December 2016 Book Club Meeting

The next book club meeting will be on Tuesday December 6th at Julie's house and the book is the following: The ocean at the end of the lane [LARGE PRINT] / NeilGaiman. There are several copies at in the County Library system so I suspect there are several in the city system as well. Jeff

The Nightengale Summary

FRANCE, 1939 In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences. With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime. (less)

Time to Update

Our Book Club at Maura's on Tuesday was small but the discussion was great! Lee brought a family heirloom that just happened to be a coffee table book of Edward Curtis's best photograghs; what a treat! Maura made a great Tiramisu dessert! The next book is "The Nightengale" by Kristin Hannah and will be on Tuesday August 30th at Lee's house. BTW, Maura found out that they have the complete epic series of books by Curtis in the NW room at the main Spokane Public Library. She is trying to organize a time when we can go because it is by appointment only. Send her an email or text if you are interested. I am available next Friday or Saturday (or even this Saturday).

Next Book Is.....

Annie Dillard!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0928/Annie-Dillard-Which-5-books-by-this-National-Humanities-Medal-winner-are-must-reads

Link to NYTimes review of Olive Kitteridge

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/review/Thomas-t.html

And the Next Book Is...

The next Book Club is at Julie's on October 29th starting at 6:30 or 7 PM. We are reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stuart which is a Pulitzer Prize winner!

Finally Back on the Blog! (Next Bookclub)

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Boys in the Boat

Great discussion tonight at Lee's house regarding The Boys in the Boat about the 1936 UW crew team that won gold at the Berlin Olympics. It had loads of local flavor and was enjoyed by all. We missed you Candace and Joe! Lee's cake was wonderful (as well as all the other goodies)! As a group we sort of decided to read something shorter and easier because the upcoming travel schedules. We are meeting next in 4 weeks instead of our normal 6 weeks.