Oct 2018: Born A Crime

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah via Penguin Random House:

"Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love."

Author facebook: Click here.

We'll meet to discuss Born A Crime on Thursday, October 25, at 7pm. Location: Community Room of the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall in downtown Atlantic Highlands. Books are available at the Library Desk.

Please note: This title wasn't available via the Monmouth County Library Bookclub List and quantity is limited!

Reminder: There is no Evening Bookclub in November!

Sep 2018: My Beloved World

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor via Penguin Random House:

"Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery."

(No author site links)

We'll meet to discuss My Beloved World on Thursday, September 27, at 7pm. Location: Community Room of the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall in downtown Atlantic Highlands. Books are available at the Library Desk.

Jul 2017: Being Mortal

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

From Goodreads:

"In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. 

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

 Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end."

Author site: Click here.

We will meet to discuss Being Mortal on Thursday, 27, 2017 at 7pm in the Community Room of the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library located inside Borough Hall at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

Feb 2017: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

From OliverSacks.Com:

"Here Dr. Sacks recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders: people afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations; patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do."

Helpful links:
Author webite click here.

We will meet to discuss The Man Who Misstook His Wife For A Hat on Thursday, 2/23/17, at 7pm in the Community Room of the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue inside Borough Hall in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

Catching Up - At Home - Aug 2016

From Amazon:

"“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig­ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposi­tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life."

We met to discuss this book on Thursday, August 25th, at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue inside Borough Hall in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

April 2016: The Boys In The Boat by Daniel J Brown

From the author's website:

"The Boys in the Boat celebrates the 1936 U.S. men’s Olympic eight-oar rowing team—nine working class boys who stormed the rowing world, transformed the sport, and galvanized the attention of millions of Americans.

The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers from the American West, the boys took on and defeated successive echelons of privilege and power. They vanquished the sons of bankers and senators rowing for elite eastern universities. They defeated the sons of British aristocrats rowing for Oxford and Cambridge. And finally, in an extraordinary race in Berlin they stunned the Aryan sons of the Nazi state as they rowed for gold in front of Adolf Hitler.

Against the grim backdrop of the Great Depression, they reaffirmed the American notion that merit, in the end, outweighs birthright. They reminded the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together. And they provided hope that in the titanic struggle that lay just ahead, the ruthless might of the Nazis would not prevail over American grit, determination, and optimism.

And even as it chronicles the boys’ collective achievement, The Boys in the Boat is also the heart warming story of one young man in particular. Cast aside by his family at an early age, abandoned and left to fend for himself, Joe Rantz rows not just for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard, to dare again to trust in others, and to find his way back to a place he can call home."

Helpful links:
Author's website click here. (Book trailer on homepage if you scroll down) Spoilers possible.
NYT Opinion/review click here. Spoilers possible.
Penguin Books readers guide (author interview, chat Qs) click here. Spoilers possible.

We will meet to discuss Boys In The Boat on Thursday, April 28 at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located inside Borough Hall at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands.

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).

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.

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.

Nov/Dec 2014: Seabiscuit (An American Legend) by Laura Hillenbrand + Holiday Party Info!

From the 2002 First Trade Paperback edition:

"He was a cultural icon. A world-class athlete. A champion who triumphed over terrible handicaps to become a legend of the racetrack. No other racehorse has rivaled Seabiscuit's fame or his sway over the Nation's imagination. Now Laura Hillenbrand unfolds the spellbinding story of this marvelous animal, the world he lived in, and the men who staked their lives and fortunes on his dazzling career. A riveting tale of grit, grace, luck, and an underdog's stubborn determination, Seabiscuit is an American classic."

A New York Times Notable Book.

For the Wikipedia author bio, click here.

For the author's facebook page, click here.

For an article about the author living with chronic illness, click here.

With Thanksgiving falling on the last Thursday of this month, we will meet to discuss Seabiscuit on Thursday, December 4, 2014, 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 annual Holiday party on December 4th, during which we will hold our annual Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down review of our 2014 books!  (If you are unable to attend, you may leave your votes on the next post here on our blog where we will share the results in January, or reply to one of your AHELBC emails with your votes).  Also, if you wish to bring in gently loved/used books for a book exchange, please feel free.  Any books not taken home will be donated to the Free Books cart in the Library.  Please feel free to bring something festive & delish to share with the group as well!

August 2014: The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson + Reminders

Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America

From the First Vintage Books Edition 2004:
"Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larsen's spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men - the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling. Erik Larsen has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction."

For the author's site, click here. (Spoilers may be possible). 

Reminder: Our August meeting will be the last one co-founder Elita will attend. Newer members may not know Elita very well because she hasn't been able to come recently, but she still plays a very big roll behind the scenes of AHLEBC. Also, if it wasn't for her, there wouldn't be an evening book club or evening bookclub blog! Lori and Elita started it together and without her encouragement it never would have been possible. If you have time, please stop by to say good-bye and wish Elita well. We will have cake and sparkling cider for her send-off.

