March 2014: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

From the Publisher:
"The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks on over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot-searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion-along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams."

For the author website, please click here. (Spoilers may be possible).

The AHLEBC will meet to discuss Beautiful Ruins on Thursday, March 27, 2014, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

February 2014: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

From the 2012 Scribner hardback edition:

"After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

 M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel."

(There is no author site for this particular author).

We will meet to discuss The Light Between Oceans on Thursday, February 26, 2014, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

January 2014: The Submission

Our first book of 2014 is The Submission by Amy Waldman.

Synopsis from the Picador 2011 paperback edition:

"A jury chooses a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack on Manhattan, only to learn that the anonymous designer is an American Muslim - an enigmatic architect named Mohammad Khan. His selection reverberates across a divided, traumatized country and, more intimately, through individual lives. Claire Burwell, the sole widow on the jury, becomes Khan's fiercest defender. But when the news of his selection becomes public, she comes under pressure from outraged family members and into collision with hungry journalists, opportunistic politicians, and even Khan himself. A story of clashing convictions and emotions, and a cunning satire of political ideals, The Submission is a resonant novel for our times."

To visit the official website for this novel, please click here. (Spoilers are possible!)  You can find author info via this site as well.

We will meet to discuss The Submission on Thursday, January 30, 2014, at 7pm.  We meet in the Community Room of the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands inside of Borough Hall.  Copies of this book are available at the front desk.

2nd Annual Holiday Party Round-Up!

(Scroll down to activate slideshow and view our Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down Round-Up of our 2013 selections).


(In order of the months we read them):
The Immortal Life of Henrietta lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Winner of our favorite book of the year)
Thumbs Up - 9 votes
Meh - 1 vote
Thumbs Down - 0 votes

A Year By the Sea by Joan Anderson (Winner of the book we could take or leave)
Thumbs Up - 1 vote
Meh - 7 votes
Thumbs Down - 1 vote

Samaritan by Richard Price
Thumbs Up - 3 votes
Meh - 5 votes
Thumbs Down - 0 votes

March by Geraldine Brooks
Thumbs Up - 5 votes
Meh - 3 votes
Thumbs Down - 2 votes

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Thumbs Up - 4 votes
Meh - 5 votes
Thumbs Down - 2 votes

Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip Pan
Thumbs Up - 7 votes
Meh - 1 vote
Thumbs Down - 0 votes

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
Thumbs Up - 0 votes
Meh - 4 votes
Thumbs Down - 5 votes

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Thumbs Up - 8 votes
Meh - 4 votes
Thumbs Down - 0

Outliers, the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Thumbs Up - 2
Meh- 7
Thumbs Down - 0

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Thumbs Up - 8
Meh - 2
Thumbs Down - 0

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (Winner, or loser, of our least favorite book)
Thumbs Up - 3
Meh - 2
Thumbs Down - 8

Thanks to everyone who came out for our 2nd Holiday Party this year and we missed everyone who couldn't make it!

Best wishes to everyone for a healthy and Happy New Year! See you on January 30th.

Nov/Dec 2013: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

From the Penguin Book paperback edition:

"Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militants Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide."

Visit the author's website by clicking here.  (Spoilers may be possible).

We will meet to discuss The Eyre Affair on Thursday, December 5th (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). 

We will also have our second annual holiday party on Thursday, December 5th! We will vote on our favorite and least favorite books from this year, and we will have a book exchange. Bring as many books as you like. If you don't have any to give away, that's okay too. You can tell us a little bit about the book or just put it/them on the table for whoever would like to take it home. If a book is unclaimed, you can take it back or it will be put on the free cart in the library.

Lori and Elita will bring some sort of beverage and snack (probably sweet). If you'd like to bring something to share, that would be fantastic! Ann donated several strings of Christmas lights to the library and we  hope to put them up again for our party. If you have anything suggestions for our celebration, please e-mail Lori at ahlebc@gmail.com.

October 2013: State Of Wonder by Ann Patchett

From goodreads:

"In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, "State of Wonder" presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.

As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, "State of Wonder" is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest's jeweled canopy."

Visit Ann's site by clicking here. (Spoilers may be possible).

We will meet to discuss State Of Wonder on Halloween, Thursday, October 31, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located inside Borough Hall at 100 First Avenue.  Costumes are optional!

September 2013: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

From the 2011 Hachette Group, Inc. paperback edition:

"In understanding successful people, we have come to focus far too much on their intelligence and ambition and personality traits. Instead, Malcolm Gladwell argues in Outliers, we should look at the world that surrounds the successful - their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.  Along the way, Gladwell reveals what the Beatles and Bill Gates have in common, the reason you've never heard of the smartest man in the world, why almost no hockey players are born in the fall, and why, when it comes to plane crashes, where the pilots are born matters as much as how well they are trained.

The lives of outliers - people whose achievements fall outside normal experience - follow a peculiar and unexpected logic, and in uncovering that logic, Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential."

Visit the author's website by clicking here. (Spoilers possible).

We will meet to discuss Outliers on Thursday, September 26, 2013, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall, in Atlantic Highlands.