January - The Magus by Fowles

Book for January is The Magus by Fowles  published in 1985

Description from Amazon:

A man trapped in a millionare's deadly game of political and sexual betrayal. 
Filled with shocks and chilling surprises, The Magus is a masterwork of contemporary literature. In it, a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching position on a Greek island where his friendship with the owner of the islands most magnificent estate leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately confused by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life. A work rich with symbols, conundrums and labrinthine twists of event, The Magus is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, a work that ranks with the best novels of modern times.

Books on my "to read list"

Parallel Stories - Nádas
The Dervish House - McDonald
My Name is Red - Pamuk
The Paris Wife - McLain
Havana Nocturne - English
Ripper - Allendes
An Officer and a Spy - Harris
Beautiful Ruins - Walter
The Lost Wife - Richman
Luncheon of the Boating Party - Veeland
The Sealed Letter - Donoghue
Graham Greene
Salt , A World History - Kurlansky
Spice - The History of a Temptation - Turner
When you are engulfed in Flames - Sederis
West with the Night - Berkham
Cave Dreams - Donenfield-Vernoux
Paris, the Secret History - Hussey
Paris to the Moon - Gopnik
A Paris Aparment - Gable
Almost French - Turnbull
One Fifth Avenue - Bushnell
Killing Kennedy - O'Reilly
Shock of Gray - Fishman
A Sudden Light - Stein
In One Person - Irving
Mrs. Poe - Cullen
The Shoemakerk's Wife - Trigiani
The Children Act   McEwan
The Bartender's Tale - Doig
Adultery - Coelho
The Company of Strangers - Wilson
The Wall in my Backyard - Dodds and Allen-ThompsonThe Ugly Renaissance - Lee
Contested Will - Shapiro
Vifginia Woolf - DeSalvo
My Lives - White
The First Muslim - Hazleton
Vera - Schiff
Gutenberg Apprentice - Christie
The Bone Clocks - Mitchell
The Paying Guests - Waters
Colorless Tsukuru and his year of Pilgrimage - Murakami
Dr. Mütters Marvels - Aptowicz
The Luminaries - Catton
Andrew's Brain - Doctorow
Wild - Strayed
Berlin - Maclean
The Light in the Ruins - Bohjallian
The Deepest Secret - Buckley
Empty Mansions - Dedman and Newell
Sweet Salt Air - Delinsky

Books under consideration for future discussion

I sent out emails with the list of books suggested for everyone to select at least 5 of their choice. That is the first round. Once I have everyone's selections I will compile a much shorter list from which we will then vote for the final selection.

Below is the list of books from which we voted on at our November meeting. Highlighted text should link you to the Amazon cite describing the book.

2015 January  The Magus by J. Fowles

2015 February The City of Thieves by Benoitt

2015 March      The Candy Bombers by Andrei Chemy

2015 April      The Cuckoo's Calling by R. Galbraith

Round one of suggestions

o   A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben MacIntyre

o   The Way of the Knife, Mark Mazzetti

o   America’s Great Game, Hug Wilford

o   The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer

o   Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

o   We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

o   The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T.J. Stiles

o   The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, David Nasaw

o   Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, H. W. Brands

o   Expo 58, Jonathan Coe

o   The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Alice Hoffman

o   Zealot, Reza Azlan

o   Sutton by J.R. Moehringer

o   One Summer by Bill Bryson

o   Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

o   Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

o   Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

o   The Human Age by Diane Ackerman

o   The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

o   Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

o   The Known World by Edward Jones

o   White Teeth by Zadie Smith

o   Wolfe Hall by Hilary Mantel

o   Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 

o   Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

o   The Human Stain by Philip Roth

o   Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

o   Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende

o   Paris the Novel by Edward Rutherford

o   The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

o   The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

o   Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson

o   Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

o   Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

o   anything by William Faulkner, Light in August

o   The Round House by Louise Erdrich

o   Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

o   Lay of the Land by Richard Ford

o   Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

o   Fault in Our Stars by John Green

o   Luminarium - Alex Shakar

o   Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier

o   How to be Both - Ali Smith

o   Our Mutual Friend, Dickens

o   Bleak House, Dickens

o   Tale of Two Cities, Dickens

o   Great Expectations, Dickens

ü  Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

ü  Doer, All the Light We cannot See

ü  Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

ü  Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

ü  Roth, Patrimony (autobiog)

ü  Atkinson, Life after Life

ü  Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

ü  Waters, The Paying Guests

ü  Doctrow, Andrew’s Brain

ü  Allende, Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel

ü  Shaccochis, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

ü  Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia

ü  Maya, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War

ü  McDermott, Someone

ü  Ozeki, A Tale For the Time Being

ü  Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

ü  Robinson, Lila

ü  Thomas, The White Hotel

ü  Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

ü  Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country
Glass, Three Junes

ü  Franzen, Freedom

ü  Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

ü  Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Essex

ü  Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

ü  Ciezadlo, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War

ü  Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

ü  Morrell, Murder is a Fine Art

ü  Kulanski, Salt: A World History

ü  Pavone, The Expats

ü  Catton, The Luminaries

Kafka's Last Love for November

November's discussion centered on Kafka's Last Love by Kathi Diamant, a local author. While few of us had read the entire book, we managed to have a lively discussion that evening.

I left a copy in our Club "library" for those who may be interested. Below is the beginning of the excerpt from Amazon:

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who fled her Polish Hasidic family to pursue her Zionist dreams, who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died.

Suggestions

We are approaching the end of year and I am looking for suggestions.

Certainly you have read something that you would like to discuss with the group or a friend has recommended their book club selection. Please post your ideas in the comment section.

Do we need new leadership in the coming year?

Mary

October is In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

This book was hard for me to put down and I am so glad we are discussing it at Book Club! It also fits with a theme, not preselected, but a common one never the less for many of our books this year: WWII and art.

Here is a link to the New York Times article:
In the Garden of Beasts

From Amazon:
"The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
    A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.
    Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror."

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert for September

This novel was a one book, one San Diego.

The role of family is such a strong theme in this novel.

Personally, I found the comments regarding Fr Damien rather interesting; it was another perspective from the one I grew up with. There is a statue of him in the church in the community in which he grew up (I have been told that was his home town). It is also the church in which my grandparents were married.



From Amazon:

"This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place---and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end---but instead she discovers it is only just beginning. 

With a vibrant cast of vividly realized characters, Moloka'i is the true-to-life chronicle of a people who embraced life in the face of death. Such is the warmth, humor, and compassion of this novel that "few readers will remain unchanged by Rachel's story" (mostlyfiction.com)."

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene for August

Our Man in Havana written by Graham Green stimulated conversation about Cuba, the Cold War, etc. The backdrop of the Cold War was more meaningful this reading ( I am older?). Loved Greene's satire, I had to purchase more of his novels.

From Amazon:
"MI6’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true…

First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene’s most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens."

The Rosie Project for July

From Amazon.com:

"MEET DON TILLMAN, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. 

Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you. 

Arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, Graeme Simsion’s distinctive debut will resonate with anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of great challenges. The Rosie Project is a rare find: a book that restores our optimism in the power of human connection."