Host: Vanessa Kesterson
Book: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Meeting Date: June 30, 2007
Location: Vanessa's (Oakdale)
Synopsis
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
RATINGS:
7 out of 11 members voted.
71% gave this book 5 stars
28% gave this book 4 stars
Water for Elephants
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Host: Lisa Noma
Book: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Meeting Date: May 26, 2007
Location: Jenny's (Lodi)
Synopsis
Lily is haunted by memories–of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.
In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (“women’s writing”). Some girls were paired with laotongs, “old sames,” in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become “old sames” at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.
RATINGS:
6 out of 11 members voted.
100% gave this book 5 stars
Fingersmith
Host: Melissa Williams
Book: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Meeting Date: April 28, 2007
Location: Darla's (Elk Grove)
Synopsis
In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a country estate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalf of a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.
RATINGS:
5 out of 11 members voted.
20% gave this book 5 stars
60% gave this book 4 stars
20% gave this book 3 stars
A Hand to Guide Me
Host: Janet Noma
Book: A Hand to Guide Me by Denzel Washington
Meeting Date: February 18, 2007
Location: Jenny's (Lodi)
Synopsis
In his debut as an author, Denzel Washington shares his personal story of the mentors who helped guide his life.
Washington pens the introduction for the stories of more than 70 of America's leading personalities in theatre, sports, business, and politics as they tell their life-changing stories of mentorship.
Contributors include Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Antwone Fisher, Bonnie Raitt, Cal Ripken, Alex Rodriguez, Dick Vitale, Whoopie Goldberg and more.
A portion of the book's proceeds benefit 4.5 million children currently involved in the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
RATINGS:
6 out of 11 members voted.
14% gave this book 3 stars
28% gave this book 2 stars
57% gave this book 1 star
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Host: Jenny Penner
Book: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Meeting Date: November 25, 2006
Location: Jenny's (Lodi)
Synopsis
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret.
But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night.
A brilliantly crafted, stunning debut, The Memory Keeper's Daughter explores the way life takes unexpected turns, and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open.
RATINGS:
6 out of 11 members voted.
66% gave this book 3 stars
16% gave this book 2 stars
16% gave this book 1 star
Bloodsucking Fiends
Host: Lisa Leggett
Book: Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
Meeting Date: October 28, 2006
Location: Lisa's (Lodi)
Synopsis
Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching back, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.
Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door...and proceeds to rock Tommy's life — and afterlife — in ways he never thought possible.
RATINGS:
7 out of 11 members voted.
14% gave this book 5 stars
23% gave this book 4 stars
42% gave this book 3 stars
14% gave this book 2 stars
The Kite Runner
Host: Christa Williams
Book: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Meeting Date: September 30, 2006
Location: Darla's (Elk Grove)
Synopsis
“I sat on a bench near a willow tree and watched a pair of kites soaring in the sky. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought, ‘There is a way to be good again.’”
Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in the alleys and orchards of Kabul in the sunny days before the invasion of the Soviet army and Afghanistan’s decent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates, they know, are to be different. Amir’s father is a wealthy merchant; Hassan’s father is his manservant. Amir belongs to the ruling caste of Pashtuns, Hassan to the despised Hazaras.
This fragile idyll is broken by the mounting ethnic, religious, and political tensions that begin to tear Afghanistan apart. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; Amir has witnessed his friend’s torment, but is too afraid to intercede. Plunged into self-loathing, Amir conspires to have Hassan and his father turned out of the household.
When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee to San Francisco, leaving Hassan and his father to a pitiless fate. Only years later will Amir have an opportunity to redeem himself by returning to Afghanistan to begin to repay the debt long owed to the man who should have been his brother.
Compelling, heartrending, and etched with details of a history never before told in fiction, The Kite Runner is a story of the ways inwhich we’re damned by our moral failures, and of the extravagant cost of redemption.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
57% gave this book 5 stars
28% gave this book 4 stars
14% gave this book 3 stars
The Birth of Venus
Host: Kris Navarra
Book: The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Meeting Date: August 26, 2006
Location: Jenny's (Lodi)
Synopsis
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.
But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art.
The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
57% gave this book 5 stars
42% gave this book 4 stars
The Nanny Diaries & The Pilot's Wife
Host: Mary Kennard
Book: The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus
The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
Meeting Date: July 29, 2006
Location: Mary's (Manteca)
The Nanny Diaries Synopsis
Based on the real-life experiences, the inside story on the real lives of the rich and privileged from the women who know all the secrets - the nannies. The Nanny Diaries deftly skewers the manner in which America's over-privileged raises les petites - as if grooming them for a Best of Show competition. A poignant satire, it punctures the glamor of Manhattan's upper class to tackle head-on the truer state of backstairs Park Avenue.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
14% gave this book 5 stars
28% gave this book 4 stars
57% gave this book 3 stars
The Pilot's Wife Synopsis
The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve—an engrossing thriller woven between the pages of a stirring meditation on love and betrayal. With one late-night knock on her door, Kathryn Lyons's worst fears as a pilot's wife come true: Her husband, Jack, has died in a mid-air explosion off the coast of Ireland. Later, a phone number found among Jack's papers leads Kathryn to London and the unfathomable truth about her husband's secret other life. A second wife and two young children are just the beginning of what Jack was hiding in England. With each staggering revelation, Kathryn must reconcile her memories of the man she loved with the disturbing portrait unfolding before her.
RATINGS
4 of 11 members voted.
75% gave this book 2 stars
25% gave this book 1 stars
Three
Host: Darla Sorensen
Book: Thr3e by Ted Dekker
Meeting Date: June 24, 2006
Location: Darla's (Elk Grove)
Synopsis
Enter a world where nothing is what it seems. Where your closest friend could be your greatest enemy.
Kevin Parson is alone in his car when his cell phone rings. A man calling himself Slater offers a deadly ultimatum: You have exactly three minutes to confess your sin to the world. Refuse, and the car you're driving will blow sky high. Then the phone goes dead.
Kevin panics. Who would make such a demand? What sin? Yet not sure what else to do, Kevin swerves into a parking lot and runs from his car. Just in case.
Precisely three minutes later, a massive explosion sets his world on a collision course with madness. And that's only the first move in this deadly game.
RATINGS
5 of 11 members voted.
60% gave this book 5 stars
40% gave this book 4 stars
Can You Keep a Secret
Host: Vanessa Kesterson
Book: Can you Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella
Meeting Date: April 29, 2006
Location: Janet's (Lodi)
Synopsis
With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:
Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.
Secrets from her boyfriend:
I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.
I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.
From her colleagues:
When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.
Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:
My G-string is hurting me.
I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.
Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.
But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from
the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
85% gave this book 5 stars
14% gave this book 3 stars
Night
Host: Kristin Kennard
Book: Night by Elie Wiesel
Meeting Date: March 25, 206
Location: Mary's (Manteca)
Synopsis
A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel
Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.
RATINGS
6 of 11 members voted.
50% gave this book 5 stars
16% gave this book 4 stars
16% gave this book 3 stars
16% gave this book 2 stars
The Alchemist
Host: Lisa Noma
Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Meeting Date: February 25, 2006
Location: Jenny's (Lodi)
Synopsis
Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its simplicity and wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an Alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a meditation on the treasures found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is art eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
42% gave this book 3 stars
28% gave this book 2 stars
28% gave this book 1 stars
My Sister's Keeper
Host: Melissa Williams
Book: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Meeting Date: January 28, 2006
Location: Darla's (Elk Grove)
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness.
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate — a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister — and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.
RATINGS
7 of 11 members voted.
100% gave this book 5 stars
