December Party

December is a busy month, so it’s not surprising that subVERSEive had a number of members unable to attend the holiday party on December 12^th. We persevered and joined up with the Monday Night library book club, which was meeting on the main floor. There were plenty of sweet treats and lots of cheer to go around, so this might be a fun joint book club event to continue annually. Here are the books that we shared with links to the library catalogue:

Fiction:

I, Claudius by Robert Graves (Colleen)

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast by Bill Richardson (Madeleine)

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (Sharleen)

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (Iris)

The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time series no. 1) by Robert Jordan (Kevin)

The Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers (Linda L.)

The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich (Sandra)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Linda R.)

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (Linda Marie)

The Virgin Widow by Anne O’Brien (Julie)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Erin)

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (Alison)

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (Luise)

Non-Fiction:

Louder than Words by Jenny McCarthy (Chelsea)

The Resolution for Men by Steven & Alex Kendrick (Katrina)

The Resolution for Women by Priscilla Evans Shirer (Katrina)

Mary Colter, Architect of the Southwest by Arnold Berke (Linda Marie)

Thank you to Monday Night book club organizers Sandra and Luise for letting subVERSEive crash their party.

Have a safe and happy holiday season! See you all on January 16th (we will discuss The Help by Kathryn Stockett).

Room by Emma Donoghue

The unusual setting and point-of-view in this book gave the group plenty of discussion material. A great deal of planning and research obviously went into Donoghue’s writing. The details such as the construction of the shed, the daily phys ed activities of Jack and his mother, and the necessity of sunscreen and sunglasses were among the things that we marvelled at. One member managed to read the novel without exposure to all the reviews and media hype. He was treated to the gradual revelation of Jack and Ma’s circumstances, which made it a somewhat different reading experience. After hearing so much about Room, I was personally surprised that only half of the book took place in captivity and the other half dealt with the main characters’ adjustment to the outside world. This, of course, made for a much better read than the alternative. When we considered the Great Escape, most of the group found the events difficult to believe. It seemed unlikely that several chance events would all go in favour of the protagonists: Old Nick obeyed Ma’s directions not to look at Jack or bury him in the back yard, the five-year-old boy managed to get out of the rolled up rug, and a man just happened to be out on a residential street after nine at night to witness Jack fleeing. It was probably a challenging sequence to dream up and edit. When considering how each of us might have parented Jack, the group felt that the childhood that Ma was able to give Jack, given her horrific circumstances and very limited resources, was quite good. Protecting Jack from Old Nick and not telling the boy about the outside world for the first few years of his life were understandable decisions. When we finally gave our opinions on the book, a few members said that had Room not been a book club book, they would not have read it or at least might not have completed it. Our ratings for the book worked out to an average of 3.75 out of 5 stars.

The next meeting on the evening of December 12 will be our winter holiday party. I will send out the details through e-mail.

Irma Voth and What We’ll be Reading in 2012

Irma Voth was not a top pick for subVERSEive; it received an average rating of 3.3 stars out of 5 stars. One member commented, “it reminded me of a story by someone who was high.” In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the group did manage to have an excellent discussion about Miriam Toews’ novel. The book was character-driven, and much of our talk focused on the relationships among Irma’s family members, as well as the ways in which the Mexican film crew interacted with the Mennonites. For some of us, the period of time when Irma and Aggie had just arrived in Mexico City with their infant sister, Ximena, stood out as the most interesting part of the book. At this point of great plight, Irma’s resourcefulness became apparent and some interesting new characters were introduced (Noehmi and the protesters, the taxi driver, and Hubertus and Natalie). We agreed that Irma and Aggie were fortunate to encountered helpful people; things could have gone terribly wrong had someone taken advantage of the naivety of the young women. Other aspects of the book which we discussed included how the novel depicted life in a Mennonite community (the author grew up in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba), the relationship of law enforcement to Mennonite communities, themes of isolation, rebellion, and parenting, the logistics of filmmaking, and the author’s references to art and music. We wondered if it might have been possible for Irma, Aggie, and Ximena to seek asylum in Canada, and we also wondered why Irma took the risk of returning to the campo to visit her mother. The novel was definietely thought-provoking.

