Summer reading suggestions

Thanks to all who participated in the book group last night! We created a long list of recommended reads, so here it goes:

Non-fiction:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver
India: An Illustrated History, Prem Kishore
The Templars, M. Haag
Worried Sick, N. Hadler
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
The Whale, Hoare
A Little History of the World, Gombrich
The Story of the World, Weisbauer (children's history, elementary level)

Historical fiction:
The King's Rose, 16th century England
Just Jane, fictionalized bio of Jane Austen
Kite Rider, set in China under the Huns
The Blood of Flowers, 16th Century Persia (NOTE: contains some intense scenes)
The Lighthearted Quest, Portuguese Escape, Illyrian Spring and other novels by Ann Bridge

General fiction (much of it YA):
The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd
The Alchemist, M. Scott, series (similar to Percy Jackson)
Isabel Dalhousie series and 44 Scotland Street series by A. McCall Smith
Elm Creek Quilt series
Beverly Lewis series (Amish romance/mysteries)
Hunger Games series
Leviathan, S. Westerfeld
Seven Towers, P. Wrede
The Last Apprentice, J. Delany
Last of the High Kings and others by Kate Thompson
Sarah Wolson mysteries (set in San Francisco)
The Underland Chronicles, Suzanne Collins (young readers)
Septimus Heaps series
Lips Touch Three Times, short stories
Much Ado About Nothing
Exodus and Zenith, apocalyptic YA novels
Incarceron, Fisher
The Dark Is Rising, S. Cooper
The Tricking of Freya (Icelandic immigrants in Canada)
I Dreamed of Africa, Kuki Gallmann
The Waves, Virginia Wolfe

I may not have caught all of them, but this is a pretty good starting point! Happy Reading!

November's Reading Choices

North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell

Even though Wives and Daughters is considered her masterpiece, I liked this Gaskell novel better. It is set in a fictionalized industrial Manchester and looks at the conflicts between agrarian and industrial England in the 19th century through the characters of Margaret Hale and John Thornton.

Obasan, Joy Kagawa

A fictionalized memoir of one girl's experiences during World War II in Canada. Beautifully written. I think Kagawa herself was left with an aunt while her mother made a trip to Japan, and while she was gone, war broke out and she couldn't return. This was the first novel to address the issue of interment camps for the Japanese during the war.

And Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

I found this at the thrift store and now need an excuse to read it! Written in 1937, it's the story of a Southern black woman and considered a must-read in the canon of African-American literature.

(You can click on the titles for links to Amazon.com reviews...)

October's Choices

From Cari, for October's reading pleasure:

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell:
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff (Amazon.com)


What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell:
Check out Amazon or elsewhere for a review. I couldn't find one that was succinct and to the point! :)

November choices

I know, far away huh? But let's get excited now :) I linked them to their amazon reviews :) The Theme: The South
I know I've used this theme before, but there is just too much good stuff out there :)

Choice #1 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, "To Kill a Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill a Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior-to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 15 million copies in print and translated into ten languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Choice #2 Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.


Choice #3 Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
A vivid and charming portrait of a large southern family, the Fairchilds, who live on a plantation in the Mississippi delta. The story, set in 1923, is exquisitely woven from the ordinary events of family life, centered around the visit of a young relative, Laura McRaven, and the family’s preparations for her cousin Dabney’s wedding.

Summer

Here is the plan for the next few months:

May 27th, THIS Thursday, we'll meet at Christina's to discuss A Curse Dark As Gold. 8:00pm
June 17th, we meet at Maggie's for The Help.

Because so many people are out of town in July (myself included) we will skip that month and meet at my house on August 19th for an extra informal discussion of whatever you've been reading over the summer.

Then in September, we'll pick back up again with Kathy as our host.

Questions? Let me know!
Deborah

MAY reading

Here are Christina's choices for MAY (that's this month, so vote now!):

Train to Potevka, Michael Ramsdell
Fictionalized memoir of an LDS spy in Russia. It got great reviews on Amazon.com.

A Curse Dark As Gold, Elizabeth Bunce
Too stubborn to let go of the troubled mill that has supported her community for generations, Charlotte Miller takes over after her father's death, fighting impending disaster with bargains with a mysterious Jack Spinner that eventually threaten her infant son. Set in a rural valley in the late 1700s, this reworking of the "Rumplestiltskin" story includes ghosts, witchcraft, elements of Georgian society, and much earlier folk magic in the guise of a novel of manners. The leisurely paced narrative gathers steam as it becomes clear that the family and the mill have not simply had a long run of bad luck, but are seriously cursed. Readers need not be familiar with the folktale to see where Charlotte's efforts to save her mill are headed. Though their roles in the narrative are clear, secondary characters are distinctive: foppish Uncle Wheeler is more than a stereotyped villain, and Charlotte's eventual husband is an admirable romantic lead with unsuspected talents. A rich opening to Jane Austen's world for teens. (courtesy Amazon.com)

June Reading

Here are Maggie's picks for JUNE reading:

"I Capture the Castle" Dodie Smith

"I Am The Messenger" Markus Zusak

"The Help" Kathryn Stockett


Check out summaries and reviews on Amazon and cast your vote in the poll on the right. I'll leave it up for a week or so...

And don't miss our meeting THIS Thursday at Carolyn's!