Sunday, June 27, 2010
June 27, 2010 - Meeting at Judy's
Judy's home was the perfect setting for an early summer meeting. In spite of storms around us, we were able to sit on the deck looking out at the gardens, waterfalls, and river as we discussed our book.
The June selection was "Mists of Avalon" a 912 page book. It is a 1982 novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, in which she relates the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters. Only a handful of diligent book club members actually made it all the way through the book. The majority were not interested in the subject matter, but would have completed the book if it had not been so long.
Amazon ratings are high for this book. It is classified as Science Fiction and Fantasy. Perhaps the book was more popular back in 1982 when Women's Liberation was more a topic of interest??
Marilyn printed out a time line that put King Arthur in the late fifth to early sixth century.
Dates of future meetings:
Last Sunday of the Month - July 25 at Celia's - Book - "We Took to the Woods" by Louise Dickinson Rich
August 29 - "Ines of My Soul: A Novel" by Isabel Allende - location TBA
September 26 - "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett - location TBA
October 31 - Ann Sevigny will provide list of selections at our August meeting. location TBA
Then a change. Instead of meeting on November 28 (Thanksgiving Weekend), we will meet on Sunday, December 5, for our Holiday Meeting. Those interested in being an elf for the Polar Express, we will participate in this activity on Saturday, December 4.
Book to be read for our August 29, meeting. Majority voted for "Ines of My Soul: A Novel" by Isabel Allende.
It will be Ann Fitzherbert's turn to recommend books for our September meeting. Ann suggested that since "The Help" has been postponed in the past because it was new and unavailable through the library, that we consider this book for September. The group agreed unanimously. We will not consider other books. "The Help" will be September's selection.
In addition to our appetizers of cheese, crackers, veggies, dips and shrimp, we had a buffet of salads and salmon. Desert of hermits and a rich flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce.
Wonderful afternoon....and evening spent with good friends. We really are blessed to have each other's company.
The June selection was "Mists of Avalon" a 912 page book. It is a 1982 novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, in which she relates the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters. Only a handful of diligent book club members actually made it all the way through the book. The majority were not interested in the subject matter, but would have completed the book if it had not been so long.
Amazon ratings are high for this book. It is classified as Science Fiction and Fantasy. Perhaps the book was more popular back in 1982 when Women's Liberation was more a topic of interest??
Marilyn printed out a time line that put King Arthur in the late fifth to early sixth century.
Dates of future meetings:
Last Sunday of the Month - July 25 at Celia's - Book - "We Took to the Woods" by Louise Dickinson Rich
August 29 - "Ines of My Soul: A Novel" by Isabel Allende - location TBA
September 26 - "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett - location TBA
October 31 - Ann Sevigny will provide list of selections at our August meeting. location TBA
Then a change. Instead of meeting on November 28 (Thanksgiving Weekend), we will meet on Sunday, December 5, for our Holiday Meeting. Those interested in being an elf for the Polar Express, we will participate in this activity on Saturday, December 4.
Book to be read for our August 29, meeting. Majority voted for "Ines of My Soul: A Novel" by Isabel Allende.
It will be Ann Fitzherbert's turn to recommend books for our September meeting. Ann suggested that since "The Help" has been postponed in the past because it was new and unavailable through the library, that we consider this book for September. The group agreed unanimously. We will not consider other books. "The Help" will be September's selection.
In addition to our appetizers of cheese, crackers, veggies, dips and shrimp, we had a buffet of salads and salmon. Desert of hermits and a rich flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce.
Wonderful afternoon....and evening spent with good friends. We really are blessed to have each other's company.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Book Recommendations for August Meeting
Stephanie presented the following books for our consideration:
Below are four books to consider for our August book choice. If you are not going to attend June's book club meeting at Judy's but would like to vote for your choice, please let me know by the 27th.
Thanks.
