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ETA - In true Survivor fashion, I think the book with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated and for our next round, I'll add two more. Please, PLEASE feel free to suggest titles or genres you'd like to see in the running for future planned reads.
Ladies and Gentlemen, do bear with me. A poll of my first selections for our book club reading is here somewhere. I'm sure we can find something in this lot that we can read and discuss and if you don't like the books I picked, tell me why and I'll try to do better next time.
We've got some science fiction, some literary, a bit of humorous epic and a thriller thrown in for good measure.
Peek at these synopses and vote in the poll. I'm thinking of giving it until Tuesday, unless someone has a better idea. Obviously, I'm winging it here. That's what I do.
The Sparrow (Paperback)
by Mary Doria Russell In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.
Bel Canto: A Novel (Paperback)
by Ann Patchett
Opera and terrorism make strange bedfellows, yet in this novel they complement each other nicely. At a birthday party for Japanese industrialist Mr. Hosokawa somewhere in South America, famous American soprano Roxanne Coss is just finishing her recital in the Vice President's home when armed terrorists appear, intending to take the President hostage. However, he is not there, so instead they hold the international businesspeople and diplomats at the party, releasing all the women except Roxanne. Captors and their prisoners settle into a strange domesticity, with the opera diva captivating them all as she does her daily practicing. Soon romantic liaisons develop with the hopeless intensity found in many opera plots.
Poisonwood Bible : A Novel (Paperback)
by Barbara Kingsolver
In 1959, Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist, takes his four young daughters, his wife, and his mission to the Belgian Congo -- a place, he is sure, where he can save needy souls. But the seeds they plant bloom in tragic ways within this complex culture. Set against one of the most dramatic political events of the twentieth century -- the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium and its devastating consequences -- here is New York Times-bestselling author Barbara Kingslover's beautiful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable epic that chronicles the disintegration of family and a nation.
Jitterbug Perfume (Paperback)
by Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn't conclude until nine o'clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon becaused it is leaking and there is only a drop of two left.
Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel
by Daniel Hecht
Tommy Keeday is a talented student at a boarding school for gifted Navajo teens, located in the vast high desert of western New Mexico. When he is suddenly seized by an illness with bizarre and frightening symptoms, his family believes he is possessed by a chindi, the hostile spirit of a dead ancestor. But Julieta McCarty, the principal of Oak Springs School, is unwilling to accept either a traditional Navajo explanation or a conventional medical diagnosis. In desperation, she calls on Seattle-based parapsychologist Cree Black.
Nothing in Cree's training as a clinical psychologist or her experience as a paranormal investigator has prepared her for the dangerous task of helping this brilliant boy in whom two spirits seem to battle. Is Tommy Keeday just a sensitive but troubled teenager, or is he suffering from an exotic brain disorder? Or is there truth in the terrifying Navajo legends of witches, skinwalkers, and malevolent ghosts? As Cree and her associates struggle to find the answer, it becomes apparent that there are secrets in the pasts of Tommy and the people around him, and that his fate can only be decided by exposing these unresolved longings and regrets.
Drawing on in-depth research and personal experience, Daniel Hecht's latest novel, the second in the Cree Black series, is a thrillingly plausible supernatural mystery, a passionate love story, and a thoughtful exploration of Navajo culture and identity in modern America.
Ladies and Gentlemen, do bear with me. A poll of my first selections for our book club reading is here somewhere. I'm sure we can find something in this lot that we can read and discuss and if you don't like the books I picked, tell me why and I'll try to do better next time.
We've got some science fiction, some literary, a bit of humorous epic and a thriller thrown in for good measure.
Peek at these synopses and vote in the poll. I'm thinking of giving it until Tuesday, unless someone has a better idea. Obviously, I'm winging it here. That's what I do.
The Sparrow (Paperback)
by Mary Doria Russell In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.
Bel Canto: A Novel (Paperback)
by Ann Patchett
Opera and terrorism make strange bedfellows, yet in this novel they complement each other nicely. At a birthday party for Japanese industrialist Mr. Hosokawa somewhere in South America, famous American soprano Roxanne Coss is just finishing her recital in the Vice President's home when armed terrorists appear, intending to take the President hostage. However, he is not there, so instead they hold the international businesspeople and diplomats at the party, releasing all the women except Roxanne. Captors and their prisoners settle into a strange domesticity, with the opera diva captivating them all as she does her daily practicing. Soon romantic liaisons develop with the hopeless intensity found in many opera plots.
Poisonwood Bible : A Novel (Paperback)
by Barbara Kingsolver
In 1959, Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist, takes his four young daughters, his wife, and his mission to the Belgian Congo -- a place, he is sure, where he can save needy souls. But the seeds they plant bloom in tragic ways within this complex culture. Set against one of the most dramatic political events of the twentieth century -- the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium and its devastating consequences -- here is New York Times-bestselling author Barbara Kingslover's beautiful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable epic that chronicles the disintegration of family and a nation.
Jitterbug Perfume (Paperback)
by Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn't conclude until nine o'clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon becaused it is leaking and there is only a drop of two left.
Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel
by Daniel Hecht
Tommy Keeday is a talented student at a boarding school for gifted Navajo teens, located in the vast high desert of western New Mexico. When he is suddenly seized by an illness with bizarre and frightening symptoms, his family believes he is possessed by a chindi, the hostile spirit of a dead ancestor. But Julieta McCarty, the principal of Oak Springs School, is unwilling to accept either a traditional Navajo explanation or a conventional medical diagnosis. In desperation, she calls on Seattle-based parapsychologist Cree Black.
Nothing in Cree's training as a clinical psychologist or her experience as a paranormal investigator has prepared her for the dangerous task of helping this brilliant boy in whom two spirits seem to battle. Is Tommy Keeday just a sensitive but troubled teenager, or is he suffering from an exotic brain disorder? Or is there truth in the terrifying Navajo legends of witches, skinwalkers, and malevolent ghosts? As Cree and her associates struggle to find the answer, it becomes apparent that there are secrets in the pasts of Tommy and the people around him, and that his fate can only be decided by exposing these unresolved longings and regrets.
Drawing on in-depth research and personal experience, Daniel Hecht's latest novel, the second in the Cree Black series, is a thrillingly plausible supernatural mystery, a passionate love story, and a thoughtful exploration of Navajo culture and identity in modern America.
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