Group Picture-Stiff

We read a very unique and interesting book this month! I think most of us will be reading another book by Mary Roach. Very different!

 

I think Gary rushed through the picture-taking process this time! Good enough!

Heather re-joined this month after maternity leave/sabbatical!

 

Spring Challenge 2013

Well, the first weekend of spring in St. Louis this year was not what we were expecting! It still feels like winter with a foot of snow! It's still officially spring, though; that means it's time for the spring challenge. Let's make it an easy one this time. We'll read the follow up to Jeff Well's first book that we enjoyed so much. This spring we'll read All My Patients Kick and Bite.

The highly amusing, uplifting and entertaining follow-up to All My Patients Have Tales... In this second collection by our intrepid vet, Jeff Wells has his work cut out for him when he learns that llamas do not take kindly to having their toenails trimmed, dog owners in the medical field can be a real pain, Scottish Highland cattle stick together and just might run a vet out of their enclosure, and fixing an overly amorous burro often needs to be prioritized. Told with Wells’s trademark humor and gentle touch, these and many other heartwarming, heartbreaking, funny and strange stories will give readers a whole new appreciation for those who care for our pets.

This should be a pretty easy challenge that we can all actually finish!

Group Picture-Heaven is Here

We had another great discussion! Check out The Nie Nie Dialogues if you haven't already!

 

 

Thanks to Linda for hosting this month.

 

 

January Book Choices!

It's time to select our first book of 2013! We'll choose from memoirs for January.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe | Paperback, 352 pages

“What are you reading?”

That’s the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, often in six months or less.

This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother, who start a “book club” that brings them together as her life comes to a close. Over the next two years, Will and Mary Anne carry on conversations that are both wide-ranging and deeply personal, prompted by an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading. Their list jumps from classic to popular, from poetry to mysteries, from fantastic to spiritual. The issues they discuss include questions of faith and courage as well as everyday topics such as expressing gratitude and learning to listen. Throughout, they are constantly reminded of the power of books to comfort us, astonish us, teach us, and tell us what we need to do with our lives and in the world. Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.

Will and Mary Anne share their hopes and concerns with each other—and rediscover their lives—through their favorite books. When they read, they aren’t a sick person and a well person, but a mother and a son taking a journey together. The result is a profoundly moving tale of loss that is also a joyful, and often humorous, celebration of life: Will’s love letter to his mother, and theirs to the printed page.

 

Schwalbe is the founder of cookstr.com and has worked in publishing and journalism. This is his first memoir. It has a 4.11 rating on Goodreads.

Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson | Hardcover, 320 pages

Stephanie Nielson began sharing her life in 2005 on the Nie Nie dialogues, drawing readers in with her warmth and candor. She quickly attracted a loyal following that was captivated by the upbeat mother happily raising her young children, madly in love with her husband, Christian (Mr. Nielson to her readers), and filled with gratitude for her blessed life.

However, everything changed in an instant on a sunny day in August 2008, when Stephanie and Christian were in a horrific plane crash. Christian was burned over 40 percent of his body, and Stephanie was on the brink of death, with burns over 80 percent of her body. She would remain in a coma for four months.

In the aftermath of this harrowing tragedy, Stephanie maintained a stunning sense of humor, optimism, and resilience. She has since shared this strength of spirit with others through her blog, in magazine features, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Now, in this moving memoir, Stephanie tells the full, extraordinary story of her unlikely recovery and the incredible love behind it—from a riveting account of the crash to all that followed in its wake. With vivid detail, Stephanie recounts her emotional and physical journey, from her first painful days after awakening from the coma to the first time she saw her face in the mirror, the first kiss she shared with Christian after the accident, and the first time she talked to her children after their long separation. She also reflects back on life before the accident, to her happy childhood as one of nine siblings, her close-knit community and strong Mormon faith, and her fairy-tale love story, all of which became her foundation of strength as she rebuilt her life.

What emerges from the wreckage of a tragic accident is a unique perspective on joy, beauty, and overcoming adversity that is as gripping as it is inspirational. Heaven Is Here is a poignant reminder of how faith and family, love and community can bolster us, sustain us, and quite literally, in some cases, save us.

 

This is Stephanie's first book. She is a well known Mormon mommy blogger. Heaven is Here has a 4.24 rating on Goodreads.

Louise: Amended by Louise Krug | Paperback, 200 pages

A beautiful young woman from Kansas is about to embark on the life of her dreams—California! Glossy journalism! French boyfriend!—only to suffer a brain bleed that collapses the right side of her body, leaving her with double vision, facial paralysis, and a dragging foot.

