January 19: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery [fiction]Moscow Library Third Tuesday Book Club
When: 1:00 p.m. on the third Tuesday of each month
Where: Moscow Library
Who may join: Anyone interested in reading!
The Third Tuesday Book Club is especially suited if you prefer meeting during the day. Membership is free.
For more information contact Chris at the Moscow Library, 882-3925 ext. 16, chriss@latahlibrary.org
Reading schedule:
January 19: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery [fiction]
In the center of Paris, an elegant apartment building is inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.
Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.
Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. --BookBrowse.com
February 16: Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Orhan Pamuk [nonfiction]
Weaving history with observations of people, places, and art, Nobel Prize winner Pamuk shows Istanbul's transformation from the seat of faded imperial glory to the capital of a modern nation at the dizzying crossroads of East and West.-- Ingram iPage
March 16: The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford [fiction]
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.
Forty years later, Henry is still trying to find words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.--BookBrowse database
April 20: The Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks [fiction]
This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village," in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, a tainted bolt of cloth from London carries bubonic infection to this isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners. A visionary young preacher convinces the villagers to seal themselves off in a deadly quarantine to prevent the spread of disease. The story is told through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Anna Frith, the vicar's maid, as she confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna emerges as an unlikely and courageous heroine in the village's desperate fight to save itself.--BookBrowse database
Previous Titles Read by the Book Club:
Molokai by Alan Brennert
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Night by Elie Wiesel
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
The Matisse Stories by A.S. Byatt
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Snow in the River by Moscow native Carol Ryrie Brink
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez
Guernica by Dave Boling
Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss
Q & A by Vikas Swarup (also published as Slumdog Millionaire) [fiction]
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald [fiction]
The Women by T.C. Boyle [fiction]
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
The Other by David Guterson
The Road From Coorain by Jill Ker Conway [nonfiction]
A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis [fiction]