Also: We have a few months in 2015 still open for members to pick a book for! They are August, October, and November/December.  (Since Thanksgiving 2015 falls on the last Thursday, we will not meet in November 2015, we will meet on the first Thursday in December 2015). Even if you don't yet have a book in mind, but one of those months works for you, please let Lori know and she can put you on the schedule. If anyone would be interested in facilitating the novel Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, please let Lori know. You can email her at ahlebc@gmail.com.

Our schedule for 2015 so far is as follows:

Jan:  The Invention of Wings by Susan Monk Kidd
Feb:  Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
March:  month taken, book not chosen yet
April:  month taken, book not chosen yet
May:  Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (this title may change)
June:  Possibly something by a Russian author
July:  Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Aug:  Open
Sept:  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Oct:  Open
Nov/Dec:  Open

We will meet to discuss The Devil In The White City and say goodbye to AHLEBC co-founder Elita on Thursday, August 28, 2014, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Library branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue in downtown Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall) where copies of the book are available at the front desk.

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.

June 2013: Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip P. Pan

From goodreads:
"From an award-winning journalist for "The Washington Post" and one of the leading China correspondents of his generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the world's most successful authoritarian state -- a nation undergoing a remarkable transformation.Philip P. Pan's groundbreaking book takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's past -- the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule -- and to take control of its future. Capitalism has brought prosperity and global respect to China, but the Communist government continues to resist the demands of its people for political freedom.

Pan, who reported in China for the "Post" for seven years and speaks fluent Chinese, eluded the police and succeeded in going where few Western journalists have dared.

From the rusting factories in the industrial northeast to a tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town courtroom to the plush offices of the nation's wealthiest tycoons, he tells the gripping stories of ordinary men and women fighting for political change. An elderly surgeon exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A filmmaker investigates the execution of a young woman during the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a crusade against forced abortions carried out under the one-child policy.

The young people who filled Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 saw their hopes for a democratic China crushed in a massacre, but Pan reveals that as older, more pragmatic adults, many continue to push for justice in different ways. They are survivors whose families endured one of the world's deadliest famines during the Great Leap Forward, whose idealism was exploited during the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and whose values have been tested by the booming economy and the rush to get rich."

**Please note:  As of 5/25, all copies of Out Of Mao's Shadow had been checked out of the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monnouth County Library.  Please contact them at 732-291-1956 or stop by to let them know you would like to be put on the waiting list.  If you already have a copy, please return it to the Library asap so those on the waiting list have a chance to get a copy and read the novel before we meet this month.**

Click here to be brought to the official website for Out Of Mao's Shadow.  (Spoilers may be possible).  You can also find an author bio via this site.

We'll meet to discuss Out of Mao's Shadow on Thursday, June 27, 2013, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue, inside Borough Hall.

A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson, February 2013

From Broadway Books paperback edition dated 2000:

"Life is a work in progress, as ever-changing as a sandy shoreline along the beach. During the years Joan Anderson was a loving wife and supportive mother, she had slowly and unconsciously replaced her own dreams with the needs of her family. With her sons grown, however, she realized that the family no longer centered on the home she provided, and her relationship with her husband had become stagnant. Like many women in her situation, Joan realized that she had neglected to nurture herself and, worse, to envision fulfilling goals for her future. As her husband received a wonderful job opportunity out-of-state, it seemed that the best part of her own life was finished. Shocking both of them, she refused to follow him to his new job and decided to retreat to a family cottage on Cape Cod.

At first casting about for direction, Joan soon began to take plea-sure in her surroundings and call on resources she didn't realize she had. Over the course of a year, she gradually discovered that her life as an "unfinished woman" was full of possibilities. Out of that magical, difficult, transformative year came A Year by the Sea, a record of her experiences and a treasury of wisdom for readers.

This year of self-discovery brought about extraordinary changes in the author's life. The steps that Joan took to revitalize herself and rediscover her potential have helped thousands of woman reveal and release untapped resources within themselves."

For more on the author, visit her site by clicking here.

We will meet to discuss our second non-fiction book of 2013 on Thursday, February 28, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue inside Atlantic Highlands Borough Hall.

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lack, January 2013 + Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: A Year Of Reading In Review (*Updated 3/28/13)

Our first selection of 2013 is the nonfiction book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. 

From the BroadwayPaperbacks/Publisher: "Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells - taken without her knowledge in 1951 - became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew."

For information on author Rebecca Skloot, visit her website by clicking here.

You can also visit the Henrietta Lacks Foundation website by clicking here.

We'll meet to discuss The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks on Thursday, January 31, 2013, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located inside Borough Hall on 100 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands. 

