Digging to America by Anne Tyler

In January 2008 the Harford Out-of-the-House Book Group for Moms will be meeting in the Bel Air Branch. Please call the branch at 410-638-3151 or check our web page for details of this group and for other book groups sponsored by the Bel Air branch.

In January the Moms will be discussing Digging to America by Anne Tyler. Since my own book group just finished reading this uplifting and thought provoking book, I thought I would discuss it here. I can heartily recommend it both as a good read and as a book that a discussion group can get its teeth into. Find this large print book in our catalog.
Find this book in our catalog.

This is a novel of seemingly quiet and unremarkable lives. The novel itself is seemingly quiet and unremarkable and yet it packs a punch. In subtle and nuanced ways and with powerful psychological insight, it explores the tension between the human need to fit in with the crowd and yet assert ones own individuality. There is a lot of quiet humor in the book, and loving observation of human frailty. The reader cares about the two families, one quintessentially white middle class American and the other Iranian American, both living in Baltimore.

The families meet at BWI, when both are there to greet the arrival of two Korean infants who are being adopted by two couples, Brad and Bitsy and Sami and Ziba. The families get together over an arrival party arranged by Bitsy and afterwards their friendship develops in fits and starts, through misunderstandings and various happy and sometimes excruciatingly embarassing social occasions. Maryam, the widowed mother of Sami, and a first generation Iranian immigrant is the center of the story. It is mainly through her eyes that the reader sees twenty-first century American life, at least in the Baltimore/Washington suburbs. Maryam has always found it hard to come to terms with being part of a culture and a country. She feels foreign in America, though she has been in the country thirty-something years, and yet she no longer feels she has a home in Iran. If truth be told, she never felt she fitted in even in Iran, and when young expressed this alienation in political dissidence. Most of the book is about how she works out this dilemma.

The book also shifts to the points of view of the other characters, who are individually quirky and lovable. Stretching from the babies’ arrival in 1997 to 2004, the novel is punctuated by the annual Arrival parties and other celebrations, all of which add color and humor to the book and also offer insights into American and Iranian culture.

Conversation Starters

It is said that in the novel the two different households serve as microcosms for twenty-first American Society. Would you agree?
Bitsy and Brad Donaldson appear to be stereotypical white-middle class Americans. Is Anne Tyler condemning the stereotype? Are there occasions when they depart from the stereotype?
Maryam continually feels her “outsiderness.” Are there occasions when others feel this exclusion or “otherness?”
Some of the members of my group felt that Anne Tyler made many of her characters two-dimensional in order to make a point in the book. Do you agree? If you do, did this matter?
Other group members felt an empathy with the characters. Why would this be?
Even though some characters may be stereotypical, one reviewer found the families “utterly believable.” Do you agree?
What did you think of this portrait of immigrant life? Each character strikes a balance between assimilation and remaining true to his/her culture. What do you think of the implications of this in the book and in our own lives?
One reviewer noticed that many decisions in the book are transformed into deeply symbolic acts, subject to earnest debate. Did this make sense to you in the context of the book. In the context of your own life? Could you identify some of the symbolism in the book?
What do you think of Bitsy’s attempts to create traditions for her family?
What do you think of Anne Tyler’s language and her ability one reviewer noticed to infuse the commonplace with meaning and grace?
What did you think of the shifting from the perspective of one character to another?
Within the two extended families, many characters are able to get their own way. Can you identify some examples?

About the Author

There was an extensive article about Anne Tylaer by Jessica Teisch in Bookmarks magazine for November/December 2006.

In Washington Post, 10/22/03, Anne Tyler said this, “People have always seemed funny and strange to me, and touching in unexpected ways. I can’t shake off a sort of mist of irony that hangs over whatever I see…It just seems to me that even the most ordinary person, in real life, will turn out to have something unusual at his center.”

Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos

Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos is a book that richly repays the reader with eccentric characters, multiple plot lines, mysteries from the past, strong emotions, love in unlikely places, quirky humor, and complex but largely happy outcomes. It’s an ideal book for a book club.

