (marketing, Univ. of Penn.) informs and entertains while presenting his argument for why some products and ideas generate interest by word of mouth, and grow virally, and why others don't. Berger's writing is, in a sense, "contagious." This superbly written and thought-provoking book is hard to put down…’
So often we hear the phrase ‘going viral’, but not why -- perhaps this book can explain why ‘memes’ and ‘tropes’ are now showing up all over, and how did ‘curated’ move out of museums to apply to such diverse items as meat platters and reading lists? Inquiring minds want to know! (and is that a meme or a trope?)
Grain of Truth; the Real Case for and against Wheat and Gluten
Stephen Yafa
Non-fiction * 293 pages
No topic in nutrition is more controversial than wheat. While mega-sellers like Grain Brain and Wheat Belly suggest that wheat may be the new asbestos, Stephen Yafa finds that it has been wrongly demonized. .. For readers of Salt Sugar Fat and The Omnivore's Dilemma, Grain of Truth smoothly blends science, history, biology, economics, and nutrition to give us back our daily bread.
I have family members and friends who are gluten intolerant, and ‘Gluten Free’ is the latest marketing theme (trope?), so I’d like to find out more, preferably without hysteria and haranguing. Library Journal says. “Well researched and accessible, this title is recommended for libraries where people look for Michael Pollan's titles (Cooked; Food Rules; The Omnivore's Dilemma).”
Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
Sydney Padua
Graphic Novel * 315 pages
LJ: Originally a webcomic, this collection of jests interweaves history, literature, and fantasy into short stories starring Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Babbage's machines, and a number of 19th-century luminaries. Fact: Lord Byron's mathematically minded daughter Ada and inventor-wannabe Charles were lifelong BFFs and collaborated on writings about the proto-computers that Charles wanted to build. Fiction: that either the "Difference Engine" or the "Analytical Engine" was actually built or helped the Victorian pair do battle with the banking system. … VERDICT Padua's extravaganza is very much for the whimsical intelligentsia and will speak to those interested in computers or math who will delight in the abundant background materials.
I saw the author at the Computer History Museum and she was quite entertaining, so I have high hopes for the book. Ada sounds like quite an interesting woman. William Gibson’s Difference Engine might make a good companion read; originally published in 1991, an anniversary edition was published in 2011.
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From Andrea:
Nonfiction:
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, 255 pages
To this day, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Vowell investigates what that means and what it should mean. What was this great political enterprise all about? Who were these people who are considered the philosophical, spiritual, and moral ancestors of our nation? What Vowell discovers is something far different from what their uptight shoe-buckles-and- corn reputation might suggest. The people she finds are highly literate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty. Their story is filled with pamphlet feuds, witty courtroom dramas, and bloody vengeance. Sarah Vowell’s special brand of armchair history makes the bizarre and esoteric fascinatingly relevant and fun.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain, 312 pages
An eloquent, opinionated, unapologetic look at the inner workings of haute cuisine from a CIA-trained chef: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it."
Jumping the Fence: A Legacy of Race in 150 Years of Family Secrets by Maureen Gilmer, 176 pages
In 19th century New Orleans, real life legislator Jean Benjamin Esnard and his family struggled to conceal their mixed race ancestry and pass as white in the increasingly hostile racial environment of the post-Civil War South. Their secret began to unravel, however, when their son, Adrien, was born darker than his siblings and labeled “C” for “colored” on his birth certificate. As desperation sets in, Jean Benjamin and his wife Florentine must make the heartbreaking decision to separate the family in order to save it.
In Jumping the Fence, Maureen Gilmer shares the extraordinary true story of early civil rights activists—her ancestors—who stopped at nothing to protect each other and their assets in the struggle against slavery and segregation.
All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior, 336 pages
Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. But almost none have thought to ask: What are the effects of children on their parents?
In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior analyzes the many ways children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources—in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology—she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing in later chapters to parents of teens.
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, 192 pages
In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.
Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness by Alfredo Corchado, 304 pages
In the last decade, more than 100,000 people have been killed or disappeared in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican-American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juárez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group—and that he had twenty-four hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he races to save his own life.
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. 336 pages
Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks, 258 pages
The patients in these pages are confronted with almost inconceivably strange neurological disorders; their stories are a profound testament to the adaptability of the human brain and the resilience of the human spirit. Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects—the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the “disembodied” woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat—with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind.
Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence by Geoffrey Canada, 181 pages
Long before the avalanche of praise for his work—from Oprah Winfrey, from President Bill Clinton, from President Barack Obama—long before he became known for his talk show appearances, Members Project spots, and documentaries like Waiting for “Superman”, Geoffrey Canada was a small boy growing up scared on the mean streets of the South Bronx. His childhood world was one where “sidewalk boys” learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher. In his candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner. Includes the story of the founding of the Harlem Children’s Zone.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by
Tom Reiss, 414 pages
The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.
Fiction:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, 240 pages
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.
This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim, 252 pages
Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father. As she grows older, Mattie becomes more like family to Lisbeth than her own kin and the girl’s visits to the slaves’ quarters—and their lively and loving community—bring them closer together than ever. But can two women in such disparate circumstances form a bond like theirs without consequence? This deeply moving tale of unlikely love traces the journey of these very different women as each searches for freedom and dignity.
Perfect Peace by Daniel Black, 352 pages
The heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have.
When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.” From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, 243 pages
Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel by Dorothy Allison, 309 pages
Critics have likened Allison to William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, naming her the first writer of her generation to dramatize the lives and language of poor whites in the South. Since its appearance, the novel has inspired an award-winning film and has been banned from libraries and classrooms, championed by fans, and defended by critics.
Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family-a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney-and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.
Cane River by Lalita Tademy, 418 pages
Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.
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From Carolee:
I have one book I'd like to recommend Diamond Head by Cecily Wong because she happens to be related to me and I think the story might have some connection to her past. Anyway there were some good reviews.
Diamond Head
Cecily Wong
Fiction * 312 pages
A sweeping debut spanning from China to Hawaii that follows four generations of a wealthy shipping family whose rise and decline is riddled with secrets and tragic love—from a young, powerful new voice in fiction.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Frank Leong, a fabulously wealthy shipping industrialist, moves his family from China to the island of Oahu. But something ancient follows the Leongs to Hawaii, haunting them. The parable of the red string of fate, the cord that binds one intended beloved to her perfect match, also punishes for mistakes in love, passing a destructive knot down the family line.
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BAY AREA DISCUSSION GROUP – Reading list for 2015-16 Submitted by Heidi
Black Boy
Richard Wright
Non-fiction * 448 pages
An autobiography of Richard Wright’s life as a young boy in rural Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee and follows him as a young adult to Chicago. “It is an unashamed confession and profound indictment – a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering.”
This is considered by many to be Wright’s best work.
Under the Banner of Heaven
Jon Krakauer
Non-fiction * 432 pages
There are two subjects within this book. One is the chilling story of offshoot Mormon fundamentalist brothers who brutally butchered their sister-in-law and 15 month old niece in the name of divine revelation in 1984. Krakauer explores what he sees as the nature of radical Mormon sects and gives us compelling details of the history of the Mormon church from the early 19th century. In his writing Krakauer demonstrates that most non fundamentalist Mormons are community oriented, industrious and law-abiding, he poses some striking questions about the close-minded, closed-door policies of the religion – and many religions in general.
Blink
Malcolm Gladwell
Non-fiction * 296 pages
An entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments – about people’s intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy. He tells us fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting, the psychology of police work, a medical doctor’s decision making ability…
Reviewers have found each case study satisfying and applaud the wide range of fields and the seeking of an underlying truth.
Whiskey, Tango Foxtrot
David Shafer
Fiction * 448 pages
This is a suspenseful global thriller and an emotionally truthful novel about the struggle to change the world inside and outside your head. Three thirty-something do-gooders try to do the right thing with wit and humor. This fictional work is considered a techno thriller, wickedly funny and full of pop culture savvy.
The Zone of Interest
Martin Amis
Fiction * 560 pages
The story takes place in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. There are three narrators: the nephew of a top Nazi official; a slightly crazy commandant; and the head of the Sonderkommando. The author tells a story through their eyes of the absurdity and senseless of the Holocaust. It’s a story of bravery and humanity and was listed in the New York Times for top 10 fiction of 2014.
The Secret Place
Tana French
Fiction * 464 pages
A cold case re-surfaces at a posh girls’ school and the Dublin Murder squad investigates. Partners Stephen Moran and Antoinette Casey try to find the truth inside secrets, loyalties and misdirection thrown their way by two rival groups of teenage girls. A lot of twists. Great reviews. I have read a few Tana French detective novels and thoroughly enjoyed all of them.
The Killing Floor
Lee Child
Fiction * 560 pages
This is the debut of Jack Reacher- one of my favorite fictional characters. Transient Jack Reacher finds himself in Margrave, Georgia and almost immediately arrested as a murder suspect. Reacher soon unearths a huge conspiracy that goes beyond Margrave. Great read, exciting, lots of twists…
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