Stephanie
Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain Paperback: 224 pages , Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (1998)
From Library Journal
Irish Times columnist O'Faolain seeks to understand the events of her life by baring her soul to the world in a memoir of her experiences with love and loneliness and her journey of self-discovery. This autobiography is unlike most others in that O'Faolain's frank and open examination speaks to both American and European audiences. Transcending her rural Irish childhood (one of nine children, an alcoholic mother, and a philandering father), she tries to find purpose through reading, education, and a career rather than the traditional life of wife and mother. Despite winning scholarships to University College, Dublin; the University of Hull; and, finally, Oxford University, she drifts in and out of relationships, believing that her salvation will come with marriage and motherhood. We travel with her through the intellectual scene in Dublin during the 1950s and the yet traditional Oxford of the 1960s, against the backdrop of the rising feminist movement. O'Faolain is simply swept along, asserting herself but not really knowing why or to what end. Alcoholism and depression take their toll, but she fights her way back. The author speaks of events and predicaments that are universal: the need for purpose in life; the search for satisfaction; and the desire we all have to be somebody. Donada Peters's Irish brogue adds just the right air of authenticity to make this a rich and wonderful listening experience. Poignantly honest and profundly memorable, this program is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.
http://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Somebody-Accidental-Memoir/dp/080508987X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276368928&sr=1-1
The Songcatcher by Sharyn McCrumb
Paperback: 404 pages, Publisher: Signet (2002)
From Publishers Weekly
Skipping back and forth in time from the 18th to the late 20th century, and drawing on her own family history, McCrumb tells two stories in her appealing new novel, one heading toward, the other returning to, the Appalachians. In the present-day sections, 83-year-old John Walker is slowly dying in the eastern Tennessee town where he has lived most of his life, while his estranged daughter, Linda Walker better known as the country singer Lark McCourry is trying to make it home before he dies. She is also trying to recollect an old song she heard once at a family gathering, a song she hopes will round out her forthcoming album. But heading home, Lark is downed in the mountains in a small plane and trapped inside it. Meanwhile, Malcolm McCourry, one of Lark's maternal ancestors, narrates the story of his life, from the day in 1751 when English seamen kidnapped him at the age of nine from the Scottish isle Islay to the close of his life in the mountains of western North Carolina. Always he carries with him a song he learned aboard ship, which is then passed down to his descendants, each one remembering it at a crucial moment. McCrumb, an award-winning crime and mystery writer, has mixed historic and contemporary plots with success in the past (notably in She Walks These Hills and other novels in her Ballad series; some characters from the Ballad series reappear here), and she does so again, letting the past inform the present and generating a good deal of suspense in a novel that is not properly a mystery. Readers may come to feel that Lark McCourry, unlike the tune-miners looking to stake a copyright claim to every mountain song they hear, is the real songcatcher, the rightful inheritor of her family's music.
http://www.amazon.com/Songcatcher-Ballad-Novel-Sharyn-McCrumb/dp/1587240475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276370060&sr=1-1
Ines of My Soul: A Novel by Isabel Allende
Paperback: 352 pages, Publisher: Harper Perennial (2007)
From Publishers Weekly
Only months after the inauguration of Chile's first female president, Allende recounts in her usual sweeping style the grand tale of Doña Inés Suárez (1507– 1580), arguably the country's founding mother. Writing in the year of her death, Inés tells of her modest girlhood in Spain and traveling to the New World as a young wife to find her missing husband, Juan. Upon learning of Juan's humiliating death in battle, Inés determines to stay in the fledgling colony of Peru, where she falls fervently in love with Don Pedro de Valdivia, loyal field marshal of Francisco Pizarro. The two lovers aim to found a new society based on Christian and egalitarian principles that Valdivia later finds hard to reconcile with his personal desire for glory. Inés proves herself not only a capable helpmate and a worthy cofounder of a nation, but also a ferocious fighter who both captivates and frightens her fellow settlers. Inés narrates with a clear eye and a sensitivity to native peoples that rarely lapses into anachronistic political correctness. Basing the tale on documented events of her heroine's life, Allende crafts a swift, thrilling epic, packed with fierce battles and passionate romance.