About the book:
Margaret Hughes is a wealthy widow living in the biggest mansion in a Seattle neighborhood way on the top of a hill. She is all alone in the museum-like house stuffed with a priceless collection of porcelain. For various reasons, which unfold in the book, Margaret is a recluse and lives almost solely to be the caretaker of this collection, the provenance of which we suspect, but which is only slowly revealed. Margaret discovers that she has incurable cancer, and so decides she will take the last chance she has of living for herself. Her first step is to seek company and she advertises for a lodger. Wanda Schulz comes into her life. Wanda seems tough, but we find she has been severely emotionally damaged by a series of rejections, first by her father and more recently by a lover whom she is seeking in Seattle. As both women wrestle with the ghosts of their past, a diverse cast of eccentric characters comes into their lives. All are broken in some degree, and all find ways to put themselves together, each in a different and ultimately beautiful form. Wanda discovers that she is a talented mosaic artist. Her art form becomes a metaphor for all that occurs in the book, a breaking of things that is essential before beauty or lives can be reformed. The book itself is complex, with many themes and plot-lines being assembled to complete the mosaic, which finally takes shape as a celebration of the diverse ways love manifests itself.

About the author:
This is Stephanie Kallos’ first book. She spent 20 years in the theater as a teacher and actress. Her short fiction was nominated for a Raymond Carver Prize and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Seattle. Click here for her website

Reviews:
The book received 3 starred reviews.

Conversation starters:
The book starts with Margaret in her house. What do you think of the way Margaret’s history is revealed?
The characters are very eccentric, but at the same time believable. Why do you think this is? What do you think of their behavior?
The plot is very complex. How are the different threads woven together? Are the resolutions believable?
Metaphor is very important in this book. Which ones worked for you?
I saw humor in this book. Did you also find the same? What for you was the effect of the humor?
The concept of “broken” is central to the book. What did you make of that?

This book has been compared to books by Margaret Atwood. I think it would appeal also to readers of Anne Tyler. Do you agree?

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

On Tuesday, October 16, 2007, Fallston Branch’s Critics Without Credentials will discuss Jodi Picoult’s fictional tale about a school shooting, called “Nineteen Minutes.”

I don’t want to preempt the group’s discussion by betraying too much about the book here, but I do hope one or two of them leave a comment afterwards about how the discussion went. I am sure it is a very timely book, and one perhaps difficult to read, but very rewarding.

I thought I might list here some suggestions for similar books:

A Theory of Relativity by Jacqueline Mitchard
Readers with a preference for observing how families in turmoil deal with shocking situations will appreciate this novel of grieving grandparents locked in an anguished custody battle for the sole surviving daughter of parents lost in a car accident.

The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian
Jodi Picoult writes of hot-button issues as does Chris Bohjalian. This time the issue is the foster care system and mixed-race families. The devastating loss of their twin daughters in a flash flood turns the lives of Terry and Laura Sheldon upside down as their marriage is tested by grief, Terry's brief love affair, and their growing relationship with their foster child, a ten-year-old African American boy.

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Years after a friend was brutally murdered, Jo Becker is now married with a grown family, but when an old housemate moves nearby, Jo rekindles a relationship that takes her back to the past and threatens her future. This book asks the question, “How well do we really know our friends and the ones we care for?”

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
In a series of letters to her estranged husband, narrator Eva Khatchadourian relates the stories of her son’s upbringing and tries to resolve an agonizing question. Two years before the opening of the novel, her son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and the much-beloved teacher who had tried to befriend him. Eva is tortured by the question of who is to blame.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

The other day I read in one of my news alerts that a terrific book has just been adapted to make a movie. The Jane Austen Book Club, directed by Robin Swicord and starring Maria Bello, opened September 21. This would be an intriguing choice for a book club, if only because the theme is a book club! Six readers start a club to discuss the works of Jane Austen only to discover that their own lives resemble modern versions of her novels.

I don’t know what your opinion is about the audience for this book – women only? Perhaps we should be careful not to stereotype: men appreciate Jane Austen too, for her elegant writing and witty observation; and there is one (as a reviewer called him) “enigmatic” man in the book club of the title.

