New Voting List for Aug-Nov 2006
er...@ottawavalleybookclub.com
(August to November 2006). These books are also listed on the message
board of the website. The process, for our new members, is you send me
your five favorite books from this list of 15. Once we narrow it down
to the top five, we'll vote on those top five. Since our online
membership is growing, this is how the voting will go:
Online Members: I will post a poll on the message board once the top
five have been selected for each month in the next quarter, August,
September, October and November. Each poll will list the top five
books and you will select one book for each month. Make sure to vote
on each poll.
Local Members: On our June 1st and 3rd, 2006 meetings we will do an
in-person vote of the top five but we will not do a final tally of the
votes then. They will be added to the online votes and I will announce
the winners a week later. If you choose to vote online instead, please
let me know and you will not be eligible to vote in-person (this is
primarily for the local members who can not make the next meeting or
who did not read "The Da Vinci Code.")
So, the next step for ALL members would be to pick your top five out of
the list below and e-mail it to me before Sunday, May 28, 2006. I will
be putting the voting options on the message board on Monday, May 29,
2006 and we'll do the in-person vote that Thursday and Saturday.
Thank you and if you have any questions about how the vote will go,
please contact me via e-mail or give me a call at (613) 281-0641.
Sincerely,
Erin Blaskie
Ottawa Valley Book Club
http://www.ottawavalleybookclub.com
er...@ottawavalleybookclub.com
OVBC - Potential Reading List - August to November 2006
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
In the weeks following her death, Susie watches life on Earth
continuing without her-her school friends trading rumors about her
disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her
killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie
sees her parents' marriage being contorted by loss, her sister
hardening herself in an effort to stay strong, and her little brother
trying to grasp the meaning of the word gone.
And she explores the place called heaven. It looks a lot like her
school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are
counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with.
Everything she ever wanted appears as soon as she thinks of it-except
the thing she most wants: to be back with the people she loved on
Earth.
With compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees her
loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend. Her father embarks on
a risky quest to ensnare her killer. Her sister undertakes a feat of
remarkable daring. And the boy Susie cared for moves on, only to find
himself at the center of a miraculous event.
2. Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
Snowshoeing over crusted snow in the woods near their home,
twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon and her father come upon something
shocking. There, in the pristine winter scene, an abandoned baby wails,
its survival made possible only by the coincidence of their having
chosen this path for their late afternoon outing.
In the days and weeks that follow, Nicky glimpses corners of the adult
world that she never dreamed existed. As she follows the fate of the
baby girl and talks with the police officers assigned to investigate,
Nicky for the first time asks questions about her life's strange shape.
Why has her father moved them to this isolated New England farmhouse?
How can they come to terms with the tragedy they left behind? And how
can she bridge the chasm between his needs and her own growing sense of
the world? Nicky's ideas about life are thrown into stark relief by the
arrival of a young woman haunted by her own terrible choices. Together,
Nicky, her father, and this woman must work their way through a thicket
of decisions, each one seeming to carry equal possibilities of
heartbreak or redemption.
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what
very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide
an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political
turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters
whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with
readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this
on his first try.
The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a
wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's
servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early
1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites
and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an
unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and
eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever
predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains
haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these
demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring
him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.
("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the
fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up,
and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")
Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but
Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost
forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time
when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's
collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were
talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest,
sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a
fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary
novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg
4. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
The setting is Bombay, mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel, suffering from
Parkinson's disease, is the elderly patriarch of a small, discordant
family. He and his two middle-aged stepchildren-Coomy, bitter and
domineering, and her brother Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent, occupy
a once-elegant apartment whose ruin progresses as rapidly as Nariman's
disease. When his illness is compounded by a broken ankle, Coomy plots
to turn his round-the-clock care over to her younger, sweet-tempered
half sister-living with her husband and two sons in an already
over-crowded apartment-knowing that Roxana will not refuse. What
ensues is a great unraveling, and repair, of the family, and a
revelation of its love-torn past.
5. Fall On Your Knees by Anne-Marie MacDonald
Beginning in Nova Scotia, this story of four remarkable sisters, their
parentage and their closest alliances, is interwoven with the history
of our century. The irresistible narration of this simultaneously
intimate and global tale describes both the external life and spiritual
development of an extraordinary group of characters, revealed and
described with disarming charm and almost unbearable frankness. That
MacDonald succeeds, skillfully generating as much humour from her
history as distress, bears witness to her considerable storytelling
ability, and to a precise understanding of the complex psychology of
love and dependency.
