The holidays were ushered in by our merry group on
12/12/12. Everyone was glowing,
and conversation was light and bubbly.
Thanks to everyone for the cookbook with your autographs. May 2013 find us better than ever!
The Mermaid Collector – Erika Marks
The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction – S. A. Smith
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England – Ian Mortimer
Waiting for Snow in Havana – Carlos Eire
Tesla: Man Out
of Time – Margaret Cheney
Too Soon to Say Goodbye – Art Buchwald
Quiet – Susan Cain
Knockemstiff – Donald Ray Pollack
The Devil All the Time – Donald Ray Pollack
The Violent Bear It Away – Flannery O’Connor
Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Katherine Boo
The Little Prince – Antione de Saint-Exupery
Wonder – R. J. Palacio
Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
Sleepwalk with Me:
and Other Painfully True Stories – Mike Birbiglia
The Hydrogen Sonata – Iain Banks
KLF: Chaos
Magic Music Money – JMR Higgs
From our sister group in OK:
Lawton Book Bunch
December 6, 2012
Books
Mantel, Yann: Life
of Pi
Vaillant, John: Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and
Survival
Goodwin, Doris Kearns: Team of Rivals: The Political
Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Schiff, Stacy: Saint-Exupery: A Biography
Albaret, Celeste: Monsieur Proust
Deresiewicz, William: A Jane Austen Education
Wodehouse, P.G.: Code of the Woosters
Mankell, Henning: The Wallander series
Miller, Arthur: The Crucible
Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Millard, Candice: River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s
Darkest Journey
Netflicks
The Wallander series in Swedish
West Wing
Movies we have seen or look forward to seeing
Lincoln
Life of Pi
Hyde Park on Hudson
Anna Karenina
Hitchcock
Les Miserables
Our group has been discussing
how children are and are not being taught to properly hold a pen/pencil, to
write cursive, and to print or write in cursive legibly. Vaillant's Tiger is
quite complex. It is the story of the hunt for a man-eating tiger in far east
Russia in 1997 encompassing ecology, tiger-human relationships, ethnology,
history, economics, politics, geography, etc. I was reading Tiger when I saw
the movie Life of Pi, to which the former added an extra depth to the latter.
Any way, when I read the attached passage, it resonated.
Vaillant,
John. Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. p. 236.
For
most of our history, we have been occupied with the cracking of codes – From
deciphering patterns in the weather, the water, the land, and the stars, to
parsing the nuanced behaviors of friend and foe, predator and prey.
Furthermore, we are compelled to share our discoveries in the form of stories.
Much is made of the fact that ours is the only species that does this, that the
essence of who and what we understand ourselves to be was first borne orally and
aurally: from mouth to ear to memory. This is so, but before we learned to tell
stories we learned to read them. In other words, we learned to track. The first
letter of the first word of the first recorded story was written – “printed” –
not by us, but by an animal. These signs and symbols left in mud, sand, leaves,
and snow represent proto-alphabets. Often smeared, fragmented, and confused by
weather, time, and other animals, these cryptograms were life-and-death
exercises in abstract thinking. This skill, the reading of tracks in order to
produce food, or identify the presence of a dangerous animal, may in fact be
“the oldest profession.”
Like our own texts, these “early
works” are linear and continuous with their own punctuation and grammar. Plot,
tense, gender, age, health, relationships, and emotional states can all be
determined from these durable records.”
From Mary Lou in MD:
Booknotes Dec 2012
Molly
Gloss, Wild
Life (2000). Charlotte Drummond is a very
independent and modern woman living in a small Pacific Northwest settlement in
the early 1900s. She supports her
five young boys by writing dime novels and delights in shocking her neighbors
with her feminist self-sufficiency, her manly dress and her bicycle. When a neighborhood child goes missing
in the wilds of logging country, she outfits herself for the wilderness and
joins the loggers searching for the child. When she becomes lost herself, her ingenuity and scientific
assumptions are challenged in a most astonishing way. The characterization of Charlotte is masterful, the portrayal of the western frontier
is vividly detailed, and the plot carries us by imperceptible steps beyond the
boundaries of the known world.
Marina
Lewycka, Strawberry Fields (2007).
An international crew of migrants is working the strawberry fields in
Kent, England. The men live in one
trailer and the women in another, with virtually no amenities but they are
happy to be earning more than they could in their home countries. This makes them vulnerable to many
forms of exploitation which they show great pluck and ingenuity in avoiding.
