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.

August 2013: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

From the Del Ray/Ballentine Publishing Group paperback:

"The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden.

Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires. And he enjoyed his job. he had been a fireman for ten years, and he never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs not the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then Guy met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think. And Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do."

For information on Ray Bradbury and his novels, click here.

We will meet to discuss Fahrenheit 451 on Thursday, August 29, 2013, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands.  (Inside Borough Hall).

July 2013: The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

From the 2006 hardback edition from Knopf: "From a writer 'of near miraculous perfection" (The New York Times Book Review) and a "literary intelligence far surpassing most other writers of her generation" (San Francisco Chronicle), The Emperor's Children is a dazzling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way - and not - in New York City.

There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite - and "It" girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist - and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray's nephew, Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootie's unexpected decisions - and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome - that will change each of their lives.

A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune - of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamor, disaster, and promise - The Emperor's Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment."

For information on author Clarie Messud:
Click here for The New York Times "Claire Messud News" page.
Click here for her author facebook page.
Click here for the Wikipedia biography.

*Please note: Copies of The Emperor's Children are limited, please return your copy to the Library ASAP once you've finished reading.  If you've been unable to get a copy, please let the Library know so you can be placed on a waiting list for the book.  Drop by the Atlantic Highlands branch or call 732-291-1956.

We will meet to discuss The Emperor's Children on Thursday, July 25, 2013, at 7pm, at the Atlantic Highlands branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).

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.

May 2013: A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

From the 2003 Penguin Classics paperback edition:

"'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' 

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine."

For brief biographies of Charles Dickens, click here or here. To visit the Charles Dickens Museum, click here. 

We will meet to discuss A Tale Of Two Cities on Thursday, May 30, 2013, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library, located at 100 First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands (inside Borough Hall).