June 2013 - Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Geri Beckman invited the group to her home to discuss our book selection this month.

Book Description

Release date: April 30, 2002

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing "an inspiring heroine" (The Wall Street Journal), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

Source: amazon.co

 

April 2013 - The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Our hostess this month was Rochelle Kovarik.  We had a lovely evening discussing The Round House by Louise Erdrich.  The timing for this book was perfect as Erdrich was bestowed with our state's prestigious Roughrider Award this month.

Amazon.com book description:

The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction.
One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

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March 2013 - The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow

We met at the Alexander House for dinner and discussion on the book The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow.

Book description from Amazon.com:

At 4:00 am, Leonida Wanyama lit a lantern in her house made of sticks and mud. She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of the new year. This was the day Leonida and a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya would begin their exodus, as she said, “from misery to Canaan,” the land of milk and honey.

Africa’s smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery. They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did a century ago. With tired seeds, meager soil nutrition, primitive storage facilities, wretched roads, and no capital or credit, they harvest less than one-quarter the yields of Western farmers. The romantic ideal of African farmers––rural villagers in touch with nature, tending bucolic fields––is in reality a horror scene of malnourished children, backbreaking manual work, and profound hopelessness. Growing food is their driving preoccupation, and still they don’t have enough to feed their families throughout the year. The wanjala––the annual hunger season that can stretch from one month to as many as eight or nine––abides.

But in January 2011, Leonida and her neighbors came together and took the enormous risk of trying to change their lives. Award-winning author and world hunger activist Roger Thurow spent a year with four of them––Leonida Wanyama, Rasoa Wasike, Francis Mamati, and Zipporah Biketi––to intimately chronicle their efforts. In The Last Hunger Season, he illuminates the profound challenges these farmers and their families face, and follows them through the seasons to see whether, with a little bit of help from a new social enterprise organization called One Acre Fund, they might transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger.

The daily dramas of the farmers’ lives unfold against the backdrop of a looming global challenge: to feed a growing population, world food production must nearly double by 2050. If these farmers succeed, so might we all.

February 2013 - Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

In February, we had the pleasure to meet at and tour Jacqi's beautiful new home.  For those of you who were unable to attend, let me assure you that it was a treat to see their lovely, innovative and spacious home. We couldn't be more happy for the Zikmund family!


After the house tour, we settled in to discuss Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen.  The book description on Amazon says. . .

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. As she did in her beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves. Using her past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages, Quindlen talks about Marriage: “A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn’t believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.” Girlfriends: “Ask any woman how she makes it through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she will mention her girlfriends. Sometimes I will see a photo of an actress in an unflattering dress or a blouse too young for her or with a heavy-handed makeup job, and I mutter, ‘She must not have any girlfriends.’ ” Stuff: “Here’s what it comes down to, really: there is now so much stuff in my head, so many years, so many memories, that it’s taken the place of primacy away from the things in the bedrooms, on the porch. My doctor says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, she doesn’t believe our memories flag because of a drop in estrogen but because of how crowded it is in the drawers of our minds. Between the stuff at work and the stuff at home, the appointments and the news and the gossip and the rest, the past and the present and the plans for the future, the filing cabinets in our heads are not only full, they’re overflowing.” Our bodies: “I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and in the years to come. It’s like a car, and while I like a red convertible or even a Bentley as well as the next person, what I really need are four tires and an engine.”  Parenting: “Being a parent is not transactional. We do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: We are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.” From childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, Quindlen uses the events of her own life to illuminate our own. Along with the downsides of age, she says, can come wisdom, a perspective on life that makes it satisfying and even joyful. Candid, funny, moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen’s status as America’s laureate of real life.

Ratings for the book averaged about 6-7 and the discussion was good as most or all of us could relate to at least some of the content of Quindlen's memoir.  We topped the evening off with a delicious choice of desserts.  Thank you Jacqi for inviting us to your home.

The next book is The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow.  We are still looking for a member to host for the month of March.

January 2013 - Call the Midwife

Our group met on the last day of January at the home of Marcia Rost to discuss Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth.  Ratings from the book were high, with several giving it a 9 and a few in the 5-6 range.  The club members and Glenn had some good conversation about the book, covering such questions as how many children in a family is 'ideal', modern medicine vs. natural childbirth and the ethical implications of taking away children from mothers deemed as 'unfit'.

Call the Midwife is described by Publisher's Weekly:

From Publishers Weekly

Worth gained her midwife training in the 1950s among an Anglican order of nuns dedicated to ensuring safer childbirth for the poor living amid the Docklands slums on the East End of London. Her engaging memoir retraces those early years caring for the indigent and unfortunate during the pinched postwar era in London, when health care was nearly nonexistent, antibiotics brand-new, sanitary facilities rare, contraception unreliable and families with 13 or more children the norm. Working alongside the trained nurses and midwives of St. Raymund Nonnatus (a pseudonym she's given the place), Worth made frequent visits to the tenements that housed the dock workers and their families, often in the dead of night on her bicycle. Her well-polished anecdotes are teeming with character detail of some of the more memorable nurses she worked with, such as the six-foot-two Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne, called Chummy, who renounced her genteel upbringing to become a nurse, or the dotty old Sister Monica Joan, who fancied cakes immoderately. Patients included Molly, only 19 and already trapped in poverty and degradation with several children and an abusive husband; Mrs. Conchita Warren, who was delivering her 24th baby; or the birdlike vagrant, Mrs. Jenkins, whose children were taken away from her when she entered the workhouse. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

November/December 2012 - A Winter Dream

Our Book Club met on November 30 at the Alexander House to discuss "A Winter Dream" by Richard Paul Evans, combined with our annual holiday social.  The average ratings for the book were in the 4-6 range.  The group agreed that it was quick and easy to read and enjoyed by most, but some commented that it was unbelievable in parts and also a little predictable.  In the interest of full disclosure, there wasn't a lot of time spent in discussion after rating the book.  Instead, our conversations turned to family updates, other books, movies, the weather (of course) and generally just enjoying the warmth of friendships, good laughter and a nice meal.  We also had the opportunity to welcome a new member to the group as Rochelle Kovarik joined us for the first time.  Welcome Shelly!

The book club selection for January is "Call the Midwife" by Jennifer Worth.  The location and date are to be determined.

Wishing all my book clubs friends a Blessed Holiday Season.  There are many more good books to read in 2013!

October 2012 - Buddha in the Attic

About half of the group gathered on this chilly October evening at Geri's home.  The topic of our discussion was The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.  Most of the ratings were in the range of 5-7.  Most all of the group was interested in the topic, but some were challenged by the author's choice to tell the book from the point of view of a large group of women. 

A book description from Amazon.com is as follows:

A gorgeous novel by the celebrated author of When the Emperor Was Divine that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Once again, Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.

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It was interesting to see that these women had many varying experiences, but made it harder to grasp on to the emotional connection of a single character.  The group was saddened by the plights of most of these women and the way they were treated by their husbands and Americans.  As usual, the discussion questions were a springboard for other interesting topics and discussion.  It was an enjoyable evening of good discussion.  Thank you Geri!

We made some plans for future books and discussed having a get-together around the holidays.  See the sidebar for upcoming books and future announcements for details on a Christmas social.