That same review (in Publisher’s Weekly 03/22/2004) suggests that Karen Joy Fowler is rather like Jane Austen herself, writing with sly wit and quirky characters. It strikes me that the characters and their “hangups” might be sources of some good discussion, and the humor might make it all rather fun!

You will find a Discussion Guide in Novelist. Find a link to Novelist on ReadersPlace Home page.

The book got two other “Starred Reviews” and was a New York Times Notable Book.

Click here to Find this book in our catalog.

Here are some suggestions of similar books:
Dinner With Anna Karenina by Gloria Goldreich
The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley

Click here for a list of books about Jane Austen in fact and fiction
Karen Joy Fowler's Web Site : Fowler provides information about herself and her books.

A Recipe for Bees by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

In May the Novel Ideas book group, which meets the fourth Monday of each month at the Jarrettsville Branch of Harford County Public Library from 10:30 AM to Noon, met and discussed A Recipe for Bees.

As Publishers Weekly put it, “… Anderson-Dargatz's (The Cure for Death by Lightning) latest is a warm and wise love story, an exploration of the extraordinary as revealed in everyday lives.”

As Augusta Olsen awaits the outcome of her son-in-law’s surgery she reminisces about her long and never-dull life. Augusta is both extremely gifted and headstrong. She inherited from her mother her gift of clairvoyance and her ability at bee-keeping. Unfortunately for Augusta, with her unusual outlook on life, at 18 she marries Karl, a shy man older than she who takes her away to his isolated farm in British Columbia. Augusta quickly learns to resent his taciturnity and his lack of sexual finesse. Determined not to despair, Augusta tries various friendships, work in town, and a brief affair. Eventually she causes her family’s move from the farm, after which she takes up bee-keeping again, the “ointment for her soul.” Her starting of this business re-connects her to the community and sparks changes in her marriage. Augusta realizes that as she has aged she is able to look on her life differently.

Some things to consider:

1)The PW reviewer wrote, “Augusta is a headstrong heroine with prismatic perspectives; her long, never-dull life as told by the gifted Anderson-Dargatz is both charming and impressive in its quiet, cumulative power.” If you have already read this book, would you agree with that assessment? If you haven’t read it, why not put it on your “To Read” list? If you enjoy stories of strong women and their inner emotions, or of farm life or family relationships, you will probably enjoy this.
2)I was struck by similarities that I could see between this book and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. In Prodigal Summer, Lusa, a talented scientist gives up her career to marry a farmer and try to make a life in an isolated Appalachian community. Most of the book takes place after she is widowed, but Lusa does a lot of self-searching and looking back on her marriage, which, like Augusta’s, was troubled by her husband’s taciturnity and his apparent inability to understand her. Each husband expressed his love through "a simple gesture he had been planning for a day or two, a message contained in flowers.” Lusa’s husband, for instance, sent her a message across the fields from his tractor when he refrained from cutting down “her” honeysuckle.
3)Prodigal Summer contains many story lines; but, both books contain a lot about small town life and gossip. This could be an aspect of both books you could bear in mind while reading and discussing them.
4)Another possible topic of discussion could be the author’s treatment of farm life. Are they sympathic towards the lifestyle, even though their heroines have difficulty with it? Does life on the farm in some way mold the characters?
5)Prodigal Summer has a great deal in it about farming, crops and orchards, and growing things, and also about the wilderness and about a family of coyotes. The background of A Recipe of Bees is beekeeping. I enjoyed all the lush details. What do you think they contribute to the books?

Here is a link to the publisher’s discussion guide for A Recipe for Bees.

Step Ball Change by Jeanne Ray

This week I decided to write about a book I have been reading for a discussion group I belong to. This month the group will discuss the genre known as "Hen Lit."

"Hen Lit," though not a very flattering or politically correct designation, refers to the popular fiction genre that focuses on one woman or a group of female friends and the vicissitudes of their lives as they turn sixty or so. The tone is generally warm, gentle and optimistic, but above all humorous. The emphasis is on friendship and family.

