November will be Elizabeth's last meeting! Please come by to wish her farewell!
November's Meeting will be Tuesday, November 27 at 2:00 pm in room Y-233.
For November:
Members will choose from the following list and them present "book reports" on their selection.
Little Bee by Chris Cleve
We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly
special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to
know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but
the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the
book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important.
Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you
do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it
unfolds.
Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind Body Medicine by Candace B. Pert
Her pioneering research on how the chemicals inside our bodies form a
dynamic information network, linking mind and body, is not only
provocative, it is revolutionary. By establishing the biomolecular basis
for our emotions and explaining these new scientific developments in a
clear and accessible way, Pert empowers us to understand ourselves,
our feelings, and the connection between our minds and our bodies --
body-minds -- in ways we could never possibly have imagined before.
Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigani.
The fateful first meeting
of Enza and Ciro takes place amid the haunting majesty of the Italian
Alps at the turn of the last century. Still teenagers, they are
separated when Ciro is banished from his village and sent to hide in New
York's Little Italy, apprenticed to a shoemaker, leaving a bereft Enza
behind. But when her own family faces disaster, she, too, is forced to
emigrate to America. Though destiny will reunite the star-crossed
lovers, it will, just as abruptly, separate them once again—sending
Ciro off to serve in World War I, while Enza is drawn into the
glamorous world of the opera . . . and into the life of the
international singing sensation Enrico Caruso. Still, Enza and Ciro have
been touched by fate—and, ultimately, the power of their love will
change their lives forever.
Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan
Cherry Truong’s parents have exiled her wayward older brother from
their Southern California home, sending him to Vietnam to live with
distant relatives. Determined to bring him back, twenty-one-year-old
Cherry travels to their homeland and finds herself on a journey to
uncover her family’s decades-old secrets—hidden loves, desperate
choices, and lives ripped apart by the march of war and currents of
history.
Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
The inside story of the world's most exclusive fraternity; how
presidents from Hoover through Obama worked with--and sometimes,
against--each other when they were in and out of power.
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted
with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp
intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble
families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from
the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
For a man forced into the presidency, the legacy of James Garfield extended far beyond his lifetime, and
Destiny of the Republic
revisits his meteoric rise within the military and government with
meticulous research and intimate focus. Garfield was a passionate
advocate of freed slaves, a reformer at odds with Republican power
brokers and machine politics, a devoted father, and a spellbinding
speech-giver. Four months after taking office he was shot twice by an
unhinged office-seeker, Charles Guiteau, and a nation already recently
fractured by war shattered, leaving the wounded president at the center
of a bitter, behind-the-scenes struggle for power. Examining the
medical reform spurred by Garfield's unsanitary medical treatment, and
reflecting on the surprising political reform brought on by his former
political enemy Senator Roscoe Conkling,
Destiny of the Republic passionately brings President Garfield's unknown-but-widely-felt legacy into focus.
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
"A new, unapologetic kind of adultery novel. Narrated by the proverbial
other woman—Gina Moynihan, a sharp, sexy, darkly funny thirtysomething
IT worker—
The Forgotten Waltz charts an extramarital affair
from first encounter to arranged, settled, everyday domesticity. . . .
This novel’s beauty lies in Enright’s spare, poetic, off-kilter prose—at
once heartbreaking and subversively funny. It’s built of startling
little surprises and one fresh sentence after another. Enright captures
the heady eroticism of an extramarital affair and the incendiary
egomania that accompanies secret passion: For all their utter
ordinariness, Sean and Gina feel like the greatest lovers who've ever
lived.”—
Elle
Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
After doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, the Kid is
forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather.
Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid is in many ways an innocent,
trapped by impulses and choices he struggles to comprehend. Enter the
Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. The
two men forge a tentative partnership, but when the Professor's past
resurfaces, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Suddenly,
the Kid must reconsider all he has come to believe, and make a fateful
choice when faced with a new kind of moral decision. A mature and
masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most
accomplished storytellers,
Lost Memory of Skin explores the
zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope
of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has
perhaps created a new kind of victim.
Swamplandia by Karen Russell
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at
Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in
the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the
park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her
father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character
known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to
a rival park called The World of Darkness. As Ava sets out on a
mission through the magical swamps to save them all, we are drawn into a
lush and bravely imagined debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of
reality.
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and
The Romanovs returns
with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary
story of an obscure German princess who became one of the most
remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a
minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of
Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government,
foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people
were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars,
and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the
French Revolution. Catherine’s family, friends, ministers, generals,
lovers, and enemies—all are here, vividly brought to life. History
offers few stories richer than that of Catherine the Great. In this
book, an eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.
The Information: A History, a Theory, A Flood by James Gleick
Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of
how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of
human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the
history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s
talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the
electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory,
into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets,
images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators,
including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude
Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is
transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live.
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable.
Hailed as "a masterpiece" (
San Francisco Chronicle), the late
Manning Marable's acclaimed biography of Malcolm X finally does justice
to one of the most influential and controversial figures of
twentieth-century American history. Filled with startling new
information and shocking revelations,
Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America. Reaching into Malcolm's
troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism as
followers of Marcus Garvey through his own work with the Nation of
Islam and rise in the world of black nationalism, and culminates in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X is a stunning achievement, the definitive work on one of our greatest advocates for social change.
