Compelling and timely novel on refugee's struggle

When: SATURDAY June 3rd at 7:30pm (meeting moved again)*
Where: Eva's
Book: Dalila
Author: Jason Donald

****Jason is a friend of our book club and will be in the area the weekend of the meeting and is planning to attend our meeting. He wrote part of the book while living in Saanenland.*****

Review in the Guardian

From Amazon.com:
"'As compelling as it is tough, sidestepping piety in favour of clear-eyed infectious anger.' - Rebecca Nicolson Sunday Times

Irene Dalila Mwathi comes from Kenya with a brutally violent personal history. Once she wanted to be a journalist, now all she wants is to be safe. When she finally arrives, bewildered, in London, she is attacked by the very people paid to protect her, and she has no choice but to step out on her own into this strange new world. Through a dizzying array of interviews, lawyer’s meetings, regulations and detention centres, she realises that what she faces may be no less dangerous than the violence she has fled...."

Link to the buying the book on Amazon.com.

* Meeting moved to accommodate holiday and the author's presence

Are people in Switzerland happier?

Next Meeting

When: April 28 at 7:30pm
Host: Kevin
Book: The Geography of Bliss
Author: Eric Weiner

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." 

The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? < Read more

Tales of love and injustice

When: March 31 at 7:30pm
Where: Vré's
Book: How to be Both
Author: Smith Ali

Review in the Guardian


From GoodReads:

"Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion—and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth, humanity and humor of her voice.

How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

A NOTE TO THE READER:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order?
This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both.
In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA.
In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES.
The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.

The books are intentionally printed in two different ways, so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which edition you happen to receive, the book will be: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. Enjoy the adventure"

'Riveting' memoir ends February

When: February 24  March 3 at 7:30pm
Where: Jackie
Book: Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter
Author: Adeline Yen Mah
Here's the preview from GoodReads:

"A riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family.

Following the success of the critically acclaimed adult bestseller Falling Leaves, this memoir is a moving telling of the classic Cinderella story, with Adeline Yen Mah providing her own courageous voice."

2017 begins with a 'page-turner'

When: January 27 at 7:30pm
Where: Helen
Book: The Pure Land
Author: Alan Spence

From Amazon.co.uk:

"The year is 1858. Thomas Glover is a gutsy eighteen-year-old who grasps the chance of escape to foreign lands and takes a posting as a trader in Japan. Within ten years he amasses a great fortune, learns the ways of the samurai, and, on the other side of the law, brings about the overthrow of the Shogun. Yet beneath Glover's astonishing success lies a man cut to the heart. His love affair with a courtesan - a woman who, unknown to him, would bear him the son for which he had always longed - would form a tragedy so dramatic as to be immortalised in the stories behind Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon.

The Pure Land relives in fiction the arc of Glover's true-life rise and fall, and forges a hundred-year saga that culminates in the annihilation of Nagasaki in 1945."

A book about resilience, grit and finding hope

When: Nov 25 at 7:30pm
Where: Cristina's
Book: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Author: James Brown

‘The Boys in the Boat is not only a great and inspiring true story; it is a fascinating work of history’ Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea 

‘I really can't rave enough about this book . . . I read the last fifty pages with white knuckles, and the last twenty-five with tears in my eyes’ David Laskin, author of The Children's Blizzard and The Long Way Home 

‘A thrilling, heart-thumping tale of a most remarkable band of rowing brothers’ Timothy Egan, author of The Worst Hard Time

From Goodreads:

"For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics
Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.
The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled  by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.
Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs."

October book will get your thinking about your body

When: October 28th, 2016 at 7:30pm
Where: Eva's
Book: Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ 
Author: Giulia Enders

A New York Times Bestseller

"A cheeky up-close and personal guide to the secrets and science of our digestive system

For too long, the gut has been the body’s most ignored and least appreciated organ, but it turns out that it’s responsible for more than just dirty work: our gut is at the core of who we are. Gut: The Inside Story of our Body's Most Underrated Organ gives the alimentary canal its long-overdue moment in the spotlight. With quirky charm, rising science star Giulia Enders explains the gut’s magic, answering questions like: Why does acid reflux happen? What’s really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity and mood? Communication between the gut and the brain is one of the fastest-growing areas of medical research—on par with stem-cell research. Our gut reactions, we learn, are intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being. Aided with cheerful illustrations by Enders’s sister Jill, this beguiling manifesto will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach: they’re trying to tell you something important."

-- Amazon

"Enders’s wonder at the strange ways of the gut is matched only by her incredulity at the limited public knowledge on the subject." —The New York Times

"With a great sense of humor and ample enthusiasm, Enders explains everything readers did and didn’t want to know about their innards ... this book defies boring."—Publishers Weekly

"This primer is everything you ever wanted to know about the gut (and then some), chattily and accessibly written in a uniquely Millennial and matter of fact way. An unexpected page turner. ...Her excitement about the subject matter is infectious. The fun yet informative black and white drawings throughout are her sister’s handiwork. Refreshingly devoid of recipes, or any self help-y language." —Self Magazine