The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Sue's book of the month is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He writes about how our food is grown--what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: the first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. What should we have for dinner? To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time, we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

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Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Mama-san Carol's book of the month is Brick Lane by Monica Ali. This phenomenally original novel entwines Pakistani traditional beginnings with a gradual transformation into modern, multicultural life in contemporary London. Ali's narrator, Nazneen, holds all of her experiences close at hand and maintains a connection to both worlds, considering fate and observation as her beacons. Brick Lane tells the parallel stories of two sisters: one in London, the other back home in Bangladesh. The story unfolds over the course of 20 or so years. The story alternates between the daily life of Nazneen and letters written by her sister Hasina. Ali's writing is funny, sharp, and deeply moving; and she explores the power of personal choice and the sometimes-suffocating disillusion of immigrant life.

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Sue's book of the month is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby. It’s 1995, Bauby was the editor-in-chief of the French magazine Elle, the father of two young children, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, style, and impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, Bauby bears witness to his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had been able to do in his body. Again and again he returns to an inexhaustible reservoir of sensations, keeping in touch with himself and the life around him.

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Atonement by Ian McEwan

M & M's (Mom & Michelle's) book of the month is Atonement by Ian McEwan. This haunting novel is McEwan at his finest. It is in effect two, or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935. Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family, points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed. The second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie, now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a kind of victory. In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now together as lovers. In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination.

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What is the What by Dave Eggers

Sue's book of the month is What is the What by Dave Eggers. Sue could not be more in agreement with Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, who reviewed of this book: "I cannot recall the last time I was this moved by a novel. What Is the What is that rare book that truly deserves the overused and scarcely warranted moniker of sprawling epic. Told with humor, humanity, and bottomless compassion for his subject, one Valentino Achak Deng, Eggers shows us the hardships, disillusions, and hopes of the long-suffering people of southern Sudan. This is the story of one boy's astonishing capacity to endure atrocity after atrocity and yet refuse to abandon decency, kindness, and hope for home and acceptance. It is impossible to read this book and not be humbled, enlightened, transformed. I believe I will never forget Valentino Achak Deng."

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