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2012 Reading
List:
For
discussion on June
7th:
 Left neglected, by Lisa
Genova
Sarah
Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont,
the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but
charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three
children-Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus. Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son's teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it's a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe. A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt. A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future. Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny-her new, true life-may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice. July:Unless, by Carole Shields
 "Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy,
fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're offered
what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to
despair."
Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy:
Her three almost grown daughters. Her twenty-year relationship
with their father. Her work translating the larger-than-life
French intellectual and feminist Danielle Westerman. Her
modest success with a novel of her own, and the clamour of her
American publisher for a sequel. Then in the spring of her
forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her
well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter
Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and
begging on a Toronto street corner, with a hand-lettered sign
reading GOODNESS around her neck.
GOODNESS. With the inconceivable loss of
her daughter like a lump in her throat, Reta tackles the
mystery of this message. What in this world has broken Norah,
and what could bring her back to the provisional safety of
home? Reta's wit is the weapon she most often brandishes as
she kicks against the pricks that have brought her daughter
down: Carol Shields brings us Reta's voice in all its
poignancy, outrage and droll humour.
Piercing and sad, astute and evocative,
full of tenderness and laughter, Unless will stand with The Stone
Diaries in the canon
of Carol Shields's fiction.
August:
 Half Blood Blues, by Esi
Edugyan
Paris,
1939. A young, black, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is
hauled off by the Nazis to Mauthausen based on the colour of
his skin. As the novel unfolds, Sid, the narrator and
conscience of the novel, details the friendships, love
affairs, and treacheries that led to Hiero's horrific fate.
From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris,
Sid, with his distinctive and compelling German-American
slang, leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known
world, and into the heart of his own guilty
conscience.
Half-Blood
Blues,
the second novel by an exceptionally talented young writer, is
an enticing, electric story about music, race, love and
loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of
others, in the name of art.
September:
 The Bishop’s Man, by Linden
MacIntyre
The
year is 1993 and Father Duncan MacAskill stands at a small
Cape Breton fishing harbour a few miles from where he grew up.
Enjoying the timeless sight of a father and son piloting a
boat, Duncan takes a moment's rest from his worries. But he
does not yet know that his already strained faith is about to
be tested by his interactions with a troubled boy, 18-year-old
Danny MacKay.
Known to fellow priests as the "Exorcist"
because of his special role as clean-up man for the Bishop of
Antigonish, Duncan has a talent for coolly reassigning deviant
priests while ensuring minimal fuss from victims and their
families. It has been a lonely vocation, but Duncan is
generally satisfied that his work is a necessary defense of
the church. All this changes when lawyers and a policeman
snoop too close for the bishop's comfort. Duncan is assigned a
parish in the remote Cape Breton community of Creignish and
told to wait it out.
October:
 The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane
Setterfield
The
Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about secrets, ghosts,
winter, books and family. The Thirteenth Tale is a book
lover's book, with much of the action taking place in
libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and
fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is
Setterfield's debut novel, for she makes the words come to
life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills.
With a mug of cocoa and The Thirteenth Tale,
contentment isn't far away.
November:
 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand,
by H. Simonson
Written
with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a
born storyteller, Major
Pettigrew's Last Stand
explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness
in the face of family obligation and
tradition.
When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an
unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village
shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced
to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century.
Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss
of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find
their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something
more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and
Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on
embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a
permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride
in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the
place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali?
No book for
December
January
2013:
Flowers for
Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
February
2013:
Desert
Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell Adventurer,
Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, by
Janet
Wallach |
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Algonquin Book Club