At the October meeting, the members in attendance made the decision to include all 3 books from the previous blog post in our 2012 lineup. There are also 3 additional books that I have chosen based on the availability of the newer book club kits. Here are the books we will be reading in the first half of the new year:

The Help (Kathryn Stockett) – January 16^th

Right of Thirst (Frank Huyler) – February 13^th

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (William Kamkwamba) – March 19^th

The Beauty of Humanity Movement (Camilla Gibb)  – April 16^th

The Best Laid Plans (Terry Fallis) - May 14^th

Cool Water (Dianne Warren) - June 18^th

There’s a non-fiction book, a political satire, and a mix of male and female protagonists. The stories are set in the Canada, the southern United States, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. There should be something to appeal to every taste.

I am looking into the possibility of getting a book club kit made for The Marriage Plot, the new novel (just released last week!) by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides. If you have suggestions for other titles, please let me know.

For those of you who missed the meeting, you can sign out a copy of our November book, Room (Emma Donoghue), from the book club kit at the Adult Information Desk on the second floor of the library. Tell the librarian that you belong to the subVERSEive book club.

Vote for February & March Books

I have 3 books for book club to consider for the new year. Please choose your top 2 and we will vote at our meeting on Monday night!

The Beauty of Humanity Movement (fiction)

author: Camilla Gibb

“Set in contemporary Vietnam, this is the story of a country undergoing momentous change, a story that transforms our notions of how family is defined – not always by bloodlines, but by the heart. Tu’ is a young tour guide working in Hanoi for a company called New Dawn, but when he leads tourists through his city, including American veterans on “war tours,” he starts to wonder what it is they are seeing of Vietnam – and what they miss entirely. Maggie, who has lived most of her life in the U.S., has returned to the country in search of clues to her dissident father’s disappearance during the war.”

~From the Doubleday Canada hardcover edition

 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (non-fiction)

author: William Kamkwamba

“Forced to drop out of school when famine hits his village-which has no electricity or running water-a Malawi boy tinkers with scrap metal and builds a windmill that lights a few bulbs and catches the world’s attention.”

~Description from the St. Albert Public Library catalogue

 

The Right of Thirst (fiction)

author: Frank Huyler

“Shattered by his wife’s death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbour. But when the refugees he’s come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.”

~From the Harper Perennial  paperback edition

Waiting for Essex County

I consider our summer meeting to be successful, with 4 of us in attendance. No new members, so far, even though the library has been advertising in house and in the paper. We experimented with different seating – I dragged in the big comfy chairs and the coffee table. Definitely preferable to a boardroom-style meeting. Thanks for the suggestion, Erin!

Waiting for Columbus got a lukewarm reception. Comments included that the writing was a little choppy, and some of the content was not believable. Here is a video of author Thomas Trofimuk’s appearance on Richard and Judy, a UK talk show:

http://www.youtube.com/OfficialRichardJudy#p/a/u/4/cBUwQdPH9BU

I keep forgetting to ask for your ratings of the books (0 to  5 stars), so please come to the next month’s meeting with some ratings to share for Sarah’s Key, Cutting for Stone, The Forgotten Garden, and Waiting for Columbus.

Our next meeting will take place on Monday, September 19, and we will be discussing our first graphic novel: Essex County. It made it into the top five for the 2011 Canada Reads competition. Most of us are new to the format, so I have invited the library’s resident graphic novel expert, Drew, to come  to the meeting and share his knowledge of the format and his recommendations. I was surprised at how much I enjoy reading graphic novels (I’ve read about 15 to date), so my hope is that this introduction will prompt the you to read more within this format.

Summer Meeting Reminder

Rainy summers are good for reading. The pile of books on my to-read shelf is getting smaller by the week. Just a quick reminder that our next subVERSEive book club meeting is on Monday, August 15 at 7 pm, so you still have lots of time to read Waiting for Columbus. Keep The Forgotten Garden in mind, too, so that we can discuss it.