There are multiple narrators: the Convent-educated Emanuel who writes eloquent letters with hilarious Latinate
misspellings to his sister in Africa;
the beautiful young Ukrainian Irina who doesn’t want her mother to know
about her desperate escape from a rape-minded labor boss; the Ukrainian coal
miner’s son trying to work out his relationships with the fair sex; and most
intriguingly, Dog, who adopts the group, describes their individual identities
in terms of smells, and acts as their guardian angel. The plot follows the travels of these and other characters
after they must flee the strawberry farm.
The conflicts center around the varied outrages perpetrated on the
migrants, generally by other émigrés.
Lee
Child, The Enemy
(2004). This novel takes us back
to Jack Reacher’s U.S. Army MP career, before he became a samurai-type wanderer
in reluctant service of justice.
In the midst of the operation in Panama, on New Year’s Eve 1990, Reacher
is transferred without notice to be the MP Executive Officer on a North
Carolina base. Police from a
near-by town phone and inform him that a soldier has died of a heart attack in
a sleazy motel next to a strip joint. The deceased turns out to be a 2-star
general and Reacher is ordered to deal with the matter without embarrassing the
Army. Additional deaths occur,
Reacher’s superior officer receives a midnight transfer, and the replacement orders
Reacher to cease investigating.
That’s not happening, of course.
He takes as his sidekick a tough, fast-driving Black female sergeant
from Mississippi and together they unravel the twists and turns of a
delightfully complex plot that involves conspiracy at the highest levels of
Army bureaucracy.
From Bhumi in OH:
This list of books was from my International Coach
Federation book exchange.
I gave the first book on the list Celestine Prophecy.
Thought you and Marian, avid readers, might find some
interesting so I am passing it along.
Another great book
exchange last Friday! Many have asked what books were exchanged; THANK YOU,
Lisa Ryan, for capturing the list! Please see below. Happy Holidays, everyone.
ICF-Cleveland Book Exchange List 12-14-12
The Celestine Prophesy - James Redfield;
When I Stepped Out on Faith - Ciaj Diann Harris;
Excuse Me Your Life is Waiting - Lynn Grabhorn;
The Path - Laurie Beth Jones;
True Compass - Ted Kennedy;
10,000 Horses - John Stahl-Wert, Ken Jennings;
The Worst Case Scenario of Dating and Sex Care of the Soul -
Thomas Moore;
Energy Makeover and Energy Makeover Journal - Betsy Muller;
Unplug the Christmas Machine - Jo Robinson, Jean Coppock
Staeheli;
How to Become a Rainmaker - Jeffrey J. Fox;
Contagious Success - Susan Annunzio;
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life - Marilee Adams;
Super Parenting for ADD - Edward Hollowell;
Live With Intention - Rediscovering What We Deeply Know -
MaryAnne Radmacher;
Finding Inner Courage - Mark Nepo;
Soulcraft - Crossing in the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche -
Bill Plotkin;
Lemonade Stand Selling - Diane Helbig;
Chicken Soup for the Soul - I Can't Believe My Dog Did That;
If Life is a Game, These are the Rules - Sherry Carter Scott;
The 8th Habit - Stephen Covey;
Get Noticed and Get Referrals;
Energy Leadership - Transforming Your Workplace and Your
Life from the Core - Bruce D. Schneider;
Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki;
The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari - Robin Sharma;
Beyond Booked Solid - Michael Port;
Giving Thanks with the Aramaic Jesus - Tom Leonhardt;
Pop Goes Cleveland - Peter Shikarian;
The Browns Tailgating Guide - Peter Shikarian;
Everything I Do Positions Me - Christine Zust;
The Circle Maker - Mark Batterson;
Value Based Fees - How to Charge and Get What You're Worth
- Alan Weiss;
To Love is to Be Happy With - Barry Neil Kaufman;
Be Free Where You Are - Thicht Naht Hahn;
The Startup of You - Reid Hoffman;
My American Journey - Colin Powell;
Tuned In - Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott;
Nine Lies that Are Holding Your Business Back - Steve
Chandler;
Caring Enough to Lead - Leonard Pellicer;
Who Killed Change - Ken Blanchard;
The Gifts of Imperfection - Brene Brown;
The Law of Attraction - Esther and Jerry Hicks;
Positioning - The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries and Jack
Trout;
The Second Circle - How to Use Positive Energy for Success
in Every Situation - Patsy Rodenburg
See you next time January 23!
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