Classic Suggestion July 2011

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham


Brief Summary:
Kitty Fane's affair with Assistant Colonial Secretary Townsend, a married man, is interrupted when she is taken from Hong Kong by her vengeful bacteriologist husband to accompany him to his new post amid a raging cholera epidemic. -Novelist

This book is also available as a WMA audiobook and an Adobe EPUB eBook through the Greater Phoenix Digital Library.


Wikipedia Article

Book Discussion Guide and Author Information

Biography of Author

Beth's Pick July 2011

Conspirata by Robert Harris

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harris_(novelist)
http://bna.galegroup.com/bna/short_bio/GALE%7C15087823/Harris,%20Robert%20(British%20writer)

SUMMARY
On the eve of Marcus Cicero's inauguration as consul of Rome, the grisly death of a boy sends ripples of fear through a city already wracked by civil unrest, crime, and debauchery of every kind. Felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, the young slave appears to have been offered as a human sacrifice, forbidden as an abomination in the Roman Republic. For Cicero, the ill forebodings of this hideous murder only increase his frustrations and the dangers he already faces as Rome's leader: elected by the people but despised by the heads of the two rival camps, the patricians and populists. Caught in a political shell game that leaves him forever putting out fires only to have them ignite elsewhere, Cicero plays both for the future of the republic and his very life. There is a plot to assassinate Cicero, abetted by a rising young star of the Roman senate named Gaius Julius Caesar -- and it will take all the embattled consul's wit, strength, and force of will to stop it and keep Rome from becoming a dictatorship.

In this second novel of his Roman trilogy, following the bestselling Imperium, Robert Harris once again weaves a compelling and historically accurate tale of intrigue told in the wise and compassionate voice of Cicero's slave and private secretary, Tiro.

In the manner of I, Claudius, Harris vividly evokes ancient Rome and its politics for today's readers, documenting a world not unlike our own -- where the impulse toward dominance competes with the risk of overreach, where high-minded ideals can be a liability, and where someone is always waiting in the wings for a chance to set the world on fire.

REVIEWS—shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, 2010

LIBRARY JOURNAL
A vibrant reading by British actor/multiple Audie Award winner Simon Jones brings instantly to life Harris's second title in his Cicero trilogy, following the international best seller Imperium (2006). At the height of his political power and popularity, Cicero must thwart both an assassination attempt and a serious plot to overthrow the Republic. The story is wryly and amusingly told from the slave-as-fly-on-the-wall perspective of Cicero's secretary, Tiro. A very thoughtful and engaging novel highly recommended for adult audiences. He was recommended for "readers who enjoy the complexities of Steven Saylor's historical Roman mysteries and the historical detail of Colleen McCullough's “Master of Rome' series,". Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

BOOKLIST REWIEW
Harris provides the second installment in the intriguing life story of one of ancient Rome's most complex historical figures. Picking up where he left off at the conclusion of Imperium (2006), Tiro, Cicero's faithful manservant and confidential secretary, continues to narrate the experiences and the exploits of his master. Cicero, at the top of his political game in 63 BC, is elected consul of Rome. In an epic power struggle for influence and control, he matches wits with political and military heavyweights Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Just at this heady juncture in Cicero's public tenure, the body of an eviscerated child is pulled from the Tiber River. This gruesome discovery sets into motion a series of dramatic events that will have a profound impact upon Cicero's personal future and the fate of the entire Roman Empire. Once again, Harris reinvigorates history, breathing new life into a cast of timeworn historical characters and events. After devouring the middle course of this trilogy, historical fiction fans will still be hungry for more.--Flanagan, Margaret

Best in Books July 2011

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Winter Garden was recoginized by serveral publications in 2010 including RT Reviewers" Choice Award in the Mainstream Fiction category. The title was also listed on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller list for several weeks.

This book is also available as a WMA audiobook through the Greater Phoenix Digital Library

Summary
Reuntied when their beloved father falls ill, sisters Meredith and Nina find themselves under the shadow of their disapproving mother, whose painful history is hidden behind her rendition of a Russian fairy tale told to the sisters in childhood. Novelist

Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Female bonding is always good for a good cry, as Hannah (True Colors) proves in her latest. Pacific Northwest apple country provides a beautiful, chilly setting for this family drama iginited by the death of a loving father whose two daughters have grown apart from each other and from their acid-tongued, Russian-born mother. After assuming responsibility for the family business, 40-year-0ld empty-nester Meredith finds it difficult to carry out her father's dying wish that she take care of her mother; Meredith's troubled marriage, her troubled relationship with her mother and her mother'sincreasingly troubled mind get in the way. Nina, Meredith's younger sister, takes a break from her globe-trotting journalism career to return home to do her share for their mother. How these three woman find each other and themselves with the help of vodka and a trip to Alaska competes for emotional attention with the story within a story of WWII Leningrad. Readers will find it hard not to laugh a little and cry a little more as mother and daughters reach out to each other just in the nick of time. (Feb) (c) Copyright PWR LLC. All rights reserved

Kristin Hannah website

Bo0k Discussion Questions

Best in Books June 2011

My Father's Tears by John Updike

During June many of us will be thinking about fathers and celebrating the occasion on the 19Th. Updike's collection of short stories is from the perspective of men reflecting on the world around them and their own lives. My Father's Tears was the 2009 Booklist Editors' Choice for Best Fiction and the New York Times Notable Books award for Fiction and Poetry. This was Updike's last completed work.

