Books for 2013

Just a quick glimps into the books for 2013.

January 17th - Heidi Maxfield - Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

February 21st - Lisa Pyron - The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

March 21st - Jennifer Alley - The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich

April 18th - Margie Harton - Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly

May 16th - Shannon Garofalo - Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

June 20th - off due to summer and girls camp craziness

July 18th - Donna Gaddis - How to Forgive When You Don't Feel Like It by June Hunt

August 15th - Lisa Mullins - Miss Lizzie's War: The Double Life of Southern Belle Spy Elizabeth Van Lew by Rosemary Agonito

September 19th - Marisa Garofalo - The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - a Love Story by Ree Drummond

October 17th - Mallory Duncan - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

November 21st - Richelle Fawcett - The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice by Alex Kershaw

December 19th - Shannon Garofalo - end of the year book exchange and 2014 book pick night

Christmas Exchange - December 20

At Shannon Garofalo's home on Thursday December 20 at 6:30.

One Thousand White Women - November 20

For November's Book Club we will be reading One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus.  We will be meeting at Heidi Maxfield's home at 7:00 pm.



Book Discription -

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

To get a copy for your electronic device try clicking here.   Or here to check the public library.

Sarah's Key - October 18

For October book club will be reading Sarah's Key and meeting on the 18th at Karen Rich's house at 7.


Book summary - 

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

To get a copy try the public library or Amazon.

September 20 - Wish You Well

This month book club will meet on September 20th at Shannon Garofalo's house at 7pm and we will be reading Wish You Well. 

Book Summary

Whether it is the story of a young woman on the run in The Winner or a violent intrigue convulsing Washington, D.C., in Saving Faith, David Baldacci has delivered great stories, authentic characters, and thought-provoking ideas since he burst on the literary scene with Absolute Power. Now this versatile writer sets his sights on a new field of fiction.

Wish You Well
...is the story of Louisa Mae Cardinal, a precocious twelve-year-old girl living in the hectic New York City of 1940 with her acclaimed but sadly underpaid writer father, her compassionate mother, and her timid younger brother, Oz. For Lou, her family's financial struggles are invisible to her. Instead, she is a daughter who idolizes her father and is in love with the art of storytelling.

Then, in a single, terrifying moment, Lou's life is changed forever, and she and Oz are on a train rolling away from New York and down into the mountains of Virginia. There, Lou's mother will begin a long, slow struggle between life and death. And there, Lou and Oz will be raised by their remarkable great-grandmother, Louisa, Lou's namesake.

Suddenly a girl finds herself coming of age in a landscape that could not be more foreign to her. On her great-grandmother's farm, on the land her father loved and wrote about, Lou finds her first true friend; learns lessons in loyalty, tragedy, and redemption; and experiences adventures tragic, comic, and audacious. When a dark, destructive force encroaches on their new home, Lou and her brother are caught up in another struggle-a struggle for justice and survival that will be played out in a crowded Virginia courtroom.

In Wish You Well David Baldacci has written a tale laced with touching passages evoking the charms of rural Virginia, imbued with graceful humor, and enriched by with unforgettable characters. The novel is a heart-wrenching yet triumphant story about family and adversity from times past that resounds forcefully today. Wish You Well is a breathtakingly beautiful achievement from an author who has the power to make us feel, to make us care, and to make us believe in the great and little miracles that can change lives-or save them. 

To get an electronic copy either from Amazon or from the public library click the links & enjoy!

The Great Gatsby - Aug 23 - UPDATED

This month book club will be reading The Great Gatsby.  We will meet on August 23 at Richelle Fawcett's home.

Amazon's Book Review - 

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

To get a copy try here or check your local library for an e-copy.

July - Heaven is for Real

Book Club for July will be reading Heaven is for Real and will meet at Jennifer Alley's house at 7:00pm on July 19.

Book Overview -

Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.

Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.

Check out the local library or here to find a copy of this book.

June - Cutting for Stone

Book Club will meet June 21 at Margie Harton's home and is reading Cutting For Stone.

Book overview -

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret 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, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

Get a copy of this book by clicking here or the public library.

May - The Red Tent

May - Book Club is reading The Red Tent and will meet at Shannon Garofalo's home on May 17.

Book overview -

Dinah opens the story by recounting for readers the union of her mother Leah and father Jacob, as well as the expansion of the family to include Leah's sister Rachel, and Zilpah and Bilhah. Leah is depicted as capable but testy, Rachel something of a belle but kind and creative, Zilpah as mature and serious and Bilhah as the gentle and quiet one of the quartet. The book also downplays the rivalry between Leah and Rachel that is prominent in the Biblical account (see especially Genesis 30: 8 - 15).
Dinah remembers sitting in the red tent with her mother and aunts, gossiping about local events and taking care of domestic duties between visits to Jacob, the patriarch of the family. A number of other characters not seen in the Biblical account appear here, including Laban's second wife Ruti and her feckless sons.
According to the Bible's account in Genesis 34, Dinah was "defiled" by a prince of Shechem, although he is described as being genuinely in love with Dinah. He also offers a bride-price fit for royalty. Displeased at how the prince treated their sister, her brothers Simeon (spelled "Simon" in the book) and Levi treacherously tell the Shechemites that all will be forgiven if the prince and his men undergo the Jewish rite of circumcision so as to unite the people of Hamor, king of Shechem, with the tribe of Jacob. The Shechemites agree, and shortly after they go under the knife, while incapacitated by pain, they are murdered by Dinah's brothers and their male servants, who then rescue Dinah.
In The Red Tent, Dinah genuinely loves the prince, and willingly becomes his bride. She is horrified and grief-stricken by her brothers' murderous rampage. After cursing her brothers and father she escapes to Egypt where she gives birth to a son. In time she finds another love, and reconciles with her brother Joseph, now prime minister of Egypt. At the death of Jacob, she visits her estranged family. She learns she has been all but forgotten by her other living brothers and father but that her story lives on with the females of Jacob's tribe.

