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Jesus
Land by Julia Scheeves
Michele's book of
the month is Jesus Land by Julia Scheeves. Julia has written
a love story that is as romantic and as sad as any recent
memoir you'll read. It's about Julia and David, it's the
mid-1980s, and the family has just moved to rural Indiana,
a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks - and
a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia
is white, her close relationship with David, who is black,
makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother, more
involved with her church's missionaries than with her
own children, and a violent father only compound their
problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones,
bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much
to bear, the parents send Julia and David to the Dominican
Republic - to a reform school there. The Escuela Caribe
is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its
teens repent for their sins under boot-camp conditions.
Julia and David's determination to make it through with
heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor,
sparkling humor, and not a note of malice. This is one
of the most compelling, page-turning memoirs to come along
in years.
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The
God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
Ms. Carol's book
of the month is The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle. This
is one of the most exciting fiction debuts in years, a
breathtaking and beautiful novel set on a horse ranch
in small-town Colorado. Kyle develops a great story: a
young girl approaching womanhood in a man's world. The
business of raising horses acts as a novel-length metaphor,
and Kyle's illuminating details make it fresh. This is
a wise and astonishing novel about the different guises
of love and the hard-to-learn lessons on the road to adulthood.
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The
Judges by Elie Wiesel
Keith's book of the month is The Judges by Elie Wiesel, a gripping
novel of guilt, innocence, and the perilousness of judging both. A
plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv is forced down by bad weather.
A nearby house provides refuge for five of its passengers. Their host,
an enigmatic and disquieting man who calls himself simply the Judge,
begins to interrogate them, forcing them to face the truth and meaning
of their lives. Soon he announces that one of them--the least worthy--will
die. The Judges is a powerful novel that reflects the philosophical,
religious, and moral questions that are at the heart of Wiesel's work.
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The
Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Monesis
Keith's book of the
month is The Judges by Elie Wiesel, a gripping novel of
guilt, innocence, and the perilousness of judging both.
A plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv is forced down
by bad weather. A nearby house provides refuge for five
of its passengers. Their host, an enigmatic and disquieting
man who calls himself simply the Judge, begins to interrogate
them, forcing them to face the truth and meaning of their
lives. Soon he announces that one of them--the least worthy--will
die. The Judges is a powerful novel that reflects the
philosophical, religious, and moral questions that are
at the heart of Wiesel's work.
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Stolen
Lives, Twenty Years in Desert Prison, by Malika Oufkir
and Michele Fitoussi
Amy's book of the
month is Stolen Lives, Twenty Years in Desert Prison,
by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi. Oufkir was the
eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's
closest aide. She spent most of her childhood and adolescence
in the court harem, surrounded by luxury and privilege.
In 1972, her father was executed after an attempt to assassinate
the king. Oufkir, her five brothers and sisters, and her
mother were immediately imprisoned in a desert penal colony.
After 20 years, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel
with their bare hands and make an audacious escape. Oufkir
was finally able to leave Morocco and begin a new life
in exile in 1996. Stolen Lives is an unforgettable story
of one woman's journey to freedom.
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The
Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Sue's book of the
month is The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. In
Afghanistan, just after the fall of the Taliban, a bookseller
named Sultan Khan allowed a Western journalist to move
into his home and experience firsthand his family's life
in the newly liberated capital city of Kabul. In this
remarkable portrait, Norwegian journalist Seierstad recounts
with brutal honesty the day-to-day lives of one Afghani
family persevering through life in a country beset by
chaos. Sultan, a man whose love of books has exposed him
to great risks over his 30 years in the trade has seen
his volumes censored, ripped apart, even burned in the
street by the Communists and the Taliban. Each time he
rebuilds his business, hiding the most controversial texts,
surviving prison, traveling treacherous back roads to
Pakistan to order much-needed schoolbooks. He takes joy
in selling books of history, science, art, religion, and
poetry, and defends his business against competitors and
theft with a primal ferocity. With the assent of the Khan
family with whom she lives, Seierstad gives us intimate
access to a world were women have few privileges, and
where an attitude of hope seems uncommonly rare.
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The
Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Michele's book of
the month is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. When
a motherless American girl living in Europe finds a medieval
book and a package of letters, all addressed ominously
to "My dear and unfortunate successor…" she unwittingly
assumes a quest she will discover is her birthright--a
hunt that nearly brought her father to ruin and may have
claimed the life of history professor Bartholomew Rossi.
What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler, the historical
Dracula, have to do with the 20th Century?
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Until
I Find You by John Irving
Sue's book of the
month is Until I Find You by John Irving. Irving's eleventh
novel contains multitudes, building and building on the
questionable memories of perhaps his most autobiographical
character to date. Until I Find You, the story of the
actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo
artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several
North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack's missing
father, William, a church organist who is addicted to
being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can't
be found. The author's tone, indeed, the narrative voice
of this novel, is melancholic. Until I Find You is suffused
with overwhelming sadness and deception; it is also a
robust and comic novel, certain to be compared to Irving's
most ambitious and moving works.
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The Brief
History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Keith's book of the
month is The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.
This book is original, thought provoking, gorgeously written
and, ultimately, very moving. The novel alternates between
the adventures of Laura Byrd, a Coca Cola researcher stranded
in the Antarctic, and the City of the Dead. There was
been a war on earth in which the combatants are virus's.
Brockmeier's notion of an afterlife is a way station where
people must stay until people whom they have known on
earth have also died. Over half of them have known Laura
Byrd. The people who live in the City of the Dead are
not ghosts. They will remind you of your next-door neighbors.
They get up, have breakfast, and go to work, just like
normal people. They appear to have corporal bodies. One
of the characters, the Blind Man, wonders about this.
He has a theory about the difference between the spirit
and the soul. He believes the spirit connects the body
and the soul, and that when the spirit dies, we move on
to the next life. It's a treat to find a truly original
young writer and I recommend it highly.
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Julie
and Julia by Julie Powell
Sue's book of the
month is Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. This story is
at once a comic tale of struggling to find one's balance
in the adult world, and a witty exploration of why - and
how - we cook. Gastronomes, as well as those more inclined
to order take-out, will enjoy Powell's down-and-dirty
journey into French cuisine, but her depiction of America
is the secret ingredient that holds the whole recipe together.
Julie is 30 years old, living in a rundown apartment in
Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's
going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony
of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She
will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's
1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and
she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.
At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves
from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the
more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes
there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than
meets the eye. With Julia's stern warble always in her
ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and
sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs
for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight.
She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian,
the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense
pleasure of eating liver. And somewhere along the line
she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle
of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness
through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.
A nourishing read if you love to cook or would rather
stay out of the kitchen altogether.
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The Traveler
by John Twelve Hawks
Keith's Book of the
month is The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks, the first
in a projected trilogy called The Fourth Realm. This novel
is powerful, mainstream fiction built on a foundation
of cutting-edge technology laced with fantasy and the
chilling specter of an all-too-possible social and political
reality. The time is roughly the present, and the U.S.
is part of the Vast Machine, a society overseen by the
Tabula, a secret organization bent on establishing a perfectly
controlled populace. Allied against the Tabula are the
Travelers and their sword-carrying protectors, the Harlequins.
The Travelers, now almost extinct, can project their spirit
into other worlds where they receive wisdom to bring back
to Earth, wisdom that threatens the Tabula's power.
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