We are looking for new members, so if you have a friend in their twenties or thirties who wants to join this book club, please ask them to contact Alison at awatson@sapl.ab.ca or 780-418-6622. See you soon!

Cutting for Stone

At Monday night’s meeting, we discussed Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. The author is a medical doctor of Indian parentage who grew up in Ethiopia. He received his medical training there, then moved to the United States, where he has worked ever since. He has been a tenured professor at the Stanford University of Medicine in California since 2007. If you are interested in learning about his inspiration for this novel, check out this short video:

The group has decided on the books for summer and fall:

July- no meeting this month – enjoy your summer break!

August – Waiting for Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk

September – Essex County by Jeff Lemire

October – Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

Our next meeting is on Monday, June 20th at 7pm, when we will discuss The Forgotten Garden by Australian author Kate Morton.

Do you have any new suggestions for book club books for 2012? I’d love to hear them. Please comment on this blog post or e-mail me at awatson@sapl.ab.ca with your ideas.

Vote for Summer and Fall books!

With a consistently small discussion group, we have a little more flexibility in our book choices for the coming months. For the remainder of 2011, we will be meeting for book discussions on June 20th (The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton), August 15th, September 19th, October 17th, and November 21st (Room by Emma Donoghue). I have put us down for Room by Emma Donoghue for the November meeting, which is one of the library’s newest book club kits. For the December 12th meeting (please note that it is scheduled for the second Monday of that month to avoid interfering with people’s holiday plans), we will choose our own books to do book talks on and hold a used book gift exchange like last year. July is going to be a holiday month from book club.

At our May meeting, you will vote for 3 of the 4 following books, and we will read the top 3 picks in August, September, and October:

Essex County (2009) by Jeff Lemire

Lemire’s adult graphic novel, made up of 3 interconnected stories set in a rural Ontario community, has won the Joe Shuster Award for Canadian comic book creators, and was shortlisted for the 2011 Canada Reads competition.

The population of Lemire’s fictional landscape is represented from childhood to old age through the characters of Lester, Lou and Anne. Their external world is rendered in stark black-and-white lines. The vividness of their interior lives, however, is what gives the graphic novel its colour and vitality.

After the death of his mother, 10-year-old Lester, the central character of Tales from the Farm, is sent to live with his Uncle Ken, a rural bachelor and a man of few words. For the sensitive boy, comic books and superheroes are a welcome distraction from the painful circumstances of his life.

Lou LeBeuf, protagonist of Ghost Stories, is an aged hockey player living out his last days alone at his farm. Isolated and full of regret, he replays the turning points of his life once again.

Anne Quenneville is the focus of The Country Nurse. A travelling nurse in Essex County, she has seen her share of suffering. Perhaps that’s what makes her such a force for good. Through Anne, the trilogy finds resolution and its heartbreaking characters find much-needed connection.

- from the 2011 Canada Reads website

Irma Voth (2011) by Miriam Toews

This is a newly-published novel by the award-winning author of A Complicated Kindness. It is number 1 on the Maclean’s bestsellers list and number 4 on the Globe and Mail’s bestsellers list this week.

Miriam Toews’ new novel brings us back to the beloved voice of her award-winning, #1 bestseller A Complicated Kindness, and to a Mennonite community in the Mexican desert. Original and brilliant, she is a master of storytelling at the height of her powers, who manages with trademark wry wit and a fierce tenderness to be at once heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny.

Irma Voth entangles love, longing and dark family secrets. The stifling, reclusive Mennonite life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth – newly married and newly deserted and as unforgettable a character as Nomi Nickel in A Complicated Kindness – is irrevocably changed when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the community. She embraces the absurdity, creative passion and warmth of their world but her intractable and domineering father is determined to keep her from it at all costs. The confrontation between them sets her on an irrevocable path towards something that feels like freedom as she and her young sister, Aggie, wise beyond her teenage years, flee to the city, upheld only by their love for each other and their smart wit, even as they begin to understand the tragedy that has their family in its grip.