http://www.amazon.com/Ines-My-Soul-Isabel-Allende/dp/0061161543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276370492&sr=1-1
Forever: A Novel by Pete Hamill
Paperback: 640 pages, Publisher: Back Bay Books (2003)
From Publishers Weekly
This novel demands that the reader immediately suspend disbelief, but if this summons is heeded the reward will be a superior tale told by Hamill (Snow in August; A Drinking Life) in the cadence of the master storyteller. The year is 1741 and this is the story of Cormac O'Connor-"Irish, and a Jew"-who grows up in Ireland under English Protestant rule and is secretly schooled in Gaelic religion, myth and language. Seeking to avenge the murder of his father by the Earl of Warren, he follows the trail of the earl to New York City. On board ship, Cormac befriends African slave Kongo, and once in New York, the two join a rebellion against the British. After the rising is quelled, mobs take to the streets and Kongo is seized. Cormac saves Kongo from death, but is shot in the process. His recovery takes a miraculous turn when Kongo's dead priestess, Tomora, appears and grants Cormac eternal life and youth-so long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan, thus the "Forever" of the title. What follows is a portrait of the "city of memory of which Cormac was the only citizen." Cormac fights in the American Revolution, sups with Boss Tweed (in a very sympathetic portrait) and lives into the New York of 2001. In that year he warily falls in love with Delfina, a streetwise Dominican ("That was the curse attached to the gift: You buried everyone you loved"), and comes into contact with a descendant of the Earl of Warren, the newspaper publisher Willie Warren. His love, his drive for revenge and his very desire to exist are fatefully challenged on the eve and the day of September 11. This rousing, ambitious work is beautifully woven around historical events and characters, but it is Hamill's passionate pursuit of justice and compassion-Celtic in foundation-that distinguishes this tale of New York City and its myriad peoples.
http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Novel-Pete-Hamill/dp/0316735698/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276394846&sr=1-2
Below are four books to consider for our August book choice. If you are not going to attend June's book club meeting at Judy's but would like to vote for your choice, please let me know by the 27th.
Thanks.
Stephanie
Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain Paperback: 224 pages , Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (1998)
From Library Journal
Irish Times columnist O'Faolain seeks to understand the events of her life by baring her soul to the world in a memoir of her experiences with love and loneliness and her journey of self-discovery. This autobiography is unlike most others in that O'Faolain's frank and open examination speaks to both American and European audiences. Transcending her rural Irish childhood (one of nine children, an alcoholic mother, and a philandering father), she tries to find purpose through reading, education, and a career rather than the traditional life of wife and mother. Despite winning scholarships to University College, Dublin; the University of Hull; and, finally, Oxford University, she drifts in and out of relationships, believing that her salvation will come with marriage and motherhood. We travel with her through the intellectual scene in Dublin during the 1950s and the yet traditional Oxford of the 1960s, against the backdrop of the rising feminist movement. O'Faolain is simply swept along, asserting herself but not really knowing why or to what end. Alcoholism and depression take their toll, but she fights her way back. The author speaks of events and predicaments that are universal: the need for purpose in life; the search for satisfaction; and the desire we all have to be somebody. Donada Peters's Irish brogue adds just the right air of authenticity to make this a rich and wonderful listening experience. Poignantly honest and profundly memorable, this program is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.
