Hi Everyone,
As a member of Goodreads, I was sent an email of the winners of this year's best books as chosen by Goodreads members.
Check them out on :
http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2012
You'll find something for sure for these holidays!
Sharon
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
This is our last novel of the year and was chosen partly because it is not too long for this busy time of year and partly because it is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.
In general, our group felt that this was well written and the author is a worthy selection to the shortlist. However, it was felt that the central characters were quite dull including the choice of the name of the main protagonist Futh!
Futh undertakes a walking holiday after a failed marriage and reflects on a childhood journey that he took with his father. His mother's abandonment of him when he was young continues to affect him and his relationship with women.
Our rating for the book is 6.2 out of 10.
The following is the list of our choices for next year :
Sharon -- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Jane -- The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez
Patricia -- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Robyn -- The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (new choice)
Megan -- The Red House by Mark Haddon
Sally -- Having Cried Wolf, Gretchen Shirm
Lee -- Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Melissa --tentatively Gone Girl : A Novel by Gillian Flynn
Our next meeting is January 31st 2013 Thursday at Sharon's and we will be discussing Infidel.
Happy Holidays everyone and see you in the new year!
In general, our group felt that this was well written and the author is a worthy selection to the shortlist. However, it was felt that the central characters were quite dull including the choice of the name of the main protagonist Futh!
Futh undertakes a walking holiday after a failed marriage and reflects on a childhood journey that he took with his father. His mother's abandonment of him when he was young continues to affect him and his relationship with women.
Our rating for the book is 6.2 out of 10.
The following is the list of our choices for next year :
Sharon -- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Jane -- The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez
Patricia -- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Robyn -- The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (new choice)
Megan -- The Red House by Mark Haddon
Sally -- Having Cried Wolf, Gretchen Shirm
Lee -- Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Melissa --tentatively Gone Girl : A Novel by Gillian Flynn
Our next meeting is January 31st 2013 Thursday at Sharon's and we will be discussing Infidel.
Happy Holidays everyone and see you in the new year!
Saturday, October 6, 2012
The Street Sweeper
The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman
"The inalienable dignity of the individual is very important to me" says author Elliot Perlman in an interview about his very successful novel, The Street Sweeper. This is a very intriguing story of 2 men in New York in the 21st Century and how their lives eventually intertwine. Through the stories of Lamont Williams, an ex-con, and Adam Zignelik, a Columbia University history professor, Perlman explores both the themes of the civil rights movement and the Holocaust.
Perlman took nearly 6 years to write this novel and it is very well researched, including visiting Auschwitz 6 times. The stories of the courage of the Holocaust survivors and their resistance attempts in the concentration camps were very moving. He was lucky enough to interview the last surviving Jewish Sondakommando in Poland in 2008 just a few months before he dies and this old man is the inspiration for Henrik Mandelbrot's character in the book. Perlman says that without this man's story, he would not have his novel.
The question of whether there were black troops during the liberation of Dachau was introduced to tie in with the civil rights struggle in the US.
Some people found the repetition of text annoying but I thought it was a rather clever device to remind the reader of the many characters and events in the book. And there are so many characters! Some with incredible courage while some living with immense guilt and remorse. The roles of memory, love, betrayal, courage, cruelty and kindness are all explored in this engrossing novel.
I would like to include the following links here :
Random House video of an interview with Elliot Perlman :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-ynCm9I0tyE
A half hour radio interview with Elliot Perlman and ABC Radio :
Perlman took nearly 6 years to write this novel and it is very well researched, including visiting Auschwitz 6 times. The stories of the courage of the Holocaust survivors and their resistance attempts in the concentration camps were very moving. He was lucky enough to interview the last surviving Jewish Sondakommando in Poland in 2008 just a few months before he dies and this old man is the inspiration for Henrik Mandelbrot's character in the book. Perlman says that without this man's story, he would not have his novel.
The question of whether there were black troops during the liberation of Dachau was introduced to tie in with the civil rights struggle in the US.
Some people found the repetition of text annoying but I thought it was a rather clever device to remind the reader of the many characters and events in the book. And there are so many characters! Some with incredible courage while some living with immense guilt and remorse. The roles of memory, love, betrayal, courage, cruelty and kindness are all explored in this engrossing novel.
I would like to include the following links here :
Random House video of an interview with Elliot Perlman :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-ynCm9I0tyE
A half hour radio interview with Elliot Perlman and ABC Radio :
A moving short film by Sara Greenberg on her grandfather who is a Holocaust survivor :
We rated this novel 8.9 out of 10.
Our next book is The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and the meeting will be at Melissa's on Nov 8th Thursday at 7:30pm.
Then don't forget -- our Christmas dinner will be on Nov 13th Tuesday at the Oaks Hotel.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
The Happiest Refugee
An inspiring story about the success of Anh Do, a refugee who became a well known comedian in Australia. The chapters about how his family escaped from post war Vietnam on a fishing boat were especially captivating. His father's leadership and courage were instrumental in getting the family to survive a journey fraught with danger.