I picked out the following title and can recommend it heartily as a pleasant and easy quick read, perhaps even a beach read:

Step Ball Change by Jeanne Ray

This warm and humorous book is sure to appeal to readers who like stories of a strong, older female main character who shares with us the joys and sorrows of her family relationships. Sixty-plus Caroline lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, just as she has done for years with her public-defender husband Tom. Caroline has succesfully raised four children, while at the same time owning and running a prosperous dance studio. Caroline is a mentor and mother figure to all, including the little girls in her studio. At the same time she maintains her humanity: we warm to her disorganization at home, her guilty wish to have quality time alone with her husband, her attempts to understand her children, the fact that though she suffers from arthritis she remains young and vulnerable at heart. Chaos breaks loose at Caroline’s home when her sister announces she is getting divorced and turns up at her doorstep, her daughter announces her engagement yet can’t seem to decide whom she loves, and the foundations of the house are discovered to be in imminent danger of collapse. It is obvious from the beginning that with love and patience all dilemmas will happily be resolved – it is such a pleasure finding out just how!

Some points you might like to consider when reading or discussing Step Ball Change:

The unusual title refers to a dance step. I understood it as a metaphor for all the changes going on in Caroline's life and how quick-footed she has to be to cope with them. I also understood the decay in the foundations of Caroline's house to be a metaphor for what was happening within the family, as well as a useful device with which to bring strangers into the family mix. Do you agree with me, and do you think these literary devices work or not?

Reviewers of hen lit usually maintain that in general the characters are more superficially drawn than in more serious traditional fiction. Do you agree in this case? The publisher of this book said that we feel we have known these characters all our lives. What do you say?

Examples of the genre:

The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love by Joan Medlicott

The Elegant Gathering of White Snows by Kris Radish

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind by Ann B. Ross

Angry Housewives Eating Bon-bons by Lorna Landvik

Good Grief by Lolly Winstan

Not-So-Perfect Man by Valerie Frankel

Harlequin began publishing in this genre under the name Harlequin Next http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html?cid=357

The Known World by Edward Jones

In April 2007 a group in Edgewood discussed The Known World by Edward Jones. This book has won multiple prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The ideas in it are complex, of moral weight and intellectual and emotional power, yet subtly expressed through a story that draws you in and then unfolds in a book that is difficult to put down; though sometimes you just have to take a breather!

The book begins with a crisis which precipitates many changes in the "known world," the circumscribed world of an antebellum slave plantation. The crisis is the death of the plantation owner and the upheaval that this creates for his "property" - including his slaves - and his family. The interesting thing is that Henry Townsend, the property owner, was once a slave himself.

This is a book that takes a commitment of time, as it is so dense and complex. There is a large cast of characters, and the minutiae of the life they lead is woven in fascinating detail into the story. The characters, their relationships and motivations, are so convincing and compelling that the reader becomes emotionally involved in their fates.

The time-line of the plot is not straightforward but moves from the present and Henry’s death, to the past, and then back to the future. The past reveals how a former slave became a slave-owner. The future is revealed rather like a prophecy. It is this prefiguring, together with the simple, measured, factual narrative, that at times gives the book an almost Biblical character.

The book delivers without ever being heavy-handed a decided indictment of a society that depended on slavery. Subtly revealing the motives of the characters through their actions, the author inexorably builds up a picture of how slavery really ruined every part of society.

It is difficult to make suggestions for book discussion points without giving away the pleasures of the book to people who have not read it. I believe this book will appeal to readers who enjoy complex characterization and like to see characters develop. Edward Jones' characters are complicated: the good ones do bad things and the bad ones do good things. Enjoy coming to understand what drives them. See if you agree with me that Edward Jones' depiction of people and society in the era of slavery is remarkably free of stereotypes.

This book will certainly appeal to lovers of historical fiction, especially historical fiction that shows a depth of research into the period. For me, the book helped me understand more how such an inhumane institution as slavery could persist, especially after it ceased to benefit anybody. Look for occasions where Jones shows how slavery affected both white and black in the most insidious ways.

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

Valerie Ryan at Amazon.com wrote this about The Highest Tide: "This absolutely luminous first novel has all the earmarks of a classic. The Highest Tide is destined to be read, re-read, and to remain on bookshelves for the enjoyment of generations to come."

Find this book in our catalog.

The Darlington book group chose this for their discussion title in January 2007. I'm hoping that one of the group will comment on how the discussion went, as I can imagine that it sparked all sorts of side discussions on humankind's relationship with the natural world.

13-year-old Miles O'Malley is a naturalist and worshipper of Rachel Carson. One summer he obtains a licence to collect marine specimens for money from the mud flats of Skookumchuck Bay, at the South end of Puget Sound where he lives. One night he goes out in his kayak, coming eye to eye with, instead of his usual collectibles, a giant squid! In the book initially no one can credit Miles' discovery because no giant squids live in the Puget Sound and when humans have seen them elsewhere they have always been dead.

I wonder if the Darlington book group thrilled when they were reading this in January 2007, with the knowledge that in the real world only the previous December a giant squid had indeed been seen alive and had been captured on film? On December 22 this news article appeared on National Geographic News:

"December 22, 2006—Like pulling a shadow from the darkness, researchers in Japan have captured and filmed a live giant squid—likely for the first time—shedding new light on the famously elusive creatures. Tsunemi Kubodera, a scientist with Japan's National Science Museum, caught the 24-foot (7-meter) animal earlier this month near the island of Chichijima, some 600 miles (960 kilometers) southeast of Tokyo."

For pictures of the squid, see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061222-giant-squid.html

In The Highest Tide the discovery of the live giant squid is confirmed by Professor Kramer, a biologist and Miles' friend, and then the unwelcome attention from scientists, camera crews and a local cult begins.

For Miles this was a bewildering summer. As the narrator he says, "People usually take decades to sort out their view of the universe, if they bother to sort at all. I did my sorting during one freakish summer in which I was ambushed by science, fame and suggestions of the divine."

Miles has a lot to cope with as he sorts his place out in the adult world. His parents are considering divorce, his elderly best friend, Florence is dying of a degenerative disease, his sex-obsessed buddy makes fun of his science knowledge, and he himself has a desperate crush on the 18-year-old girl next door, which humiliates him further. Tension builds as the date approaches of a predicted record high tide.

Here are some things you might consider when reading this book:

The coming of the high tide is obviously very important in the book. Do you think there is any symbolic significance to it, and if so, what is it?

The beauty and the complexity of nature informs the whole book. A reviewer at PW wrote, "The fertile strangeness of marine tidal life becomes a subtly executed metaphor for the bewilderments of adolescence ." Would you agree? Why else is nature important?

Author Jim Lynch's deep knowledge of and sense of wonder at the natural world gives him an ability to tell a story "that glows on every page"(Valerie Ryan). Would you agree? for instance, one early morning Miles says, "...the water was so clear I could see coon-stripe shrimp ... and the bottomless bed of white clam shells ... Those shells, as unique and timeless as bones, helped me realize that we all die young, that in the life of the earth, we are houseflies, here for one flash of light."

As Miles says when a reporter asks him why he thinks that the giant squid has turned up in Puget Sound, "Maybe the earth is trying to tell us something." Do you think the earth is meant to be telling us something in this book? Some reviewers have written that Jim Lynch was maybe trying to cram too much into a small book. What do you think?

The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg

In October 2006 the Jarrettsville book group, Novel Ideas read and discussed The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg.

This is what Publishers Weekly said about the plot:

"Bestselling novelist Berg (Talk Before Sleep; Open House ) explores memory, love and forgiveness in her flawed but moving 12th novel. At her annual family reunion, Laura Bartone, a 50-something "quilt artist," is forced to confront the secrets that have long haunted her family. Her emotionally unstable sister, Caroline, tells Laura and their brother, Steve, that their mother abused her as a child. As Laura and Steve-whose own childhoods were reasonably happy-struggle to make sense of Caroline's accusations and wonder how they could've been oblivious to or complicit in what happened, their father dies."

Families and the complicated dynamics between their different members make wonderful subjects for literary fiction. In a novel some sort of conflict or crisis is necessary to drive the plot and to illustrate the universal dilemmas of life. Most families have conflict big or small built right into them! Though the fictional family conflicts in novels may be more extreme than we experience ourselves, many readers empathise with the characters and enjoy finding out how they resolve their dilemmas and crises. These kinds of books have lots of food for thought and make ideal book group titles. As the reviewer says, "Berg has written a nuanced account of a family's implosion, with enough ambiguity and drama to give book clubs-the book's likely audience-"plenty to discuss and to keep any reader intrigued, right up to the fittingly redemptive ending."

I would be very interested to know what participants in the discussion last October thought about the siblings' differing remembrances of their childhood. What could have caused that disconnect, and have you ever in your own life experienced a similar difference of perception? Is this difference of perception believable in the book?

Did book group members agree that the ending was "fittingly redemptive?" Please add your comments: they might help someone else decide to read the book.

For people who haven't read the book yet, here are some things you might consider when you do:

Do you think the piecing of the dark and light parts of the quilt works as a metaphor for the building of a shared family memory?

Do you agree with reviewers that Berg's insights are "penetrating" and that her characters are "carefully made real?"

If you would like to share insights and ideas on books with a group in real time, why not attend a meeting of the Novel Ideas Group?

The Group meets the fourth Monday of each month at the Jarrettsville Library from
10:30 am to Noon. For more information please contact the Jarrettsville Library at
(410) 692-7887. The moderator is Douglas Hess.

$64 Tomato

NORRISVILLE BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP
THE $64 TOMATO BY William Alexander
April 2007

The Norrisville Book Discussion Group had a rollicking good time discussing the April 2007 selection, The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. Our resident (retired) Home Ec and Sex Education teacher provided the goodies this month: The famous “kiss me cake,” winner of the second ever Pillsbury bake-off. It seems that as the winner was preparing an orange cake, her husband came home in an amorous mood and distracted her from her project. With her mind on other things, she mixed the frosting in with the batter and created an instant classic.

Alexander’s more-or-less true account of his family’s move to a small town, and his subsequent obsession with creating the garden of his dreams is excruciating, instructive to the uninitiated, and laugh-aloud funny. Techie Alexander, his newly minted physician wife, and their two children move from Westchester County, New York to the perfect hamlet far from the madding crowd. Their new house, notorious in town for being dilapidated and uninhabitable, fails to smother their enthusiasm. But when the author sets out to wrestle a behemoth of a garden out of the untouched landscape, his neighbor Larry, his wife, and especially his two kids can only pity him. And even pity is difficult to muster, since Alexander willfully takes the wrong road at every fork-decision that he comes to. In fact, some readers will find his monumentally poor judgment a little irritating. Most of our group, however, appreciated the author’s self-deprecating tone and many disasters, not a few of which they themselves have experienced in the past. It felt good to see someone else get their lumps for a change, from unreliable and downright dishonest contractors to industrial strength weeds, to the shattering of the organic pipe dream, to the endless hours sucked up by this all-consuming hobby. Alexander’s story follows a path that is not entirely chronological and arrow-straight, which only seems to emphasize the atmosphere of out-of-control living described in the book. Yet our group never gave up wanting to know how it would all turn out, hoping for at least a partial victory over nature and human nature.

The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman

The Edgewood Branch of Harford County Public Library has three book clubs – one that meets in the branch on the second Thursday of each month, one that meets at the senior center on the fourth Tuesday, and one that also meets on the fourth Tuesday in the branch, but features books by African American authors. Recently, the senior group and the Thursday group both read and discussed the same book: Elinor Lipman’s The Inn at Lake Devine.

I would be delighted if one or two of the Edgewood group members would add their comments to this post. How did you enjoy the book? Did anyone else at the discussion influence how you now think of the book?

Below is a short description of The Inn at Lake Devine, and then one or two discussion points that I hope will tempt new readers to try it.

The Inn at lake Devine was first published in 1998 and has become a classic example of Elinor Lipman’s gentle and romantic social commentaries. The story starts in 1962 and is a portrait of the social upheaval and prejudice of the 1960s and 1970s. The story deals with the serious subject of anti-Semitism, though Ms. Lipman handles it with a light touch: one reviewer called the book, “delightful,” and, “both entertaining and thought-provoking.” In fact, there is considerable humor in the book as well as some distinctly eccentric characters.

