Lifelong Learning Book Club
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Selections for September 2008 -- April 2009
September 16, 2008 - Wives and Daughters: an every-day story by Elizabeth Gaskell - First serialized in Cornhill, the lightly ironic tone of this chronicle of day-to-day life in early Victorian country society gives an extra dimension to the characters and adds a touch of satiric wit to the story which revolves around a series of relationships among family groups in Hollingford, where everyone, from the great house to the tradespeople, is grappling with a changes in technology, mores, and ideas. (1866, fiction, 692 pgs)
October 14, 2008 - A field of darkness: a novel by Cornelia Read - Madeline Dare comes from an old-money family but is married to Dean, a railroad worker. Dean's job requires frequent travel; Madeline writes fluff features for the local Syracuse, New York, newspaper. Nothing in her background prepares her for trying to solve the bizarre 20-year-old murder of two young women, a crime that might have involved her favorite cousin. Madeline sets out to clear her cousin's name, discovering a much larger, life-changing story. (2006, fiction, first novel, 308 pgs)
November 18, 2008 - The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - Changez is living an immigrant's dream. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is hired by an elite New York firm. He thrives on the city’s energy, and his love, the elegant, beautiful Erica will give him entre to Manhattan society equal to that his family once had in Pakistan. But, in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica eclipsed by ghosts of her past. And - Changez is changing too; he’s learning that he has developed allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love. (2008, fiction, 184 pgs)
February 10, 2009 - Call of the Wild by Jack London - Buck, part St. Bernard, part Scotch Shepherd, reared in comfort in Southern California, is kidnapped, and shipped off to Alaska where he is broken to the sled to work on the Klondike Gold Rush. He quickly learns how to survive in the wild - and also learns the call of the wolf. The story is told with candor and genuineness, exciting yet at times heartrending. (1905, Alaskana fiction, 126 pgs, Community Read)
March 10, 2009 - The Places In Between by Rory Stewart - By turns harrowing and meditative, Stewart's trek through Afghanistan in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur is grounded by his knowledge of local history, politics and dialects. His prose is lean and unsentimental; his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people torn by war, forgotten by time, and isolated by geography. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. (2006, non fiction, 299 pgs)
April 14, 2009 - The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment. Roy's intricate, enchanting, and often wry tale is positively mythical in its cosmic inevitability, evocative circularity, and paradoxical wisdom. (1997, fiction, first novel, 327 pgs)
May 12, 2009 - booktalk & selection of titles for September 2009 – April 2010
Note: all books have also been published in Large Print and / or audio formats
Library Contact / Discussion Leader: Georgine
Olson
459-1063 or georgine.olson@taos.fnsb.lib.ak.us