-description from the SAPL catalogue

Half-Broke Horses: A true-life novel (2009) by Jeannette Walls

This non-fiction novel charts the life of Jeannette’s grandmother. Considering how much the subVERSEive group enjoyed discussing Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, this one seemed to be a logical title to include amongst our choices.

No one familiar with Walls’s affecting memoir, The Glass Castle, will be surprised by her subtitle here: Walls is a careful observer who can give true-life stories the rush and immediacy of the best fiction. Here she novelizes the life of her grandmother, giving herself just the latitude she needs to create a great story. Lily Casey Smith is one astonishing woman, tough enough to trot her pony across several hundred miles of desert to her first job when she’s only a teenager. After a brief stint in Chicago and marriage to a flim-flam man, she’s back in the West, teaching again and eventually remarrying, helping her fine new husband at the gas station, raising her children, and running hootch if she must to make ends meet during the Depression. Her story is at once simple and utterly remarkable, for this is one remarkable woman-a half-broke horse herself who’s clearly passed on her best traits to her granddaughter. Verdict: told in a natural, offhand voice that is utterly enthralling, this is essential reading for anyone who loves good fiction-or any work about the American West.

-Review by Library Journal

Waiting for Columbus (2009) by Thomas Trofimuk

This novel is by an Edmonton author, poet, and musician. His website proclaims: Thomas Trofimuk – writer, gardener, failed Buddhist. Sounds intriguing, much like the plot of his book.

Highly acclaimed Canadian novelist Thomas Trofimuk bursts onto the international literary stage with this dazzling novel, rich with all the emotional intensity of The English Patient. In a Spanish mental institution in 2004, a man who believes he is Christopher Columbus begins to tell his story. Nurse Consuela listens, hoping to discover what tragedy drove this educated, cultured man to retreat from reality. This Columbus is not heroic: he falls in love with every woman he meets, and, on land, he has absolutely no sense of direction. More troublingly, he is convinced a terrible tragedy is coming. Yet with each tale, Consuela draws closer to this lost navigator. Waiting for Columbusis richly imagined, cinematic, and often playful; a novel about truth, loss, love, and hope by a writer at the height of his powers.

-From the Hardcover edition

If you would like to read the first few pages of Irma Voth, Half-Broke Horses, and Waiting for Columbus to get a feel for each novel, search for the book in the SAPL catalogue, click on the book title to go to the catalogue record, then click on the Preview tab under Item Details (located just below the image of the book’s cover).

See you on Monday, May 16 at 7 pm for discussion of the novel Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

Sarah’s Key

The book for April is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. The author lives in Paris and has published 10 novels in France, but Sarah’s Key is the first book that she has written in her first language of English. An online biography of de Rosnay hints that she has a passion for family history, an interest which is reflected in the subject matter of her novel.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.  Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.
“Sarah’s Key”, a New York Times bestseller, has been published in 38 countries. A movie starring Kristin Scott-Thomas, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, was released in 2010.

-synopsis of Sarah’s Key from Tatiana de Rosnay’s website

Our book for the month of March, The Happiness Project, received an average rating of 3 out of 5 stars from those who attended Monday’s meeting. Most of us rushed to finish the book on time and we certainly didn’t agree with all aspects of Gretchen Rubin’s year-long experiment, but there was some heated discussion which made for a satisfying meeting. Please add your rating or comments to this post if you were not able to attend. The next meeting of subVERSEive will take place at 7pm on Monday, April 18th.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

With the weather below -20 degrees Celcius in St. Albert this week, it was not overly surprising that only four of us made it to the subVERSEive meeting on Monday. The average rating given to the February book by group members was 3.6 out of 5 stars. If you would like to contribute your own rating and comment on the book, please click on the Leave a Comment link at the bottom of this blog post.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was a good read for most of us, but perhaps a little too light to spark much in-depth discussion. If you loved the book and the precocious sleuth, Flavia de Luce, you will be pleased to hear that author Alan Bradley has a six-book series deal with his publisher. The second book and third books are already available. You can click on the links below to check availability of these titles in the library catalogue:

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Red Herring Without Mustard