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.

A Dog's Purpose Reviews

Audible Editor Reviews Grab the tissues. This heart-warming novel told from a dog’s perspective is even more touching due to the pitch-perfect narration by George Wilson. Bailey starts out life as a mutt named Toby, but after a short existence is reincarnated into a golden retriever who finds a loving home with 8-year-old Ethan. Bailey loves Ethan eagerly and without bounds — as only a dog truly can — and believes that this must be his purpose; this must be why he was reborn. But after a long life with the boy, Bailey dies yet again — and is reborn as a German Shepherd police dog. As Bailey ponders his new existence and what his new purpose must be, the bond he had with Ethan never wavers and he misses the boy desperately. “How could I possibly have a more important mission than loving the boy?” he wonders. Yet he begins the journey of life again, searching for its meaning, and always on the lookout for Ethan. Wilson’s warm and buttery voice delivers Bailey’s thoughts with an earnest sincerity — without overdoing it. He easily captures the excitement, innocence, and fierce loyalty of a dog in his tone. Listeners will be convinced that if their dogs could talk, they would sound exactly like this narrator. Wilson also expertly and subtly changes tone and pitch when portraying the human characters around Bailey — his admirations (“Good dog, Bailey!”) and admonishments (“No, Bailey, no!”) have such emotion behind them, that you instantly empathize with Bailey and look forward to a human asking him if he wants to go for a “car ride” or have a “biscuit”. Bailey’s observations on human life are naïve, yet clever, and often hysterically funny — he’s like the Forrest Gump of the canine set. For fans of Marley & Me and The Art of Racing in the Rain, this is your new favorite dog book. —Colleen Oakley Publisher's Summary After a tragically short life as a stray mutt, Bailey is surprised to find himself reborn as a rambunctious golden-haired puppy. Bailey's search for his new life's meaning leads him into the loving arms of eight-year-old Ethan. During their countless adventures, Bailey joyously discovers how to be a good dog. But this life as a beloved family pet is not the end of Bailey's journey. Reborn as a puppy yet again, Bailey wonders, will he ever find his purpose? Heartwarming, insightful, and often laugh-out-loud funny, A Dog's Purpose is not only the story of a dog's many lives but also a dog's-eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man's best friend. This beautifully crafted novel teaches us that love never dies, that our true friends arealways with us, and that every creature on Earth is born with a purpose. ©2010 W. Bruce Cameron (P)2010 Tantor

Doig's Doings

http://www.ivandoig.com/notes.html for some background taken from Mr. Doig's homepage. These include Reader's Guide notes...check it out.

Mr. Dickens' Birthday!

