The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion June 28th

Upcoming book club ...

Our next meeting is ............................. Sunday, June 28th 

Our next hostess is   ............................Penny Munsey

Our next Book Club selection......." The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion  

The Rosie Project " by Graeme Simsion -  THE ART OF LOVE IS NEVER A SCIENCE MEET DON TILLMAN, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you. Arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, Graeme Simsion’s distinctive debut will resonate with anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of great challenges. The Rosie Project is a rare find: a book that restores our optimism in the power of human connection.


Other news ....To be finalized  - See email from Laurie

July and August will be a pass.

Fall of 2015,... will have only two meetings.

September 27th

November / December 6th

This is a brief look at the spring as far as months go.

Spring 2016 ( I have not looked up the dates yet )

January

March

May

If you like this idea and how it will work see Laurie's email and we can discuss at out June meeting!

Other topics discussed ....
checkout Sequel - Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee, Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Is to Publish a Second Novel
A few years ago we read To Kill A Mocking Bird By Harper Lee
For more than half a century, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has stood apart as a singular American literary masterpiece, a perennial best seller that has provoked countless classroom discussions about racial and social injustice. It brought instant and overwhelming fame to its enigmatic author, Harper Lee, who soon retreated from the spotlight to her native Monroeville, Ala. She never published another book, leaving her millions of fans yearning for more. Now, at age 88, Ms. Lee has revealed that she wrote another novel after all — a sequel of sorts to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” featuring an aging Atticus Finch and his grown daughter, Scout. Continue reading the main story RELATED IN OPINION Harper LeeOp-Ed Contributor: Don’t Do It, Harper Lee
FEB. 5, 2015 On Tuesday, Ms. Lee’s publisher announced its plans to release that novel, recently rediscovered, which Ms. Lee completed in the mid-1950s, before she wrote “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

The 304-page book, “Go Set a Watchman,” takes place 20 years later in the same fictional town, Maycomb, Ala., and unfolds as Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, the feisty child heroine of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” returns to visit her father. The novel, which is scheduled for release this July, tackles the racial tensions brewing in the South in the 1950s and delves into the complex relationship between father and daughter. Although written first, “Go Set a Watchman” is a continuation of the same story, with overlapping themes and characters. But Ms. Lee abandoned the manuscript after her editor, who was captivated by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, told her to write a new book from the young heroine’s perspective and to set it during her childhood.  More details here .

Winter People " by Jennifer McMahon

"Winter People  " by Jennifer McMahon  
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she’s not the only person looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.

Our next Book Club selection....... "Winter People " by Jennifer McMahon "
Our next meeting is ........... Sunday, May 31st , 7p.m.
Our next hostess is   ............................Paula Mansour   - TBD

Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers

Our next book is:
Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers
Next meeting is ........ Sunday, April 26th, 7pm
Hostess .....Sue Torosian and Kay Wood , 71 Kendall Hill
Book selection ...."Falling off the Wind" by Richard Meibers

Falling off the Wind by Richard Meibers - At 50, Clement Scheutz has been there, done that. He's raised two now-successful sons, been married and divorced, and spent the last seven years wandering the Caribbean with his luscious, much younger girlfriend, Samantha. You'd think the carefree life would be everything a man like Clem could want, but after all this time he's having second thoughts. There are storm clouds on the horizon. He and Samantha aren't getting along that well, and he's beginning to question the validity of the life he's chosen. He feels empty, homeless, and all sense of meaning seems to have disappeared from his existence. Culebra, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, is well known as a sheltered "hurricane hole," but that's not why Clem and Samantha have brought "Panacea", their 65 foot wooden schooner there. They've come because they need to nurse their meager supply of cash. Make them flat broke. Clement visits "El Tapon," a small restaurant run by Migdala, thirty-something granddaughter of the owner. He's seen her before, even danced with her during a party five years earlier. There's something in her face when she looks at him... Later, she makes him an offer; in return for his help in the kitchen, he can have the leftover food at the end of each day.

Soon after, Samantha announces she's leaving. Just in time, too, because there's another storm building. Hurricane Hugo strikes Culebra with 150 knot winds, devastating the village and driving ashore most of the boats hunkered down in the harbor, including "Panacea." The wind also lifts "El Tapon's" roof and carries it away. The place is all but destroyed. And when Migdala hires Clement to help rebuild he discovers that termites have eaten the wood framework from the inside out. The structure will need to be completely rebuilt. This, and the drive to restore his broken boat, serve as metaphors for Clement's need to rethink his life, and as the construction proceeds and his feelings for Migdala deepen, he endures, as does the reader, several bouts of deep self-examination.

All the light we cannot see : a novel " by Anthony Doerr - March 29th

Update - Our next meeting is .......... Sunday, March 29th, 7pm Our next hostess is ...........................Dee Zarella Our next Book Club selection........ "All the light we cannot see"  a novel " by Anthony Doerr ( Laurie's book choice February )

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Socitey" by Mary Ann Shaffer ( Kelly's book choice January )

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2014

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Update 2/6/2016  "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Next book club - February 22nd 2015 / Hostess -  Laurie Roy

Other dates:
March 29th ..........Dee Zarella
April 26th............Sue Torosian
May 31st............Julie Bigelow
June 28th

Cancelled - Original Request - NOT IN STOCK
Don't Let Me Go - by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Former Broadway dancer and current agoraphobic Billy Shine has not set foot outside his apartment in almost a decade. He has glimpsed his neighbors—beautiful manicurist Rayleen, lonely old Ms. Hinman, bigoted and angry Mr. Lafferty, kind-hearted Felipe, and 9-year-old Grace and her former addict mother Eileen. But most of them have never seen Billy. Not until Grace begins to sit outside on the building’s front stoop for hours every day, inches from Billy’s patio. Troubled by this change in the natural order, Billy makes it far enough out onto his porch to ask Grace why she doesn’t sit inside where it’s safe. Her answer: “If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And then nobody will help me.” Her answer changes everything. By the bestselling author of WHEN YOU WERE OLDER and PAY IT FORWARD, DON’T LET ME GO is the heart-breaking, funny, and life-affirming story of a building full of loners and misfits who come together to help a little girl survive—and thrive—against all odds.

The Perfume Collector: by Kathleen Tessaro

The Perfume Collector - A remarkable novel about secrets, desire, memory, passion, and possibility.

Newlywed Grace Monroe doesn’t fit anyone’s expectations of a successful 1950s London socialite, least of all her own. When she receives an unexpected inheritance from a complete stranger, Madame Eva d’Orsey, Grace is drawn to uncover the identity of her mysterious benefactor.

Weaving through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London, the story Grace uncovers is that of an extraordinary women who inspired one of Paris’s greatest perfumers. Immortalized in three evocative perfumes, Eva d’Orsey’s history will transform Grace’s life forever, forcing her to choose between the woman she is expected to be and the person she really is.

The Perfume Collector explores the complex and obsessive love between muse and artist, and the tremendous power of memory and scent.

Next Book Club - Sunday January 25th 2015

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan - December 7th 2014

In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish-and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember... In this extraordinary first work of fiction, Amy Tan writes about what is lost-over the years, between generations, among friends-and what is saved.

In 1949, four Chinese women begin meeting in San Francisco for fun. Nearly 40 years later, their daughters continue to meet as the Joy Luck Club. Their stories ultimately display the double happiness that can be found in being both Chinese and American. First serials to Ladies' Home Journal, Atlantic Monthly, and San Francisco Focus. 

Next Book Club December 7th - Joyce Charpentier