Proposed by Jeanne, we discussed Rough Sleepers at Jeanne & Bill’s on April 19, 2024. As a group we were impressed with Dr. Jim. Carolyn recalls that it was enlightening to her – especially the difference between “the homeless” and the “rough sleepers.” She remembers saying that working with Dr. Jim O’Connell would be crazy…
We convened at Dick Malmquist’s house on Saturday, July 8, 2023. Renee proposed this book by Toni Morrison. It’s the second Toni Morrison book we’ve read as a group (the other: A Mercy). Renee is an unabashed Toni fan. Many of us found the book riveting and lyrical. It’s long for us: 318 pages. We…
By the author of the highly-lauded biography of her parents, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Composing a Life uses the complex and varied lives of five women to explore the work in process, the life creatively lived. Author Mary Catherine Bateson, the author of Composing a Life, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is Clarence…
The troubled love story of Rosacoke Mustian and Wesley Beavers and its beautifully evoked vision of rural North Carolina. Author Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University. He taught at Duke since 1958 and was James B. Duke…
A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter – a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. Author Toni Morrison (born Chloe…
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic…
Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. Author Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction…
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666. Author Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning March and the international bestsellers Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book,…
When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Author Diane Ackerman has been the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to many other awards and recognitions for her…
A rich, wonderfully alive novel from one of our most admired and best-loved writers, her first book in nine years. Lark and Termite is set during the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea. It is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and…