Review
Starred Review: Reflection and reconsideration abound in the late (1932-2009) great author's final finished collection of stories. The mood is unmistakably autumnal, as we encounter elderly males who explore familiar surroundings and simultaneously consolatory and troubling memories ("Personal Archaeology," "The Road Home," "My Father's Tears"); straying husbands burdened by conflicted remembrance of long-ago thrills ("Free," "The Walk with Elizanne"); and seniors dizzying multiplicity of ways ("Morocco," "Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage"). Just as a representative Updike youngster intuits that he "can never be an ordinary, everyday boy, " so do universal and infinite. Among the more telling examples: the victim of a mugging while vacationing in Spain, who understands that-like the physically universe ultimately reducible to the prophecies of "cosmic theory"- he is simply wearing out ("The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe"); the psoriasis patient helped by an innovative treatment ("Blue Light") which reconciles him to his place as an integral part of an ever-changing world; and the near-octogenarian who relives his early years as a prelude to surrendering their continuation in his senescence ("The Full Glass"). There are missteps; stories too discursive to bear much dramatic weight, and a gathering of involved perspectives of the 9/11 catastrophe that seems a test run for Updike's' 2006 novel Terrorist. But the ache of knowing and celebrating how we've lived, what it all may mean and where we're going give this final testament a beauty and gravity that crown a brilliant, enduring life's work and legacy. A fine final act. (Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2009)

Biographical and Works Information

Classic Suggestion May 2011

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Summary:  "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the mosst widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man. -from Norton paperback version

Discussion Questions

Author Biography

BETH'S PICKS MAY 2011 MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS

MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS

BY ANN HOWARD CREEL

SUMMARY:
Set in 1944 Colorado, The Magic of Ordinary Days is the story of a young woman, Olivia Dunne, who became pregnant before marriage. Her father, Rev. Dunne, decided to deal with the situation, by arranging a marriage to a shy farmer through another preacher. The groom, Ray Singleton, lives on a remote farm and is very different than Livy. Ray focuses on what is close to him: his family, his land, today. Livy thinks on a much grander scale: the world, ancient civilizations, faraway places.

Ray's farm uses the help of Japanese Americans from a nearby Japanese American internment camp to help work the farm. Livy befriends two well-educated Japanese American women who were working the farm. She finds comfort and familiarity in their friendship. Livy is polite and civil to her new husband and his sister Martha, but she harbors feelings for the father of the baby, a World War II soldier, and feelings of guilt for the pregnancy. Ray, however, is caring, patient, and supportive of Livy, but the fact that she does not want him hurts him deeply. Slowly over time, the two come to understand and love each other...[Wikipedia]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ann Howard Creel is the author of two award-winning young adult novels, Water at the Blue Earth and A Ceiling of Stars. This is her first adult novel.

REVIEWS:

A YA author’s nicely written adult debut novel blends historical richness and a fine sense of place to tell the story of a woman’s developing love for her husband—and for his Colorado farmland—over the course of six months in 1944….

Creel does a delightful job of evoking first the dreariness of the Singleton farm and Olivia's unnerving loneliness, then the slow ripening of her affection for Ray, a simple but profoundly kind and gentle man….The author gives her heroine a satisfying emotional depth, moving Olivia through phases of affection and disappointment with assured confidence before closing with a tranquil scene after the baby is born.

A light, precisely observed novel. (Kirkus)

AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:

http://annhowardcreel.com/

Best in Books May 2011

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge was the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as receiving the American Library Association's 2009 Notable Book Award and Library Journal's 2008 Best Books Award. The book is a series of 13 short stories that take place in a small coastal Maine town. Olive Kitteridge, an unassuming, but acidic resident, is threaded throughout the stories that chronicle the changes around and to Olive.

Review
*Starred Review* The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center state, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town live from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.) Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in "Pharmacy," which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she's not exactly patient with shy young people -- or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in "Incoming Tide" with the news that her father, like Kevins's mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in "Starving," though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout's rueful tales. The Kitteridges' son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn't come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive's carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in "Winter Concert" has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal; aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout's sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life's pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, "It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet." A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty. (Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2008)

Book Discusion Questions

Elizabeth Strout Website