The vivid reconstructions of, for example, the battlefields of the
First World War, the jazz scene in New York, and the eerie interior of
the family home are all vital components in MacDonald's rich narrative,
but they also stand alone as powerful evocations of episodes in recent
history that altered lives and the shape of the second half of the 20th
Century.
6. Tuesday's with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Take Mitch Albom. As a young man graduating from Brandeis University,
he made promises easily. Keeping them was another story. "You'll stay
in touch?", his sociology professor Morrie Schwartz asked him on
graduation day in 1979. Mitch answered his favorite professor, his
mentor, his friend, without hesitation, "Of course." Fast-forward
sixteen years to Mitch's life as a successful newspaper sports
columnist and broadcast journalist. Adept at juggling phone calls,
faxes, interviews, problems, often it seems while driving too fast to
another appointment on an overloaded docket, Mitch has a wonderful wife
but no time to spend with her, a beautiful house on a hill, a stock
portfolio, and a brother he hasn't talked to in years. He lives on a
deadline--too fast is the only speed he knows.
7. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
>From the author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller She's Come
Undone comes this heartbreaking and multi-generational saga of the
bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. Dominick
Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and
fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves
and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father,
Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping
giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built
submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a
timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious. Born
in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the
twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected
entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his
mother's watchful 'monkey'; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble
Thomas, his mother's gentle 'bunny.' From childhood, Dominick fights
for both separation and wholeness -- and ultimately self-protection --
in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over
these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. But Dominick's
talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of
his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it
will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot,
commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both
his and Dominick's lives. Dominick goes to Sicily's Mount Etna, where
his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and namesake was born.
Searching for answers to his past, Dominick turns to the whispers of
the dead and to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir to
put together the pieces of his life. Dominick learns that power,
wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now,
picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will
search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his
ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the
haunted shadow of his twin.
8. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
>From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were
Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time
in a haunting story of friendship and love.
As a child, Kathy-now thirty-one years old-lived at Hailsham, a
private school in the scenic English countryside where the children
were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they
were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for
themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had
long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham
friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of
memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings
that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into
love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes
of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed-even
comforted-by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well:
of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind
Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight,
the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their
childhood-and about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an
extraordinary emotional depth and resonance-and takes its place among
Kazuo Ishiguro's finest work.
9. A Recipe for Bees by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Raised by her silent but companionable father and a mother who kept
bees, headstrong Augusta marries shy, deferential Karl, twelve years
her senior, and goes to live with him on his father's remote farm.
Terrified that she will literally die from loneliness and isolation,
she finds work in town, and for a short time, fulfillment with another
man in a romance that will reverberate throughout her life. Not until
many years later does she find her salvation in beekeeping, the
practice she first learned from her mother. It is beekeeping that
reconnects her to the world and at long last brings fire to her
steadfast marriage.
10. The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be
born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in
Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian
midwife with a gift for healing and a kitchen filled with herbs and
folk remedies. During the turbulent first years of WWI, Dora becomes
the midwife's apprentice. Together they help the women of Scots Bay
through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted
pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives.
When Gilbert Thomas, a brash medical doctor comes to Scots Bay with
promises of fast, painless childbirth, many in the community begin to
question Miss Babineau's methods. After Miss Babineau disappears, Dora
is left to carry on alone. In the face of fierce opposition, she must
summon all her strength and fight to protect the birthing traditions
and women's wisdom that have been passed down to her.
Filled with details that are as compelling as they are
surprising-childbirth in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, the
prescribing of vibratory treatments to cure hysteria, and a mysterious
elixir called Beaver Brew-The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of
the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and
to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern
medicine.
11. Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian
For ten summers, the Seton family - all three generations - met at
their country home in New Hampshire, to spend a week together playing
tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the
wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh
summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge
left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the
wrong time, and lead to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the
values that unite the family - and the convictions that just may pull
it apart.
Rich with unforgettable characters, Before You Know Kindness is first
and foremost a family saga. It's the tale of three generations of women
- and the dysfunctional men in their lives - and the strange and
unexpected places where we find love.
This edition also includes an extensive reading group guide as part of
the printed book.
12. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the
story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome
librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was
thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry
thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first
people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his
genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to
moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His
disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable,
alternately harrowing and amusing.