Anh Do started the book with feelings of anger against his father who left their family when he was thirteen. There is no doubt he really appreciates how hard his mother had to work to fend for him and his siblings. However, I find that throughout the book, his love and admiration for his father underlies his own outlook on life. Often his life decisions were based on his father's sayings like “There are only two times. Now and too late.” or “Always question your fear, Anh. there's almost never a good reason to be scared.”
Our discussion used the book to launch into the broader problem of racism in this country and the Australian Government's history of handling the influx and method of processing refugees and asylum seekers. We all had our opinions on issues such as offshore vs onshore processing and whether refugees are assimilating into our society. Suffice to say that we agreed to disagree but still remained friends after our meeting!
Thank you to Melissa for telling us about Dr Helen Szoke's talk at the National Press Club on how Australia is tackling racism. As our Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Szoke explains how a racial equality agenda should encompass promoting racial equality as well as tackling racism. She said : "The reality is for people who never experienced racism, they don't actually understand what impact and what damage it does".
If you'd like to watch the whole episode, the link is : http://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/national-press-club/
We felt that this was an easy read and rated the book 7.7 out of 10.
Our next book is The Street Sweeper by Elliott Perlman and it will be on Sept 27th Thursday at Lee's place.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
All That I Am
This is the first novel by Anna Funder and it is the winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award this year. Her previous work, Stasiland, is a non-fiction book about the former East Germany's ministry of state security which was very well reviewed.
Once again, a few of us found it hard to get into All That I am initially because the story is told from 2 narrators' voices and jumps around in time as well. But once you get to know the characters, you can't help but get involved in this story of their amazing courage and friendship.
There is a very good interview of Anna Funder by Anne Summers during the Sydney Writers' Festival about the background to her writing this novel. Patricia attended this event and found it most enjoyable. Here is the link to the Sydney Writers' Festival website : http://www.swf.org.au/ I would highly recommend you listen to the entire interview as Anna Funder goes on to explain her friendship with Ruth Blatt (on which the character Ruth Becker is based), the incredible research she did for the book and the meaning of the title.
Even though this is a novel about real characters, she didn't want to write it as a non-fiction because she wanted to get inside the heads of these characters and to tell a story about courage and fear, love and betrayal. She has set the telling of the story in the here and now because this story of resistance to tyranny is surprisingly universal and could be happening in China, Burma, Libya etc.
We have rated this book 8 out of 10.
Our next novel is The Happiest Refugee: My Journey From Tragedy To Comedy
by Anh Do and we are meeting on August 28th at Megan's for our discussion.
Then the next novel to be discussed will be Lee's choice The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman and the date is September 27th Thursday.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Seven Days In The Art World
This book was suggested by Sally who felt it would give an insight into the world of contemporary art--and indeed it does.
Written by Sarah Thornton who has an undergraduate degree in Art History and a doctorate in Sociology, the book is broken into seven chapters covering the most important aspects of the art world :
1/ An art auction in Christie's New York
2/ A critique course in California Institute of the Arts
3/ The Basel Art Fair
4/ The Turner Prize winner selection process
5/ Artforum magazine
6/ Visits to an artist's studios
7/ The Venice Biennale
Sarah Thornton uses a particular style of writing which she calls ethnographic research which involved not only interviews with some 250 people but hours of participant observation. We found the beginning chapter on the Christie's auction to be the most fascinating as she was able to paint a vivid scene of the excitement of an auction floor.
There were real enthusiasts in our group about this book while others felt let down by some chapters. For those of us who are not familiar with the art world, there were a lot of names to look up! The few artworks mentioned at the end of the book as being record breakers are worth checking out :
Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart sold for $22.7m
Damien Hirst's Lullaby Spring sold for $22.8m
Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sold for $33.6m
I discovered this interesting link which gives you a good idea of what the Scope Basel Art Fair in 2011 looked like :
http://360degreeshows.com/scopebasel/
I'd like to leave you with this quote mentioned in the book :
"Art is trying to sell you yourself.
That's what is different about it.
Art is what makes life worth living " -- Keith Tyson, British Turner Prize winner 2002
The average rating for this book is 7 out of 10
Our next selection is All That I Am by Anna Funder and the meeting will be at Robyn's on July 25th Wednesday.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Hare with Amber Eyes
The Hare with Amber Eyes
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
A most interesting book which traces one Jewish family's experience through two world wars and the story of how a collection of 264 Japanese netsuke survived to remain in the family's collection to this day.
First we had a brief discussion on what a netsuke is. Lee's input here was invaluable as she describes how they were originally used to fasten a cord from which a small bag would be attached to a man's robe in the 17th century in Japan. They are very small ( less than 7cm high) and can be made of different materials like ivory and wood. The pictures on Edmund de Waal's website show how intricate the carvings and decorations can be. To see the collection, click on the link below : http://www.edmunddewaal.com/hare_with_amber_eyes/hare_netsuke_gallery.html
The author is a ceramic artist who lives in the UK and is a descendant of the very wealthy Ephrussi family originally from Odessa in the Ukraine. To understand the survival and the story of the netsuke collection, he travelled to places where his family had settled starting with Vienna. Some of us felt at this point that the book drags on a bit with the direction of the novel meandering. However, once we get to the story of how Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of his great-great grandfather's, bestowed this collection as a wedding present to his great-great-grandparents Viktor and Emmy, the story became compelling.
