Monday, November 2, 2015

Nov/Dec 2015: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri + Holiday Party Info

From Goodreads.com: "Two brothers bound by tragedy; a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past; a country torn by revolution. A powerful new novel--set in both India and America--that explores the price of idealism and a love that can last long past death.

Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them. It is the 1960s, and Udayan--charismatic and impulsive--finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty: he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America.

But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he comes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind--including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife.

Suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate, The Lowland expands the range of one of our most dazzling storytellers, seamlessly interweaving the historical and the personal across generations and geographies. This masterly novel of fate and will, exile and return, is a tour de force and an instant classic."

We will meet to discuss The Lowland on Thursday, December 3rd (because the last Thursday of November is Thanksgiving), at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue (inside Borough Hall) in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

The morning bookclub, The Book Lovers, will be joining us!

It's also time once again for our annual holiday party and book exchange! Please feel free to bring a savory or sweet treat to share with the group if you wish, as well as any *gently* loved/used books you'd like to donate to the exchange. (Any books leftover at the end of the party will be placed on the library's "free" cart).

We'll also be voting on our favorite and least favorite reads of 2015! For each book we've read this year, we vote thumbs up, thumbs down or meh. If you're unable to make it on December 3rd, but would like to have your votes counted, please email them to ahlebc@gmail.com. Here is the list of books we've read in 2015, in the order we read them:

The Invention of Wings by Susan Monk Kidd
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis
Middletown, America by Gail Sheehy
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Monday, October 5, 2015

Oct 2015: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

From the Picador USA paperback edition:

"Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic."

We will meet to discuss Middlesex on Thursday, October 29, 2015, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue (inside Borough Hall) in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Sept 2015: Middletown, America by Gail Sheehy

From the hardcover edition via goodreads.com:
"The single event that we know as 9/11 is over, but the shock waves continue to radiate outward, generated by orange alerts, terrorism lockdowns, and the shrinking of personal liberties we once took for granted. The stories in this book, of real people faced with extraordinary trauma and gradually transcending it, are the best antidote to our fears. Middletown, America is a book of hope.

All Americans were hit with some degree of trauma on September 11, 2001, but no place was hit harder than Middletown, New Jersey. Gail Sheehy spent the better part of two years walking the journey from grief toward renewal with fifty members of the community that lost more people in the World Trade Center than any other outside New York City. Her subjects are the women, men, and children who remained after the devastation and who are putting their lives back together.

Sheehy tells the story of four widowed moms from New Jersey who started out scarcely knowing the difference between the House and the Senate, yet turned their sorrow and anger into action and became formidable witnesses to the failures of the country’s leadership to connect the dots before September 11. Sheehy follows the four moms as they fight White House attempts to thwart the independent commission investigating 9/11 and expose efforts at a cover up.

What would become of the young wives carrying children their husbands would never see, wives who had watched their dreams literally go up in smoke in that amphitheater of death across the river? Amazingly, each finds her own door to the light. Here, too, is the story of the widow and widower who met in the waiting room of a mental-health agency and brought each other back from the brink of despair across a bridge of love. Sheehy also reveals how bereft mothers who will never have another son or daughter found reasons to recommit to life. And she follows in the footsteps of the robbed children, documenting the incredible resilience of four-year-olds, the anger of teenagers, the courage of sisters and brothers.

Sheehy follows survivors who escaped the burning towers only to find themselves trapped inside a tower of inner torment, from which it took love, family, and faith to free themselves. She is taken into the confi-dence of the night crew at Ground Zero, police officers who worked in that pit for eight months straight and then faced the “returning home” phenomenon. She recounts the confessions of religious leaders who struggled to explain the inexplicable to their flocks. Mental-health professionals confide in her, as do corporate chiefs, educators, friends and neigh-bors, town officials, and volunteers who rose to the occasion and committed themselves to healing their wounded community.

As a journalist who conducted more than nine hundred interviews, Gail Sheehy is an impeccable researcher. As a writer with a novelistic gift, she weaves the individual stories into a compelling narrative. Middletown, America illuminates every stage of a tumultuous passage—from shock, passivity, and panic attacks, to rising anger and deep grieving, and on to the secret romances and startling relapses, the realignment of faith, the return of a capacity to love and be loved, and, finally, the commitment to constructing new lives."

We will meet to discuss Middletown, America on Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Aug 2015: Founding Brothers-The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis

From Goodreads.com:
"In retrospect, it seems as if the American Revolution was inevitable. But was it? In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis reveals that many of those truths we hold to be self-evident were actually fiercely contested in the early days of the republic.