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: 2012, A Year Of Reading In Review
On Thursday, December 27, 2012, the Atlantic Highlands Evening Bookclub held our first annual Holiday party during which we voted on our favorite and least favorite reads of 2012! 

Here is Lori's great wrap of the party:
"We had a great time at the party and we missed everybody who couldn't make it! In fact we had so much fun, we're thinking of turning it into an annual event. Thank you to everyone who brought food and drink. We were there so long, we closed the place! I have to apologize to Faye and Val for making them stay late the next time I see them. I've attached a picture from the meeting. Unfortunately, Jo left before it was taken. All the books found new homes except for one and I'll bring it to the next meeting to see if anyone wants it.

We voted on our favorite and least favorite books and here are the results:
Favorite was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. (Everyone give it a thumbs up. Not one person gave it a "meh" or a thumbs down).
Least favorite was Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd. (No one gave it a thumbs up).

Now the break-down of all the other books we read in 2012 (members who didn't read that particular book didn't vote):
The Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigani: 4 yes, 1 meh, 1 no
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare: 2 yes, 1 no
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle: 3 yes, 1 no
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom: 2 yes, 3 no
My Antonia by Willa Cather: 3 yes, 2 no
Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigani: 1 yes, 2 meh, 2 no
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson 5 yes, 1 no (Guess who voted no?)
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett: 3 yes, 2 no
The Particular Sadness of the Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: 5 yes, 2 meh
SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris: 2 yes, 1 meh, 4 no

Jo is going to post this on the blog. Please feel free to vote and or leave comments.

During the evening, we discussed the difference between young adult fiction and adult fiction. I said the big difference is that there aren't any subplots (for the most part, I'm sure some do). After the meeting, I remembered a few other differences. One is obvious I can't believe I didn't remember it! The protagonist is usually a teenager or young adult. Another difference is when it comes to describing characters and things, adult fiction can go on for a page sometimes more. Not so with YA literature. No self respecting teenager is going to put up with two pages describing wallpaper. So the reader gets the basic idea, but not every detail. Hey, all you YA readers out there; let me know if I've forgotten anything else."

For those who read with us in 2012, but weren't at the party, please feel free to cast your vote in the comments below for the books you liked (yes/thumbs up), didn't like (no/thumbs down) or were in the middle about (meh). 

We've also had some great discussion going on via email about the differences between Young Adult (YA) fiction and adult fiction, please feel free to continue the discussion here in the comments below or add your thoughts if you haven't done so!

Best wishes for 2013 and here's to another fascinating year of reading together!

*Update 3/28/13: To view the NYT's article "The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, The Sequel" by Rebecca Skloot, please click here.

SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris, December 2012

This month's selection, SantaLand Diaries, is a short story that was published in David Sedaris's Holidays On Ice (as well as in Barrell Fever).  It is an account of Sedaris's time as a Christmas Elf in the SantaLand of a Macy's Department Store.

We're gathering to discuss this short story and have a Holiday Party & Book Exchange on Thursday, December 27, 2012, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue inside the Borough Hall Building.

Further details about our Holiday Party & Book Exchange will be available soon via email.  If you're not currently on the AHLEBC email list, please send an email requesting to be added to ahlebc@gmail.com.

Best wishes for a happy holiday season & a healthy new year! 

Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts, July 2011 plus Titles Update

From Harper Collins Publishers:
"Cokie Roberts's number one New York Times bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, examined the nature of women's roles throughout history and led USA Today to praise her as a "custodian of time-honored values." Her second bestseller, From This Day Forward, written with her husband, Steve Roberts, described American marriages throughout history, including the romance of John and Abigail Adams. Now Roberts returns with Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families -- and their country -- proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice, and made it possible for the men to do what they did. The behind-the-scenes influence of these women -- and their sometimes very public activities -- was intelligent and pervasive.

Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington -- proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived.

Social history at its best, Founding Mothers unveils the drive, determination, creative insight, and passion of the other patriots, the women who raised our nation. Roberts proves beyond a doubt that like every generation of American women that has followed, the founding mothers used the unique gifts of their gender -- courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, grace, sensitivity, and humor -- to do what women do best, put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances and carry on."

We will meet to discuss Founding Mothers on Thursday July 28th at 7pm at the Library (Avenue C). The discussion will be lead by Pam.

Titles Update:
Here is the list of books & months that have been selected so far for the end of 2011 into 2012 -
Books:"Room"
"The Particular Sadness of the Lemon Cake"
"Bel Canto"
"Julius Caesar"

Months:Nov./Dec.
Jan.
Feb.
March

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, May 2011.

From the Publisher:
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.

Night by Elie Wiesel



“In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur?”

The Orchid Thief by: Susan Orlean

The orchid thief in Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native American activists, and devoted orchid collectors. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious.