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What Some Clubs are Reading: Summer/Fall 2010
(all in paperback unless otherwise noted)
- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann - This got the National Book Award last year. The publisher says: It offers a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of life in New York City in the 1970s. In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in this stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
- The Help by Katherine Stockett - Still in hardcover, but well worth it. In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women - black and white, mothers and daughters - view one another.
- The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow - Nancy and Marti really liked this one. From the co-author of the bestselling The Last Lecture comes a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of 11 girls and the women they became.
- Little Bee by Chris Cleave - A Liz pick – and Mary really liked it too. A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers—one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.
- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford - Everybody loves this one. It's the story of a true friendship and first love formed in the shadow of the Japanese internment during WWII. A reflective story of family, and of generations pushing each other away and coming together.
- Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow - Mary and Julia loved this one. Homer and Langley are brothers – one sighted, one blind—and heirs to some of the last vestiges of Golden Age New York. When their parents die and Langley returns shell shocked from WWI, their lives become more than strange. Based on the true story of the Collyer brothers.
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - A young girl is disgusted by the meaninglessness of her parents' upper class preoccupations. A hotel concierge secretly makes a study of philosophy. A neighbor is an aficionado of classic Japanese cinema. Sometimes the secrets we keep are what draw us together. Set within (I am told) a vividly accurate portrait of modern Paris.
- The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - This was Mary's Favorite Book of 2008. It's not easy to get into, but a gripping and grisly beginning gives way to poetry and myth-like stories-within-stories.
- The Given Day by Dennis Lehane - Best-selling author Lehane sets this novel of American history at the end of WWI.
- Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah - Riveting memoir of a child soldier in Sierra Leone.
- Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese - Set in Ethiopia as the old order gives way to the new, fierce ambition sends twin brothers down different paths. Louise really liked this.
- Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - A novel in letters; just about everybody at the Learned Owl liked it. The story begins one night on the Isle of Guernsey during the German occupation.
- Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay - A Liz pick. Louise and Marti liked it too. This compelling portrait of occupied Paris reveals the taboos and silence that surround this little-known episode in French history.
- Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan - When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend.
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout - Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores changes in her little town and in the world in general. What she doesn't always see are the changes taking place in those around her. An insightful and sometimes funny book.
- City of Thieves by David Bennioff - A novel based on Bennioff's grandfather's own stories about surviving World War II in Russia.
- Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti - Liz quite liked this quirky tale, which asks the reader: Why is it so impossible to get a relationship between two middle-aged misfits to work? This humorous novel breathes new life into the age-old conundrum that is love.
- The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister - Another Liz Pick. Eight students gather in Lillian's Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.
- A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick - Liz and Louise and Mary liked this dark, gothic tale of mistrust and marriage set in turn-of-the-century Wisconsin.
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Karen called this her favorite thriller of 2009.
- Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson - This true story of building schools for girls in Afghanistan has become something of a classic. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that U.S. foreign policy is changing in part because so many military wives have read the book and recommended it to their spouses. For the full article, click here.
Some of Mary's Favorites
(all in paperback unless otherwise noted)
- The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace - Liz, Nancy, Marti and Mary all liked this and say: It's a spare and lyrical debut from a writer to keep your eye on. Mary says: It's spare as a line drawing, but full of the kind of lush fancy I'd expect from Allende or Atwood. The contessa of the title grows up, marries and slowly grows blind – escaping into an interior world of stunning detail where few can follow and none, it seems, can stay. Still in hardcover, but I think worth every penny.
- The Blue Notebook by James Levine M.D - I read this in an evening. I could not put it down. It's the story of a young girl sold into prostitution in Mumbai at age 9. At 15, she has a notebook and has begun to tell her story. The Blue Notebook is a novel, but Levine did research for the Mayo Clinic interviewing homeless children on the main drag of prostitution in Mumbai (known as "The Street of Cages"), and so his characters are (quite literally) achingly real. He's donating all U.S. proceeds from the book to International and National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children. Good for groups who enjoyed discussing Little Bee.
- Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (still in hardcover) - This collection of stories treats race and class and sex and their various disadvantages with respect and subtlety. Harvest, a couple of stories in, can easily stand alongside Hemingway's best short fiction. None of the stories in here are easy to read, but they'll all make you think. A good choice for book clubs, but be sure to bring lots of wine, because it will start a fight.
- Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren - A great, guilty pleasure. Lauren takes the reader along on her unlikely-but-true trip from drop-out drama student to lover of the Sultan of Brunei. Unflinching and fascinating, this book screams to be included in every beach bag.
- The Whole World by Emily Winslow (still in hardcover) - A tightly plotted mystery steeped in the heady atmosphere of Cambridge University.
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