The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry
and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the
story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live
normal lives, pursuing familiar goals-steady jobs, good friends,
children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can
neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and
entirely unforgettable.
13. Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
Transpose Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure to New Brunswick's rugged
Miramichi River. Surround Job with loose fists, malicious boots, and
cold, gallon wine. Invite the Macbeths over for drinks. Add a lame dog
named Scupper Pit and you've got the raw ingredients of David Adams
Richards's Mercy Among the Children.
Set in an isolated, wind-besieged house with bullet holes in the
tarpaper walls, Richards's novel wonders-- pointedly,
beautifully--whether goodness is merely a luxury.
At the age of 12, having borne more suffering in his child's body than
any adult should endure, Sydney Henderson vows never to harm another
human soul. Turning his back on the violent alcoholism of his
upbringing, self-educated Sydney wins the honest respect of the
beautiful Elly and the children they bear. Honest respect, however, is
rarely a match for fear and base human opportunism. Manipulated,
attacked, and abused by a small community eager for a scapegoat, Sydney
loses his job, the health of his wife, and, most importantly, the
respect of his son Lyle.
"There is no worse flaw in man's character," Richards knows, "than that
of wanting to belong."
The superb, controlled, and unapologetic Mercy Among the Children is
nothing less than an inquiry into human strength. Richards uses the
crack of ribs on a frigid night to remind us of the opportunistic
populism of much so- called morality. Mercy, which shared Canada's
premier fiction award, the Giller Prize, with Michael Ondaatje's Anil's
Ghost, combines the hound dog's attention to locale of fellow Maritimer
Alistair MacLeod with the quotidian insight of countryman Timothy
Findley's The Wars, especially its reminder that the emotions behind
war also drive fights over who should scrub the dinner dishes.
14. The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland
Since completing high school history, few of us have managed to keep
straight the details of the French Revolution. Beyond suggestions of
eating cake and the effectiveness of the guillotine, this sordid time
period has remained--for many--somewhat obscure. Now, through the novel
The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., not only do we learn
of the many differences between Robespierre and Rousseau, but we gain
insight into the marriage of one of history's greatest political
couples: Napoleon and Josephine.
Standing beside the charismatic Napoleon, Josephine's own importance
and fascinating history have often been overshadowed. In a
fictionalized account of Josephine's diaries and her correspondence,
author Sandra Gulland has shed light on Josephine's pre-Napoleon life.
This, the first of three books about Josephine, covers her childhood in
Martinique, her first marriage, the birth of her children, her life
during the revolution, and her marriage to Napoleon.
A poor Creole outsider as well as a rising socialite, Josephine
experienced both the horrors of imprisonment and the privilege of
connections. Utilizing these different perspectives, Gulland takes
special care to bring forth the reality of life in late 18th-century
France. Though she can only theorize on Josephine's emotions and
desires, Gulland's talented writing and the restrained use of footnotes
keep the reader properly informed on pertinent details, whether they be
obscure political events or voodoo beliefs. While professional
historians may bristle at the artistic license Gulland employs, most
readers will find her novel a satisfying and engaging introduction to
this dramatic period.
15. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
In a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more
cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here),
Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely
horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland.
Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be
the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone,
however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of
experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he
scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks
how the world fell apart.
While the story begins with a rather ponderous set-up of what has
become a clichéd landscape of the human endgame, littered with smashed
computers and abandoned buildings, it takes on life when Snowman
recalls his boyhood meeting with his best friend Crake: "Crake had a
thing about him even then. . . . He generated awe . . . in his dark
laconic clothing." A dangerous genius, Crake is the book's most
intriguing character. Crake and Jimmy live with all the other smart,
rich people in the Compounds, gated company towns owned by biotech
corporations. (Ordinary folks are kept outside the gates in the chaotic
"pleeblands.") Meanwhile, beautiful Oryx, raised as a child prostitute
in Southeast Asia, finds her way to the West and meets Crake and Jimmy,
setting up an inevitable love triangle. Eventually Crake's experiments
in bioengineering cause humanity's shockingly quick demise (with
uncanny echoes of SARS, ebola, and mad cow disease), leaving Snowman to
try to pick up the pieces. There are a few speed bumps along the way,
including some clunky dialogue and heavy-handed symbols such as
Snowman's broken watch, but once the bleak narrative gets moving, as
Snowman sets out in search of the laboratory that seeded the world's
destruction, it clips along at a good pace, with a healthy dose of wry
humour.