The main character, Natalie Marx is a sharp, sensitive teenager growing up in a tight-knit Jewish family. She is shocked, when in response to a query, her mother receives a note from a Vermont inn saying more or less that Jews are not welcome to stay there. Natalie becomes fixated on the people who could say such things, and she does all she can to see them face to face. She and her father use an assumed name and visit the inn from their vacation house the other side of the lake. Another year, Natalie enveigles an invitation to stay there with a friend, blending in as one of her family. A good ten years later, when Natalie is invited to her friend’s wedding at the inn, she can finally infiltrate the bastions as herself. Her professional and romantic life become hopelessly entangled with the rigidly prejudiced proprietor and her two sons when, despite a tragedy, Natalie falls in love. Will love triumph and put prejudice to rout?

Different reviewers have said the following things about The Inn at Lake Devine. Would you agree or disagree?...

“Skillfully interweaving the bittersweet narrative with threads of both tragedy and comedy, Lipman displays a healthy amount of empathy and affection for her flawed and slightly eccentric cast of characters.”

“…this very funny novel…”

“…skewering of assimilation and cultural diversity…”

“Natalie's search for answers to unanswerable questions…”

For more information about Edgewood branch book groups, please call 410-612-1600.

You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

The “Novel Ideas” book group meets at the Jarrettsville branch of HCPL at 10:30 AM on the fourth Monday of each month. Recently they selected a title that strikes me as being an innovative choice and a difficult book to discuss. They chose You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett, a debut short story collection that explores different aspects of depression and mental illness.

As Claire Dederer, a reviewer at Amazon.com says, “Adam Haslett drags into the light subjects often left in the cellar.” Most of the stories are told from the viewpoint of the mentally ill, though one is told by the doctor in the case. Others are stories are about closeted homosexuals: boys who are coming to terms with their identity and men who never have.

Despite the sensational topics, Haslett writes quietly, plainly and with truth and sensitivity about the people in his stories. As Ms. Dederer said, “this is a beautifully written collection that's as heartfelt as it is intelligent.”

Members of the Novel Ideas group, and anyone else who has read the book, do please add your comments to this posting. Below are some questions that might bear discussion, or contribute your own insights to the dialog.

Did you find a book of short stories difficult to discuss? Did you find that the collection had any themes that made it hang together?

What did you think of the beauty of the writing?

In The Good Doctor, Haslett writes of Frank, a young MD, "The fact was he still felt like a sponge, absorbing the pain of the people he listened to." In your opinion, is the reader of these stories likely to be able to cope with all the pain of all the people?

The next meeting of the Novel Ideas will be at 10:30 AM on Monday, April 23, 2007. They will discuss When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. For information call (410) 692-7887.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan wins Texas Book Award

Timothy Egan, a reporter for the New York Times, has won the fourth
biennial Texas Christian University Texas Book Award for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. The $5,000 award is sponsored by the Friends of the TCU Library and TCU Press.

The book has also won other awards:

The 2006 National Book Award for nonfiction
The Oklahoma Book Award
The Western Heritage(Wrangler)Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

The Worst Hard Time would be a good book to read following The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin. A few days ago I posted a description of The Children’s Blizzard, which was read recently by one of HCPL’s book groups.

In The Worst Hard Time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan follows, in a similar scheme to Laskin, a few pioneering families and an overwhelming disaster that overtook them, this time during the period of the Dust Bowl. In this book the disasters the families lived through, both economic and ecological, were man-made. Egan writes how eight years of drought on the windy plains, which had been ploughed up for wheat, led to an endless series of dust storms or “black blizzards.” "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains." As Egan shows, the plains were not suited to arable farming and with the drought all the topsoil was blown into the air. Like Laskin, Egan spends a while describing the hardy Americans and immigrants who settled the area, desperate in the Depression for a piece of land and lured there by the false claims of promoters. Egan interviewed actual survivors of those hard times, and the book is filled with tales of courage and suffering. As well as stories of privation, there are horrific accounts of the effects of the black blizzard, such as the "dust pneumonia" which killed both young and old. Publishers Weekly said, “With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.”