http://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Somebody-Accidental-Memoir/dp/080508987X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276368928&sr=1-1
The Songcatcher by Sharyn McCrumb
Paperback: 404 pages, Publisher: Signet (2002)
From Publishers Weekly
Skipping back and forth in time from the 18th to the late 20th century, and drawing on her own family history, McCrumb tells two stories in her appealing new novel, one heading toward, the other returning to, the Appalachians. In the present-day sections, 83-year-old John Walker is slowly dying in the eastern Tennessee town where he has lived most of his life, while his estranged daughter, Linda Walker better known as the country singer Lark McCourry is trying to make it home before he dies. She is also trying to recollect an old song she heard once at a family gathering, a song she hopes will round out her forthcoming album. But heading home, Lark is downed in the mountains in a small plane and trapped inside it. Meanwhile, Malcolm McCourry, one of Lark's maternal ancestors, narrates the story of his life, from the day in 1751 when English seamen kidnapped him at the age of nine from the Scottish isle Islay to the close of his life in the mountains of western North Carolina. Always he carries with him a song he learned aboard ship, which is then passed down to his descendants, each one remembering it at a crucial moment. McCrumb, an award-winning crime and mystery writer, has mixed historic and contemporary plots with success in the past (notably in She Walks These Hills and other novels in her Ballad series; some characters from the Ballad series reappear here), and she does so again, letting the past inform the present and generating a good deal of suspense in a novel that is not properly a mystery. Readers may come to feel that Lark McCourry, unlike the tune-miners looking to stake a copyright claim to every mountain song they hear, is the real songcatcher, the rightful inheritor of her family's music.
http://www.amazon.com/Songcatcher-Ballad-Novel-Sharyn-McCrumb/dp/1587240475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276370060&sr=1-1
Ines of My Soul: A Novel by Isabel Allende
Paperback: 352 pages, Publisher: Harper Perennial (2007)
From Publishers Weekly
Only months after the inauguration of Chile's first female president, Allende recounts in her usual sweeping style the grand tale of Doña Inés Suárez (1507– 1580), arguably the country's founding mother. Writing in the year of her death, Inés tells of her modest girlhood in Spain and traveling to the New World as a young wife to find her missing husband, Juan. Upon learning of Juan's humiliating death in battle, Inés determines to stay in the fledgling colony of Peru, where she falls fervently in love with Don Pedro de Valdivia, loyal field marshal of Francisco Pizarro. The two lovers aim to found a new society based on Christian and egalitarian principles that Valdivia later finds hard to reconcile with his personal desire for glory. Inés proves herself not only a capable helpmate and a worthy cofounder of a nation, but also a ferocious fighter who both captivates and frightens her fellow settlers. Inés narrates with a clear eye and a sensitivity to native peoples that rarely lapses into anachronistic political correctness. Basing the tale on documented events of her heroine's life, Allende crafts a swift, thrilling epic, packed with fierce battles and passionate romance.
http://www.amazon.com/Ines-My-Soul-Isabel-Allende/dp/0061161543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276370492&sr=1-1
Forever: A Novel by Pete Hamill
Paperback: 640 pages, Publisher: Back Bay Books (2003)
From Publishers Weekly
This novel demands that the reader immediately suspend disbelief, but if this summons is heeded the reward will be a superior tale told by Hamill (Snow in August; A Drinking Life) in the cadence of the master storyteller. The year is 1741 and this is the story of Cormac O'Connor-"Irish, and a Jew"-who grows up in Ireland under English Protestant rule and is secretly schooled in Gaelic religion, myth and language. Seeking to avenge the murder of his father by the Earl of Warren, he follows the trail of the earl to New York City. On board ship, Cormac befriends African slave Kongo, and once in New York, the two join a rebellion against the British. After the rising is quelled, mobs take to the streets and Kongo is seized. Cormac saves Kongo from death, but is shot in the process. His recovery takes a miraculous turn when Kongo's dead priestess, Tomora, appears and grants Cormac eternal life and youth-so long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan, thus the "Forever" of the title. What follows is a portrait of the "city of memory of which Cormac was the only citizen." Cormac fights in the American Revolution, sups with Boss Tweed (in a very sympathetic portrait) and lives into the New York of 2001. In that year he warily falls in love with Delfina, a streetwise Dominican ("That was the curse attached to the gift: You buried everyone you loved"), and comes into contact with a descendant of the Earl of Warren, the newspaper publisher Willie Warren. His love, his drive for revenge and his very desire to exist are fatefully challenged on the eve and the day of September 11. This rousing, ambitious work is beautifully woven around historical events and characters, but it is Hamill's passionate pursuit of justice and compassion-Celtic in foundation-that distinguishes this tale of New York City and its myriad peoples.
http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Novel-Pete-Hamill/dp/0316735698/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276394846&sr=1-2
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