The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle - March 2012

From Penguin.com (usa): "Paula Spencer is the narrator and unlikely heroine of Roddy Doyle's fifth novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. The mother of four children, she lives in a working-class suburb of Dublin. She is also a battered wife and an alcoholic. Paula's husband, Charlo, has been killed while escaping the scene of a crime he committed. Though Paula threw him out a couple of years ago, she recalls their early times together, filled with joy and lust. She remembers her rebellious adolescence, boys she dated and fantasized about, family outings, and summers at the sea, and she reflects on the events in her life that brought her to where she is today.

Doyle's portrait of a working-class woman in contemporary Ireland illuminates many of the problems facing that country's working poor, yet Paula is a wonderfully unique character—honest about her feelings, fearless in her efforts to protect her family, subject to fits of anger and depression that threaten to undo all that she has accomplished. Doyle takes his time revealing Paula to us. This account of her life is not chronological but spiraling, driven by memory and recurring images that spark these memories. Roddy Doyle's lean prose and his uncanny ear for dialogue brilliantly offset the drama that unfolds as Paula tells her story. It is this restraint that makes his writing so compelling, that allows us to accept, understand, and champion Paula in her struggle to reclaim her dignity.

Roddy Doyle jokingly acknowledges that he might have titled the novel Paula Spencer Boo Hoo Hoo. However, there is no doubt that he has reached a new level of mastery in this deceptively complex portrait of a woman and a family in trouble."

We'll meet to discuss this novel at the Library on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7pm.

To visit the author's website for more information on him and his works, click here.

Julius Ceasar by William Shakespeare, February 2012 + Something New + Short Story Group Reminder

From Goodreads:

"In this striking tragedy of political conflict, Shakespeare turns to the ancient Roman world and to the famous assassination of Julius Caesar by his republican opponents. Following a successful
campaign in Spain, Julius Caesar returns to Rome and is offered the
crown. Fearing for the Republic, Cassius heads a conspiracy to murder Caesar, enlisting the noble Brutus to his ranks. With Caesar dead, Mark Anthony turns popular opinion against the conspirators, leaving the audience to question the nature of honour, ambition and integrity as depicted in the characters of Caesar and Brutus."

We'll meet at the Library on Thursday, February 23, 2012, at 7pm to discuss this play.

Something new: Inspired by our discussion last night at the Library, in an effort to help those who would like to find out about new books coming out, I've created a "Reading Sites" page for the blog where I've listed several book sites that you can get to just by clicking on each name. Just click on "Reading Sites" which appears just under the blog logo above to get to the page.  (If you use a book site that isn't listed, let me know what it is and I'll add it to the list! ~Jo)

Short Story Group reminder: We'll meet at the Library to discuss Edith Wharton's "All Souls" on Thursday, February 9, 2012, at 7pm. For more info, just scroll down to the previous post.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, January 2012

From the authors website:
"It’s 1978 and 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan is the self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the local pharmacist, she’s been keeping the town folks’ secrets for years, but she’s about to discover a skeleton in her own family’s tidy closet that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life.Soon she finds herself juggling two marriage proposals, conducting a no-holds-barred family feud, directing the prestigious Outdoor Drama and keeping the town’s dysfunctional Rescue Squad on its toes.

The crazy-quilt of characters includes Jack MacChesney (“Jack Mac” to his friends), the stoic miner with coal dust on his hands but love in his heart; Iva Lou Wade, the sexpot Bookmobile librarian; Theodore Tipton, band leader extraordinaire; Preacher Elmo Gaspar, the snake-handling Freewill Baptist; and Pearl Grimes, a coal-miner’s daughter on the verge of a miraculous transformation, thanks to Ave’s intervention."

For info on the author, please click here to view her website.

We'll meet at the Library on Thursday, January 26, 2012 to discuss this novel. (Library location will be updated here as soon as possible).

You can view the list of our 2012 selections by clicking here.

Until then, blessings for a happy Holiday season and for the coming New Year!

Nov/Dec 2011 Meet-Up Reminder & 2012 Titles

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and November overall!

We meet tomorrow, Thursday 12/1 at the library at 7pm to discuss Room.

To view our selected titled for 2012, please click here.

Wishing everyone a blessed and happy Holiday season this year!

See you on Thursday, January 26, 2012 when we meet to discuss
Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani !
Love, ~Jo

Room by Emma Donoghue, November/December 2011 (Meet-Up is in December!) + Blog update + AHFOL Garage Sale Info

From Goodreads.com:
"To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world... It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child."
Brief bio: Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is the author of several acclaimed novels, including the the bestselling Slammerkin, as well as works of literary history and drama for radio and stage. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner, son and daughter. Room has been published in thirty-nine countries. Click on http://www.emmadonoghue.com/ or http://roomthebook.com
We'll meet at the Library to discuss Room on Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 7pm. (We don't meet in November as the last Thursday of the month is Thanksgiving).
Blog update: Recently there have been some compatibility issues with blogger and the recent update to internet explorer 9 and I've been unable to update the Available Titles list as well as other areas of the blog and you may have been unable to leave comments as well as a result. Hopefully these issues have been resolved and I'll get the lists updated asap. If you're unable to leave a comment, please contact me via email and I'll give you directions as to how to get around the obstacle.
Lastly, on Saturday, November 5, 2011, from 9am to 3pm, the Friends Of The Atlantic Highlands Library will hold a Garage Sale at 14 East Garfield Avenue in town (which is the lot adjacent to the Masonic Lodge). Per their flyer: "Last minutes drop-off items at sale between 9a and 11a. Arrangements can be made for pick-up of small items, contact njfromli@comcast.com in advance. Items are tax-deductible. No Early Birds. All proceeds go to the AH Library. Find us at: AHFOL@tumblr.com." Rain date: Sunday, November 6.
Best wishes for a Happy Halloween and a Happy Thanksgiving! See you on December 1st! ~Jo

Saturday by Ian McEwan, October 2011

Description from the paperback:

"In his triumpant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement, follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne - a neurosurgeon, urbane, priviledged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children - plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him."

We will be meeting at the Library to discuss this novel on Thursday, October 27, 2011, at 7pm.

Travels In The Scriptorium by Paul Auster, September 2011

From Goodreads.come:

A man pieces together clues to his past--and the identity of his captors--in this fantastic, labyrinthine novel.

An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues.

Determining that he is locked in, the man--identified only as Mr. Blank--begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell--vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember--and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching.

Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own.

We will meet to discuss Travels... at the Library on Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 7pm.

(Sorry for the delay in posting, Hurricane Irene has me behind on many things! Hope you all made out okay with the storm and afterwards. ~Jo)