BlogaBook Points of Discussion

Publishers Weekly compares The Worst Hard Time to the novels of Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis. What do you think?

What remains most in your mind when you have finished this book?

The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin

The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin

In January the Books By the Bay book group met in the Havre de Grace branch of Harford County Public Library and discussed The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin.

On January 12 1888 a blizard struck the Great Plains region, killing about 500 people, 100 of whom were schoolchildren, who were totally unprepared and unprotected from what happened. The children’s parents were the brave immigrants who had recently settled the area. They are portrayed as totally naïve about the land they had settled, and so ignorant of what the local weather could do that on an unseasonably warm day many allowed their children to attend school without coats, hats and mittens. During the day the temperature dropped rapidly, and a blizzard ensued that many remembered as the worst that the area had ever seen.

The story has two main threads. The first is the story of five immigrant families and what happened to them in the storm. The families are put into the context of the great push into the upper Great Plains, especially by immigrants from Norway, Germany and Russia. Laskin goes into considerable detail of the immigrant experience, the hardships they faced, what made them leave home in the first place.

The second main thread is the story of the inner workings of the US Army Signal Corps, which was then in charge of weather forecasting. There is considerable detail about the formation of severe storms and the science of meteorolgy at the time.

When the storm hit, many children were trapped at school. Laskin relates the differing and sometimes heroic actions of the teachers. There are stories of heroism and also of senseless tragedy.

BlogaBook Discussion Points

Chapters about the settlers are alternated with chapters about the fledgling weather service. One reviewer felt that, “Laskin is at his best when he relates the heartbreaking stories of the storm’s victims; the chapters on weather history interrupt the book’s flow.” Would you agree with this?

Another reviewer found the book to be, “somewhat information-heavy.” Would you agree, or do you think with the reviewer that the possible drawback of the density of the detail is balanced by the empathy we feel for the children? How do you think Laskin provokes this empathy in the reader?

More reviewers found the story to be, “gripping,” “spellbinding,” “well-told, “adroit,” “sensitive,” and “horrific.” Was this true for you, or did you get bogged down in all the separate threads and the historical detail?

Click on “comments” to post your own comment. You may be anonymous. Comments may be edited for things like bad language, but generally your comments stand as you post them.

Books By the Bay meet on the third Friday of the month at 11:30 AM. For details contact 410-638-3151.

Free Online Book Clubs

If you like to talk books, there are a number of new venues online where you can participate in a book club without leaving your computer. In my last blog I suggested a few websites where book group leaders and members might go to get suggestions for titles for future discussions. The sites I am suggesting this time go beyond recommending good books and providing discussion guides and author interviews to allowing members to post their own comments and be part of an ongoing book discussion.

Booklist Online Book Club is a partnership between Booklist and the Downers Grove Public Library in Downers Grove, Illinois. Every month they add new book discussions moderated by Downers Grove staff. They post a short critique of each book and one or two comments or questions to spur discussion. Then members or guests can go online and add their comments or view what other people have said.

Bookspace at Hennepin County Library has a book clubs blog. Registration is required, but it is free. A new feature of Bookspace allows readers to add their own booklists to the website. Book clubs can view what other clubs have been reading. Readers can also post their own comments on the blog.

Barnes and Noble has introduced a new service: free online book clubs. This is intended as an online community of writers, literary experts, and readers. There are over 25 discussions happening right now, including conversations with authors, expert-led book groups, writing advice, discussions on topics such as Mystery, History, Romance, and more.

And finally, there is Harford County Public Library! BlogaBook is your very own opportunity to find out what book groups in your community are reading and thinking. Your editor and your book group leaders will be posting critiques of books just read by HCPL book groups, plus discussion questions, and sometimes comments on how the discussions went and what participants felt.

Join Blogabook with your comments and enrich the dialog! All you have to do is click on “post a comment” and then type in the box, then “publish your comment.” You can be anonymous if you wish. Though the comments may be edited for things such as bad language, generally your opinion will stand as you write it. We welcome a chance to talk with you about books!

Elizabeth