It's the birthday of novelist Charles Dickens (books by this author), born in Portsmouth, England (1812). When his father was thrown in debtors' prison, 12-year-old Dickens was forced to leave school and work in a factory, repetitively labeling jars of shoe polish for 10 hours a day in miserable conditions. Dickens' father inherited money and was able to leave prison, and Dickens went back to school, but he remained bitter about his childhood. Many years later, when he was famous and his father was asking for money, Dickens wrote to a friend: "I am amazed and confounded by the audacity of his ingratitude. He, and all of them, look upon me as a something to be plucked and torn to pieces for their advantage. They have no idea of, and no care for, my existence in any other light. My soul sickens at the thought of them." By the mid-1850s, Dickens was a popular and successful writer; his novels included The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37), The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-39), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), A Christmas Carol (1843), and David Copperfield (1849-50). In 1856, he had finally earned enough from his writing that he was able to buy a home in the country, an estate called Gad's Hill Place near where he had grown up. He said, "I used to look at it as a wonderful Mansion (which God knows it is not) when I was a very odd little child with the first faint shadows of all my books in my head." The same year that he bought Gad's Hill Place, Dickens helped his friend Wilkie Collins write a play called The Frozen Deep (1856). Dickens hired the cast, which included an 18-year-old actress named Ellen Ternan. Forty-five-year-old Dickens fell in love with Ellen and became increasingly frustrated by his marriage of more than 20 years and the 10 children he had to support; he felt that his wife, Catherine, did not match his energy and intellect. He wrote: "Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so too." And in another letter, he said that he would like a prize "for having brought up the largest family ever known with the smallest disposition to do anything for themselves." A year after meeting Ellen, Dickens bought her a gold bracelet, which the mailman mistakenly delivered to Catherine. A month later Dickens and his wife separated; hoping to squash any rumors, he published an official notice in several major newspapers explaining that the separation was mutual and "involves no anger or ill-will of any kind." Dickens' affair with Ellen Ternan lasted for the rest of his life, but he was very careful to keep her out of the public eye, even using fake names to buy her homes. For the next decade or so, Dickens wrote less and toured more. He had given a couple of successful charity readings of A Christmas Carol, and he knew a business opportunity when he saw it. His first tour consisted of 149 performances in 49 towns throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. He performed alone on stage, with dramatic lighting, a maroon curtain, and a red reading stand. There he had selections from his novels, covered in performance notes. Dickens used different voices for different characters and acted out the dramatic parts. His most popular reenactment was of Bill Sikes' murder of his lover Nancy from Oliver Twist. One audience member wrote: "Warming with excitement, he flung aside his book and acted the scene of the murder, shrieked the terrified pleadings of the girl, growled the brutal savagery of the murderer [...] It is here, of course, that the excitement of the audience is wrought to its highest pitch." His tours were wildly popular, with scalpers hawking tickets outside the theaters, and audience members frequently crying and fainting. In the late 1860s, Dickens gave a reading tour of the United States, performing 76 times even while his health failed. He suffered from repeated small strokes, one of his feet was so painful that there were times he couldn't wear a shoe, and by the end of the American tour he could barely eat solid food. His friends, family, and doctor urged him to stop — they were particularly concerned that his reenactment of Nancy's death was taking a huge toll on his health. His son declared it the best thing he had ever heard, and told him never to do it again. Back in England, he continued his performances at the same level despite giddiness and paralysis. His doctor confirmed that Dickens' heart rate skyrocketed when he performed, and finally put an end to the tours. Dickens went to work on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but before he could finish it — less than three months after his final public reading — he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 58.

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

We had a nice discussion at Candace's house about this book. The general consensus, however, was that it was darker than we thought it was going to be. I felt it had a limited development of Della's character and could have used a bit more description of the landscape around the Wenatchee, Washington area. Not everyone agreed with me as it did seem a bit ponderous in places. Here are two sections from the book that I liked that I forgot to bring up at the meeting; "It took a long time. By the time Clee was finished the horse was shivering, brimming with wildness just contained. Its flesh, and the air around its flesh, was primed with the energy of corroded nerves, of that which could not be dominated having miraculously been dominated." This second passage described Talmedge to the tee; "He had pulled out of that grief, eventually-out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep. Generous and kind and attentive, although he had been that before. Each thoughtful gesture hoping to extend back, far back, to reach his sister, to locate her somewhere." Wow.

Amazon Review of Flight Behavior

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: In what may be the first novel to realistically imagine the near-term impact of “global weirding,” Barbara Kingsolver sets her latest story in rural Appalachia . In fictional Feathertown, Tennessee, Dellarobia Turnbow--on the run from her stifling life--charges up the mountain above her husband’s family farm and stumbles onto a “valley of fire” filled with millions of monarch butterflies. This vision is deemed miraculous by the town’s parishioners, then the international media. But when Ovid, a scientist who studies monarch behavior, sets up a lab on the Turnbow farm, he learns that the butterflies’ presence signals systemic disorder--and Dellarobia's in-laws’ logging plans won’t help. Readers who bristle at politics made personal may be turned off by the strength of Kingsolver’s convictions, but she never reduces her characters to mouthpieces, giving equal weight to climate science and human need, to forces both biological and biblical. Her concept of family encompasses all living beings, however ephemeral, and Flight Behavior gracefully, urgently contributes to the dialogue of survival on this swiftly tilting planet. --Mari Malcolm --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Review “Drawing on both her Appalachian roots and her background in biology, Kingsolver delivers a passionate novel on the effects of global warming.” (Booklist, Starred Review) “With her powerful new novel, Kingsolver delivers literary fiction that conveys an urgent social message… a clarion call about climate change, too lucid and vivid for even skeptics to ignore.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review) “…Enthralling…Dellarobia is appealingly complex as a smart, curious, warmhearted woman desperate to-no resisting the metaphor here-trade her cocoon for wings.” (Oprah.com) “A dazzling page-turner” (Elle) “Kingsolver has written one of the more thoughtful novels about the scientific, financial and psychological intricacies of climate change. And her ability to put these silent, breathtakingly beautiful butterflies at the center of this calamitous and noisy debate is nothing short of brilliant.” (Ron Charles, Washington Post) “Dellarobia is a smart, fierce, messy woman, and one can’t help rooting for her to find her wings.” (Entertainment Weekly) “Dellarobia is appealingly complex as a smart, curious, warmhearted woman desperate to-no resisting the metaphor here-trade her cocoon for wings.” (O, the Oprah Magazine) “One of the gifts of a Kingsolver novel is the resplendence of her prose. She takes palpable pleasure in the craft of writing, creating images that stay with the reader long after her story is done…(a) majestic and brave new novel.” (New York Times Book Review) “Kingsolver has constructed a deeply affecting microcosm of a phenomenon that is manifesting in many different tragic ways, in communities and ecosystems all around the globe. This is a fine and complex novel.” (Seattle Times) “So captivating is this grand, suspenseful plot and the many subplots rising and falling beneath it that it takes some time before we realize what this story is really about -- climate change.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) “Spirituality, a troubled marriage, global warming…Kingsolver’s latest is a bold mélange, but it works.” (People) “Kingsolver is a storyteller first and foremost, as sensitive to human interactions and family dynamics as she is to ecological ones.” (NPR) “a delicate symbiosis between the sacred and the scientific in this richly rewarding novel that will both entertain and incite its readers.” (BookPage) “FLIGHT BEHAVIOR is a book worth reading twice? first for the intricacies of character, second for the dense, beautiful language Kingsolver puts on the page. She’s a keen observer of the messiness and unexpected beauty of the quotidian.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) “By the end of FLIGHT BEHAVIOR, it’s clear that Kingsolver’s passionate voice and her ability to portray the fragility of the natural world, and why we should care about it, are as strong as ever.” (San Francisco Chronicle) “Novelists like Kingsolver have a particular knack for making us empathize with lives that may bear little resemblance to our own…What lifts FLIGHT BEHAVIOR…is not just Kingsolver’s nuanced and funny prose; it’s Dellarobia’s awakening to the possibilities around her.” (Julia Ingalls, Salon) “FLIGHT BEHAVIOR is a terrifically entertaining read about a spirited young woman you’ll miss the minute you reach the last page.” (USA Today) “Marvelous…This is fiction rich in empathy, wit and science. Like the butterflies that astonish Feathertown, Kingsolvian gifts are ‘fierce and wondrous,’ ‘colors moving around like fire.’” (New York Times) “[Kingsolver’s] keen grasp of delicate ecosystems-both social and natural-keeps the story convincing and compelling.” (The New Yorker)

Groundbreaking and Emotional Bookclub on the South Hill

We had a full compliment plus the return of Maura Baptist, a former member and dear friend to many of us! Many Congratulations to Jim, Candace, Lori and especially Julie & Midge! I wish we had more time to talk about everyone's accomplishments and milestones but, hey, we will have plenty of time at the next bookclub! We will be returning to a fun retreat at Hill's Resort way up on Priest Lake in North Idaho. It will be a blast! Julie is checking into getting another Murder Mystery game and I am sure other people will come up with fun ideas or activities. It was a great discussion about our two not-dissimilar books about our human societies reactions to the end of technology as we know it! Nothing too scary next time... Great dessert again Jim; many thanks!

Oh, Canada on Canada Day

"It was a warm and sultry evening on 21st Avenue...." We were at Julie's for last night's discussion about Canada by Richard Ford. I can't comment much because I didn't read it. It was a good discussion none-the-less. Perhaps I will listen to the audio version someday. Julie made banana splits; YUMMY! So, for next time I proposed a novel idea. I had recommended a 'fun' apocalyptic novel entitled 'Dies the Fire'. I say fun because it isn't nearly as dark as 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy that we read a few years back. Last night Rhonda suggested "One Second After" with a similar theme. I suggested that we split into two groups with each group reading one or the other. We can compare and contrast this genre; let's boldly go where this bookclub has never gone before! If you think of interesting questions to pose for the discussion write them down and bring them to the next meeting at Jim's house on August 14th!