This memoir gives a really good insight into the extraordinary wealth accumulated by the very rich Jewish families in the late 1800s and the horrors of their experience during Anschluss. I found the fate of Viktor and Emmy particularly poignant. This collection would not have survived without the actions of Emmy's maid Anna and it is unfortunate that her identity and fate is still unknown to this day.
Rating this book is a little tricky as 3 of us gave it 10/10 while one gave it only 5/10! I think we were divided into 2 camps-- those who loved the book and those who just could not get into the story.
The weighted average rating of this book is 8.2 out of 10.
We would like to extend a warm welcome to Melissa for joining our group.
Our next selection is Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton and our meeting will be on June 13th (Wed) at Sally's.
A most interesting book which traces one Jewish family's experience through two world wars and the story of how a collection of 264 Japanese netsuke survived to remain in the family's collection to this day.
First we had a brief discussion on what a netsuke is. Lee's input here was invaluable as she describes how they were originally used to fasten a cord from which a small bag would be attached to a man's robe in the 17th century in Japan. They are very small ( less than 7cm high) and can be made of different materials like ivory and wood. The pictures on Edmund de Waal's website show how intricate the carvings and decorations can be. To see the collection, click on the link below : http://www.edmunddewaal.com/hare_with_amber_eyes/hare_netsuke_gallery.html
The author is a ceramic artist who lives in the UK and is a descendant of the very wealthy Ephrussi family originally from Odessa in the Ukraine. To understand the survival and the story of the netsuke collection, he travelled to places where his family had settled starting with Vienna. Some of us felt at this point that the book drags on a bit with the direction of the novel meandering. However, once we get to the story of how Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of his great-great grandfather's, bestowed this collection as a wedding present to his great-great-grandparents Viktor and Emmy, the story became compelling.
This memoir gives a really good insight into the extraordinary wealth accumulated by the very rich Jewish families in the late 1800s and the horrors of their experience during Anschluss. I found the fate of Viktor and Emmy particularly poignant. This collection would not have survived without the actions of Emmy's maid Anna and it is unfortunate that her identity and fate is still unknown to this day.
Rating this book is a little tricky as 3 of us gave it 10/10 while one gave it only 5/10! I think we were divided into 2 camps-- those who loved the book and those who just could not get into the story.
The weighted average rating of this book is 8.2 out of 10.
We would like to extend a warm welcome to Melissa for joining our group.
Our next selection is Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thorton and our meeting will be on June 13th (Wed) at Sally's.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
The Help
We had a fun evening discussing our first selection for 2012. This is a first novel by Kathryn Stockett which was made into a movie last year with Octavia Spencer winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the role of Minny. Incidentally, Octavia Spencer is also the narrator for the same role in the audible book available from Audible.com which is a highly enjoyable and captivating rendition.
Our discussion was mainly on segregation and whether things have really changed that much since the 1960s, the timeframe of this novel.
The author gave a good picture of what being poor, black and a woman must have been like. Even though some of us found the voices who tell the story a little disjointed, we were quite captivated by some of these characters : Skeeter and her search for her maid Constantine, her relationship with her domineering mother; Celia and Minny's attempt at fooling Celia's husband; Minny, who was usually strong and speaks her mind, being finally free from an abusive husband; Hilly and her sanitation initiative and her "reckoning"; Aibileen and her attempt at bringing up Mae Mobley to be good and fair...
It is pretty amazing that these women managed to get their book on the truth of their relationships with their white employers published. The ending was quite optimistic and uplifting.
The author's Epilogue gives a good insight into her reasons for writing this novel. There was a suggestion to reread the beginning chapter after finishing the book to revisit many of the characters in the novel.
Those of us who saw the movie found it highly entertaining.
We do recommend this book and give it a rating of 8-9 out of 10.
Our next selection is The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmond De Waal and our meeting will be on May 2 (Wed) at Jane's.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Welcome to 2012 and another year of interesting reading!
We discussed a lot of options for our year's selection and below is a list of books which we have chosen for our group discussions :
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmond De Waal
Seven Days In The Art World by Sarah Thornton
All That I Am by Anna Funder
Please Don't Make Me Go by John Fenton
Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare
Books which we also considered were :
The Shelly Beach Writers' Group by June Loves
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Solar by Ian McEwan
The Best American Non Required Reading edited by Dave Eggers
A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
Our first meeting will be at Sharon's on March 29th Thursday and the book will be The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
See you then!
We discussed a lot of options for our year's selection and below is a list of books which we have chosen for our group discussions :
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmond De Waal
Seven Days In The Art World by Sarah Thornton
All That I Am by Anna Funder
Please Don't Make Me Go by John Fenton
Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare
Books which we also considered were :
The Shelly Beach Writers' Group by June Loves
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Solar by Ian McEwan
The Best American Non Required Reading edited by Dave Eggers
A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
Our first meeting will be at Sharon's on March 29th Thursday and the book will be The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
See you then!
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