Ellis focuses on six crucial moments in the life of the new nation, including a secret dinner at which the seat of the nation's capital was determined--in exchange for support of Hamilton's financial plan; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; and the Hamilton and Burr duel. Most interesting, perhaps, is the debate (still dividing scholars today) over the meaning of the Revolution.

In a fascinating chapter on the renewed friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at the end of their lives, Ellis points out the fundamental differences between the Republicans, who saw the Revolution as a liberating act and hold the Declaration of Independence most sacred, and the Federalists, who saw the revolution as a step in the building of American nationhood and hold the Constitution most dear.

Throughout the text, Ellis explains the personal, face-to-face nature of early American politics and notes that the members of the revolutionary generation were conscious of the fact that they were establishing precedents on which future generations would rely."

We will meet to discuss Founding Brothers on Thursday, August 27, 2015, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

Friday, July 10, 2015

July 2015: Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

From the 2003 Random House Trade Paperbacks edition:

"Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.

In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature."

Author's website: Click here.
Author's facebook page: Click here.
Author's twitter page: Click here.

We will meet to discuss Reading Lolita in Tehran on Thursday, July 30, 2015, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall, in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

June 2015: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

From the 2005 Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback:

"First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian."

We will meet to discuss One Day... on Thursday, 6/25/15, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

May 2015: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

From the Vintage International paperback edition, 1990:

"One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in American literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant."

Helpful links: (Spoilers may be possible)
-Nobel Prize biography of William Faulkner, click here.
-Interview with the Paris Review entitled, "The Art of Fiction No. 12," click here.
-Article on Faulkner from the NY Times Archives, click here.

Links included in this month's AHLEBC group email regarding The Sound and the Fury:
(spoilers may be possible)
-Faulkner interview, click here.
-Book review #1, click here.
-Book review #2, click here.

We will meet to discuss The Sound and the Fury on Thursday, May 28, 2015, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall, opposite Veterans Park).

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

April 2015: Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck

From the Moyer Bell paperback edition:

"Madam Wu was to retire from married life and had planned to select a concubine for her husband when the difficulties ensued changed life in the women's quarters."

Please note: There is a info flyer available with this book when you check it out from the (Atlantic Highlands) Library!

There are several sites with biographies of Ms. Buck, here are a few:

-Click here for the Penn Arts & Sciences Department of English page.
-Click here for the Biography Channel page.
-Click here for the Nobelprize.org page.

Click here for the YouTube video, "Pearl S. Buck's Legacy Lives on in PA."

We will meet to discuss Pavilion of Women on Thursday, April 30, 2015, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands inside Borough Hall.

Monday, March 2, 2015

March 2015: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple + Our 5th Anniversary!

From the 2013 Hachette Book Group paperback:

"When fifteen-year-old Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for her perfect grades, her fiercely intelligent but agoraphobic mother, Bernadette, throws herself into preparations for the trip. Worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Bernadette is on the brink of a meltdown. As disaster follows disaster, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces. Which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together emails, invoices, and school memos to reveal the secret past that Bernadette has been hiding for decades.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is an ingeniously entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are, and the power of a daughter's love for her imperfect mother."

Author bio, click here.

We will meet to discuss Where'd You Go, Bernadette on Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located in downtown Atlantic Highlands at 100 First Avenue (inside Borough Hall).

This March meet up will mark our 5th Anniversary! Help us celebrate our birthday; we'll have tea and treats! Here's to many more years of reading together, great discussions, and laughter!

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

February 2015: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

From the 2004 B & N Classics paperback edition:
"Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte's only novel - remains one of literature's most disturbing explorations into the dark side of romantic passion.

An unpolished and devastating epic of childhood playmates who grow into soul mates, Wuthering Heights revolved around the willfully childish Catherine and the dark Heathcliff, who, in the words of Charlotte Brontee, "exemplifies the effects which a life of continued injustice and hard usage may produce on a naturally perverse, vindictive, and inexorable disposition." Heathcliff and Cathy believe they're destined to love each other forever. But when cruelty and snobbery separate them, their untamed emotions literally consume them.

Set amid the wild and stormy Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights is widely regarded as the most original tale of thwarted desire and heartbreak in the English language."

Your edition of Wuthering Heights may differ than the one featured here, this shouldn't be an issue!

Wikipedia bio of Emily Bronte: Click here.
Poetry Foundation bio of Emily Bronte: Click here.
Encyclopedia bio of Emily Bronte: Click here.

We will meet to discuss Wuthering Heights on Thursday, February 26, 2015, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

In the event of inclement weather, please look for an email update from AHLEBC right before the meeting date. If you are not on our email list, please send an email to ahlebc@gmail.com / ahlebcATgmailDOTcom requesting to be added to our email list.