This group has not been active yet during summer 2013.

Put your name on the list!  Call the OLLI office at 474-6607.

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This group was formed to exchange ideas and tour information or just contact one another when we need a travel companion. If you are interested in joining this informal group that primarily exchanges email, please contact the OLLI office at 474-6607 and give them your phone and email address. 

Winter Tours Offered by UAF Summer Sessions 
Yes, "Summer Sessions" arranges "winter" trips.  Get more information on their website www.uaf.edu/summer/travel/

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This group is on hiatus due to a lack of members.  If interested, please contact the OLLI office.  The group will resume meeting if enough people are interested.

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This new group will meet weekly to explore what it CAN mean to be in our 70s, 80s and even 90s, using Chittister’s book Gift of Years. The chapters are short, the questioning deep.

The first meeting will be June 20, 2013, 1:00-3:00 pm.

Call Barb Rondine at 456-2462.

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We meet the second Friday of each month (with a potluck) at 6:30pm  in U Park Room #154.  We plan to have a field trip once a month during the summer.  For more information contact Maria Polly @ akmpolly@hotmail.com.

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September 17, 2013  -  Catherine the Great: portrait of a woman

by Robert Massie

This is a masterful, intimate, and tantalizing portrait of the minor German princess who became Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796). During her marriage to the grandson of Peter the Great, Catherine bore three children by three different lovers and the couple was controlled by his powerful aunt, Empress Elizabeth. Six months into her husband's incompetent reign as Peter III, Catherine dethroned him. Confident, cultured, and witty, Catherine ruled as a benevolent despot and brought European culture into Russia, from philosophy to medicine, education, and art. (biography, 2011, 625 pages)

October 15, 2013 - Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Shaken by a brush with death, big-city detective Joe Cashin is posted to a quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical scars and not a little guilt, he spends his time playing country cop, walking his dogs, and thinking about “before.” When a prominent local is attacked and left for dead, Cashin is thrust into the investigation. The evidence points to three boys from the Aboriginal community, but Cashin is unconvinced, and soon begins to see hints of something far more terrible than a robbery gone wrong. (mystery; 2007; 357 pgs)

November 19, 2013 - Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy

A look at   motherhood and marital infidelity set in the context of the German occupation of the Guernsey during WWII. Vivienne de la Mare loves her young daughters, but not her marriage, so when her husband is called up to the front, for her it's almost a relief. Then the German army occupies her town, and Vivienne is increasingly torn between her sympathies for the POWs and her budding feelings for a German officer who has moved in next door. She begins an affair, but remains committed to protecting and nurturing her daughters as they grow up in this tense, dangerous environment. Leroy lovingly portrays the era and the isolated Guernsey landscape while, at the same time, delivering an unsparing view of the horrors of war. (historical fiction; 2011; 404 pgs)

December 2013 – no discussion (winter break)

January 21, 2014 (one author, two books) –
Paris in Love: a memoir by Eloisa James

2007 was a bad year for best-selling romance author James. Cancer claimed her mother, and she learned that she, too, had the disease. Though her cancer was treatable, James and her husband felt they needed a respite. Taking a sabbatical from Fordham University, where she is known as Shakespearean scholar Mary Bly, James and her Rutgers professor husband spent the year in Paris with their two children. James, planning to work on various literary projects, instead found herself on Facebook and Twitter, musing about food, fashion, and family. These musings became the basis of this charming memoir of a healing year where, without the constant claims of academia and of publishing, the family rediscovered simpler pleasures of life. (memoir; 2012; 260 pgs)

Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James

Set in the scandalous Georgian era, this is a gracefully written, lusciously sensual, delectably witty, and exquisitely romantic historical romance. If Shakespeare had written an 18th-century romantic comedy, it might look something like this - offering a larger-than-life portrait of Georgian England, complete with oversexed aristocrats, posturing courtesans and a feuding duke and duchess. (romance; 2007; 384 pgs)

February 18, 2014 - Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

In the 1920s, a couple in their early 50s takes advantage of cheap land to build a homestead in Alaska. But the work is backbreaking; the winters are brutally cold, and their isolation only reminds them of their childlessness. There's a glimmer of light, however, in the mysterious girl who lurks near their cabin. Though she's initially skittish, in time she becomes a fixture in the couple's lives –and it’s uncertain whether the girl is real or not. The writing style is spare and straightforward, and there’s enough detail about hunting and farming to avoid familiar pieties about the Last Frontier. The book's tone throughout has a lovely push and pull - Alaska's punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against the child’s charmed appearances – with an ending both surprising and true. (Alaskana, 2012, 336 pgs)

March 18, 2014 - Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Brooks imagines the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. The story is told by Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of a preacher who traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to “bring Christ to the Indians.” In 1660, when Bethia is 12, the family takes Caleb, a Wampanoag Indian, into their home to prepare him for boarding school. Bethia is a bright scholar herself, and though education for women is discouraged, she absorbs the lessons taught to Caleb and her brother Makepeace. When the boys are sent to Cambridge, Bethia accompanies them as a servant to a professor. She marries a Harvard scholar, journeys with him to Padua, and finally returns to her beloved island. In flashbacks, Brooks skillfully relates the woes of the Indian Wars, the smallpox epidemic, and Caleb’s untimely death shortly after his graduation.   (historical fiction, 2011, 306 pgs)

April 15, 2014 - Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig

In 1889, two young Scotsmen, Rob Barclay and Angus McCaskill arrive in Montana, where for 30 years they struggle to find personal happiness and wrest a living from this demanding land. Losing the woman he loves, Angus marries Rob's sister Adair; their difficulties create conflict, and then a bitter breach, between the two men. But if the thorny individualism of Rob and Angus results in lives that are never easy, they are beautifully described in Doig's strong, savory prose. America's frontier history comes vividly to life in this absorbing saga filled with memorable characters. (historical fiction; 1987; 405 pgs)

May 20, 2014 - booktalk & title selection for September 2014–April 2015