For 3 Years

I have been wanting to post on our website and today I got a notice to use my gmail account and IFOUND IT!!!!!!!

Reeves

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Title: The Mermaid Chair

Genre: Fiction

Original Language: English

Setting: Contemporary

Meeting: Lesley's beach themed home complete with fishing net (knotted by monks no doubt!).

Read Score: 6.5

Discussion Score: 10

About This Book -- B&N Synopsis

Telling the story of Jessie Sullivan-a love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul-Kidd charts a journey of awakening and self-discovery illuminated with a brilliance that only a writer of her ability could conjure.

Mother Night

Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Title: Mother Night
Genre: Fiction
Original Language: English
Setting: Contemporary (1961)
Meeting: Anne's home. Wonderful book discussion while enjoying German fare.
Read Score: 8
Discussion Score: 10

About This Book -- B&N Synopsis

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

March 6, 2009 HAPPY 3rd BRITHDAY LLOEW! A Thousand Splendid Suns

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Genre: Fiction

Original Language: English

Setting: Contemporary Afghanistan

Meeting: Maryanne's home. Wonderful book discussion while enjoying a lavish feast of Indian food.

Read Score: 10

Discussion Score: 10

About This Book -- B&N Synopsis

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years — from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding — that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives — the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness — are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heartwrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love — a stunning accomplishment.

January 2009 The Alchemist

Author: Paulo Coelho
Title: The Alchemist
Genre: Allegory
Original Language: Portugese (Brazil)
Setting: Spain and Northern Africa
Meeting: Dayna's
Read Score: 7
Discussion Score: 7

About This Book -- B&N Synopsis

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its simplicity and wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an Alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a meditation on the treasures found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is art eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.

December 2008 Eat, Pray, Love

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Title: Eat, Pray, Love

Genre: Memoir

Original Language: English

Setting: Contemporary Italy, India, Indonesia

Meeting: Jackie's Xmas wonderland!

About this book -- B&N Synopsis

Oddly but aptly titled, Eat, Pray, Love is an experience to be savored: This spiritual memoir brims with humor, grace, and scorching honesty. After a messy divorce and other personal missteps, Elizabeth Gilbert confronts the "twin goons" of depression and loneliness by traveling to three countries that she intuited had something she was seeking. First, in Italy, she seeks to master the art of pleasure by indulging her senses. Then, in an Indian ashram, she learns the rigors and liberation of mind-exalting hours of meditation. Her final destination is Bali, where she achieves a precarious, yet precious equilibrium. Gilbert's original voice and unforced wit lend an unpretentious air to her expansive spiritual journey.

October 2008 Loving Frank

Author: Nancy Horan
Title: Loving Frank
Genre: Fiction
Original Language: English
Setting: early 1900's America
Meeting: October 2009. Reeve's meeting at Jackie's house.
Read Score: 9
Discussion Score: 7

About This Book -- B&N Synopsis


"I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current."

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

Loving Frank Background

Edwin Cheney House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright


Cheny divorce as reported in the Chicago Tribune.
To read this clipping click here


Ellen Key

Taliesin

Slideshow

September 2008

Author: Irene Nemirovsky

Title: Suite Francais

Genre: Historical Fiction

Original Language: French

Setting: Occupation of Paris and France 1940

Meeting: September 19, 2008 Dayna's "french" inspired dining room

Read Score: 8

Discussion Score: 8

About this book --

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Celebrated in pre-WWII France for her bestselling fiction, the Jewish Russian-born Némirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, months after this long-lost masterwork was composed. Némirovsky, a convert to Catholicism, began a planned five-novel cycle as Nazi forces overran northern France in 1940. This gripping "suite," collecting the first two unpolished but wondrously literary sections of a work cut short, have surfaced more than six decades after her death. The first, "Storm in June," chronicles the connecting lives of a disparate clutch of Parisians, among them a snobbish author, a venal banker, a noble priest shepherding churlish orphans, a foppish aesthete and a loving lower-class couple, all fleeing city comforts for the chaotic countryside, mere hours ahead of the advancing Germans. The second, "Dolce," set in 1941 in a farming village under German occupation, tells how peasant farmers, their pretty daughters and petit bourgeois collaborationists coexisted with their Nazi rulers. In a workbook entry penned just weeks before her arrest, Némirovsky noted that her goal was to describe "daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides." This heroic work does just that, by focusing—with compassion and clarity—on individual human dramas. (Apr. 18) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Whiskey Rebels -- Early review for Librarything.com and Random House

The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel by David Liss

David Liss has been on my "to read" list for quite some time. After reading The Whiskey Rebels, he's sky rocketed to the top of that list. Though some earlier reviewers say this "is not his best", you could have fooled me.

18th century America is not my favorite period in historical fiction, but colonial Philadelphia and the factors leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion would have grabbed my attention. Freshman Pennsylvania history in high-school and Colonial history II in college (both in Pennsylvania) came flooding back to me, this time, in a good way.

Liss' has wonderfully built period atmosphere, compelling characters, and an intriguing story full of suspense, all of which is enhanced by flawless research. He's also hit everything I look for in historical fiction -- a story based on history I know little about (or have forgotten) that I can get lost in! I hit the jackpot with The Whiskey Rebels and am really looking forward to reading his earlier works. 4 stars

June Meeting aka FEET ON THE DASH BOARD SUMMER BLAST Road Trip

Author: Kim Edwards
Title: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1964 to present
Meeting: June 6, 2008 on Anne's Patio with hoagies galore!
Read Score: 5
Discussion Score: 7

About this book --
from Publisher's Weekly:
Edwards's assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. Though the impact of Phoebe's loss makes sense, Edwards's redundant handling of the trope robs it of credibility. This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.