You can get your electronic copy by clicking here or by visiting the public library.

April - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

April's Book Club will meet at Robin McLean's home on April 19 and is reading Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

Book overview -

In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.

Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat, returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz. Her beautiful illustrations, printed in full-color, accompany the text throughout. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.

To get an electronic copy try Amazon or even the Public Library.

March - Year of Wonders

March 15 - Book Club will be at Lisa Pyron's home.

Year of Wonders book description -

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.

February: My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams

UPDATE:  

A number of people have talked about the difficulty reading our Feb book.  It is My Dearest Friend: the Letters of John and Abigail Adams.  After talking with a couple of folks you may want to read First Family: Abigail and John Adams. It contains a number of the letters but is an easier read and tells the same story.

 A quick overview of the book...

In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to "Miss Adorable," the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence -- and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships -- in American history.

As a pivotal player in the American Revolution and the early republic, John had a front-row seat at critical moments in the creation of the United States, from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to negotiating peace with Great Britain to serving as the first vice president and second president under the U.S. Constitution. Separated more often than they were together during this founding era, John and Abigail shared their lives through letters that each addressed to "My Dearest Friend," debating ideas and commenting on current events while attending to the concerns of raising their children (including a future president).

Full of keen observations and articulate commentary on world events, these letters are also remarkably intimate. This new collection -- including some letters never before published -- invites readers to experience the founding of a nation and the partnership of two strong individuals, in their own words. This is history at its most authentic and most engaging.

To buy it online click here.  Book Club for February meets at Margie Harton's house.

January - The Host

UPDATE:  The Host movie will be coming out March 2013. Click on the link here to read all about it.

Book Club will be at Jennifer Alley's house this month and the book is The Host

A gripping story of love and betrayal in a future with the fate of humanity at stake.

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.

Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves-Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

Featuring what may be the first love triangle involving only two bodies, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel that will bring a vast new readership to one of the most compelling writers of our time.

2012 Book Club Selections

January 19th - The Host (@ Jennifer Alley's house)

February 16th - My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams (@ Margie Harton's house)

March 15th - Year of Wonders (@Lisa Pyron's house)

April 19th - When the Mountain Meets the Moon (@Robin McLean's house)

May 17th - The Red Tent (@ Shannon Garofalo's house)

June 21st - Cutting for Stone (@ Margie Harton's house)

July 19th - Heaven is for Real (@ Jennifer Alley's house)

August 16th - The Great Gatsby (@ Richelle Fawcett's house)

September 20th - Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (@ Heidi Maxfield's house)

October 18th - Sarah's Key (@ Karen Rich's house)

November 15th - One Thousand White Women (@ Mallory Duncan's house)

December 20th - Event TBD (@ Marisa Garofalo's house)

*Honorable mention books: Little Princes, Half Broke Horses, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, When I Lay my Isaac Down

August: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

For August we will be reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

Excerpt from the author's website: This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the baby as her own. Compusively readable and deeply moving.

March 17: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

From the author:

Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.

It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.

That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.

The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.

February: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

For February, we will be reading "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte. I remember the first time I became aware of this book was in ninth grade when my best friend read it for a book report. She was so angry at turn of events that she threw the book across the room! This book is filled with characters that we love to hate.

Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte. If you'd like, you can find an short and interesting biography of her here at The Victorian Web. Although she also published a book of poetry with her sisters, Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's only novel. She died at the age of 30 from tuberculosis. However, some of her letters and papers have been published and if you're interested, you can access them here.

2011 Book Club selections

January - Night by Elie Wiesel (Margie Harton's house 1/20)

February - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Shannon Garofalo’s house 2/17)

March - Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Karen Rich's house 3/17)

April - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Marisa Garofalo's house 4/21)

May - The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (5/19)

June - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (6/16)

July - These is My Words by Nancy Turner (7/21)

August - The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (8/18)

September - Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball (9/15)

October - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (10/20)

November - The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck (11/)

December - skip month? book exchange?

January 2011: Night by Elie Wiesel

Book: Night by Elie Wiesel
When: Jan. 20, 2011
Where: Margie H.'s home



"Haunting in its graphic simplicity, Elie Wiesel's Night documents one of the most infamous crimes against humanity in a startlingly personal way. In this autobiographical account, Elie Wiesel tells of his deportation to the concentration camps at the age of 15 and his struggle to survive. In this new translation by his wife and new preface by the author, Wiesel seeks and successfully adds greater poignancy to his already deeply moving piece of history." -about.com

About the author...Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, which is now part of Romania. He was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945. Click here for more.

2010 Book Club

We had a great March meeting at the home of Robin McLean!  Wonderful , delicious Southern food was served while we talked about "To Kill a Mockingbird".
 
Here is the remainder of meetings for 2010.  A few changes have been made.
April 15 - The Glass Castle @ Tish Heflebower

May 20 - The Princess Bride by William Goldman@ Richelle Fawcett

June 17 - Cold Sassy Tree @ Margie Harton

July 15 - The Help @ Jennifer Alley

August 19 - Three Cups of Tea @ Karen Rich

September 16 -Saving CeeCee Honeycutt@ Heidi Maxfield

October 21 -The Shack @ Mallory Duncan

November 18 - The Apothecary's Daughter @ Marisa Garafalo

December 16 -Book Exchange/Pot Luck (Location TBD)