        
Ravenna Third Place Book Club
2005 Book Picks Our November book was The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin. Our October book was The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day. Kirkus Review calls Day's book "funny and tough-minded, yet tender and touched with magic: this is a real find." We agree! In these linked stories, which take place between 1884 and 1939, the Great Porter Circus makes the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. In Lima an elephant can change the course of a man's life-or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show's manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In her astonishing debut, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and straight into the heart of this small town. As Day tells us through one of her characters, "When the weather and the frequency are just right, we can all hear our hometowns talking softly to us in the back of our dreams." Our September book was The Master by Colm Toibin. Short-listed for the Booker Prize, and on the list of just about every critic's Best Books of 2004, this fictionalized look at four troubling years in the life of the author Henry James is amazing for the way it constructs, page by quiet page, the complicated world of one of America's greatest writers. Haunted by the loss of several important women in his life, unsure about his own sexuality and emotional attachments, and troubled by a period of relative difficulty in his creative endeavors, Henry James is at a loss about what life is trying to teach him. A careful and brilliant observer of other people's behavior, James is less comprehending of his own feelings and actions. The productive years of his greatest novels, including The Portrait of a Lady, are still ahead of him, but James is unsure how to proceed. His ruminations about life - the people he has loved and lost, the games he has played and the indignities he has suffered, the highly-stratified social circles he inhabits, his friendships with some of the brightest, wealthiest, wittiest (and, at times, cruelest) men and women of the 19th century - are absolutely fascinating. Winner of the coveted LA Times Book Award, this book was cited as "an illumination of the very process of writing itself - a compelling, richly rewarding and utterly original work of fiction about family and friendship and art in the Modern Age." If you've read Henry James in the past, or if you've been wanting to, be sure to give this beautifully-crafted novel about the Master himself a try. Our August book was 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky. With the current U.S. military action abroad and divisive politics at home, perhaps it's time to look again at "the year that rocked the world" - 1968, when there were anti-war demonstrations in Berkeley and Paris; the passage of the Voting Rights Act; the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and M.L.King, Jr.; the "Prague Spring" and Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe; Black Power salutes at the Mexico City Olympics; the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; "police riots" in Chicago at the Democratic Convention; and the Beatles' release of both The Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album. Mark Kurlansky, award-winning author of SALT, gives us a riveting account of this pivotal moment in history, a time of great hope and great upheaval. Does it shed light on similar polarizations and struggles occurring in today's world? Our July book was Natasha by David Bezmozgis. This collection of short stories presents the sometimes hilarious, sometimes melancholy tales of one Latvian Jewish family recently arrived in Toronto, the "city of their dreams." The unique voice of young Mark Berman, son of Bella and Roman Berman, conjures up Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, and Lenny Bruce. Critics are also comparing Bezmozgis to Anton Chekov for his ability to find just the right detail to convey his characters to us. Publishers Weekly writes, "These complex, evocative stories herald the arrival of a significant new voice...Bezmozgis captures the insecurity and loneliness of recent immigrants with utter believability." The book is a "slim volume," a quick read, but the characters will linger long after you've finished reading because of their charm and vulnerability. Our June book was Life and Times of Michael K. by J.M. Coetzee. In this moving novel a young man seeks a life of quiet solitude and dignity in war-torn South Africa. Wishing only to be left alone, Michael K. struggles for freedom despite the brutality of a system that captures and cages with no regard for the individual. This provocative book raises many questions: What is the cost of personal freedom? How important are the needs of the individual in a chaotic society? How does one maintain privacy in an intrusive world that enslaves the body and denies the spirit? Our May book was Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay. Journalist Victoria Finlay traveled around the globe to research the artistic, social and political meanings associated with different colors. She provides us with a narrative history involving yak trains hauling jade along ancient silk trade routes; Phoenicians sailing the Mediterranean in search of a special purple shell that garners wealth, sustenance, and prestige; and Aborigines of Australia carrying clumps of ochre across the Outback. Is Finlay's book art history? Or a travelogue? Our April book was The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and The Farming of Bones. In this deeply moving work of fiction, Danticat explores the world of those men known in Haiti as "dew breakers" - torturers - who brutalized the people of Haiti during the reign of the infamous dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The New York Times says, " Each tale in The Dew Breaker could stand on its own as a beautifully made story, but they come together like jigsaw-puzzle pieces to create a picture of this man's terrible history and his and his victime' afterlife." The story moves between Haiti in the 1960's and New York City today, where the man's past lies hidden beneath his new American reality. Our March book was The Best Science and Nature Writing 2004. Edited each year by a different scientist, this year's lively selection was made by Steven Pinker, renowned Harvard Professor of Cognitive Sciences and author of The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct. Pinker's idiosyncratic choices include essays about bird lovers, cat haters, the psychology of suicide terrorism, the weird world of octopuses, Sex Week at Yale, the latest in cloning techniques and the linguistics of click languages! Our February book was The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. A thought-provoking and critically acclaimed novel which examines the struggle of two people trying to rebuild their lives in post-WWII Japan. Aldred Leith, military hero and son of a famous novelist, has come to Eastern Asia to observe firsthand the subject matter of a book he intends to write. There he meets Helen, the daughter of a local Australian commander, and becomes captivated by her ability to live vicariously through literature. In addition, Japan itself becomes a character in the book, as Hazzard explores how an ancient society struggles to cope with the brutal implications of defeat in modern warfare. Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, calls the novel "brilliant and dazzling." Our January book was In the Shadow of Memory by Floyd Skloot. In December 1988, Oregon poet Floyd Skloot was stricken by a virus that targeted his brain. The resulting damage left him totally disabled and utterly changed. In the Shadow of Memory is a candid memoir of living with a brain and a mind that have suddenly been shattered - an intimate picture of what it is like to find oneself possessed of a ravaged memory, unstable balance, and wholesale changes in both cognitive and emotional powers. But the book is more than an account of catastrophic metamorphosis. Skloot also explores the gradual reassembling of himself, putting together his scattered memories, rediscovering the meaning of childhood and family history, learning a new way to be at home in the world. Combining the author's skills as a poet and novelist, this book finds humor, meaning, and hope in the story of a fragmented life made whole by love and the courage to thrive. |
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