An unflinching, wise, and darkly funny portrait of sudden disability and painstaking recovery, the memoir presents not only Louise's perspective, but also the reaction of her loved ones—we see, in fictional interludes, what it must have been like for Louise's boyfriend to bathe her, or for her mother to apply lipstick to her nearly immobile mouth. Challenging the notion that one person's tragedy is a single person's story, Louise: Amended depicts a dismantling—and rebirth—of an entire family.
At age twenty-two, Louise Krug suffered a brain bleed and underwent an emergency craniotomy that disrupted her ability to walk, see, and move half her face. Now, six years later, Louise has astounded doctors and loved ones by recovering not only much of her vision and mobility, but a ferocious spirit and enviable grace. She currently lives with her husband Nick and daughter Olive in Lawrence, Kansas, where she's a PhD candidate and teacher.

Louise: Amended is Krug's first book. It has a 4.08 rating on Goodreads.

We'll talk about the schedule for next year at the December meeting, but the January meeting will likely be hosted by Linda.

Fall Challenge 2012

Well, summer officially ended over the weekend. Did you finish reading Anna Karenina? If not, there's still time. The movie isn't out yet. But, either way, we're moving on to the fall challenge for 2012.

This fall, let's read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I've been thinking about reading it since it came out last October, shortly after his death. (I started thinking about this book again with all the talk about the iPhone 5.) Walter Isaacson was asked by Jobs to write his biography. Isaacson also wrote biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.  It was a 2011 Time Best Books of the Year. The full-length movie version will be adapted by Aaron Sorkin.

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

 

Who's joining in?

The Book Page

Do you read The Book Page blog (the book case)? There was a recent post about 20 unexpected book club picks. A bunch of them sound pretty good. Remember, we need 3 to pick from for December!

I think I'm going to get this one:

Final Exam by Pauline Chen

When Pauline Chen began medical school twenty years ago, she dreamed of saving lives. What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Almost immediately, Chen found herself wrestling with medicine’s most profound paradox, that a profession premised on caring for the ill also systematically depersonalizes dying. Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her education, training, and practice as she grapples at strikingly close range with the problem of mortality, and struggles to reconcile the lessons of her training with her innate knowledge of shared humanity, and to separate her ideas about healing from her fierce desire to cure.

From her first dissection of a cadaver in gross anatomy to the moment she first puts a scalpel to a living person; from the first time she witnesses someone flatlining in the emergency room to the first time she pronounces a patient dead, Chen is struck by her own mortal fears: there was a dying friend she could not call; a young patient’s tortured death she could not forget; even the sense of shared kinship with a corpse she could not cast aside when asked to saw its pelvis in two. Gradually, as she confronts the ways in which her fears have incapacitated her, she begins to reject what she has been taught about suppressing her feelings for her patients, and she begins to carve out a new role for herself as a physician and as human being. Chen’s transfixing and beautiful rumination on how doctors negotiate the ineluctable fact of death becomes, in the end, a brilliant questioning of how we should live.

Moving and provocative, motored equally by clinical expertise and extraordinary personal grace, this is a piercing and compassionate journey into the heart of a world that is hidden and yet touches all of our lives. A superb addition to the best medical literature of our time.

Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss

The release date for this book is January 24th.
I am a self-proclaimed addict of the Kennedys, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I was in fifth grade when our only Catholic president was assasinated. I will never forget that day, November 22, 1963. Since then I have read several books about our late President and his family. I have Jackie Kennedy's new book on my list and now I will put this one there. Can't wait to find time to read these...

To everyone else, John F. Kennedy Jr. may have been American royalty, but to RoseMarie Terenzio he was an entitled nuisance—and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. RoseMarie was his personal assistant, his publicist, and one of his closest confidantes during the last five years of his life. In this, her first memoir, she bravely recounts her own Fairy Tale Interrupted, describing the unlikely friendship between a blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.
Funny, moving, and fresh, her memoir is a unique account by the woman who was with him through dating, politics, the paparazzi, and his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Her street smarts, paired with her loyalty, candor, and relentless work ethic, made her the trusted insider to America’s most famous man.

After John and Carolyn’s tragic, untimely deaths on July 16, 1999, RoseMarie’s whole world came crashing down around her, along with her hopes for the future. Only now does she feel she can tell her story in a book that is at once a moving tribute and a very real picture of her friend and employer.

Many books have sought to capture John F. Kennedy Jr.’s life. None has been as intimate or as honest as Fairy Tale Interrupted, a true portrait of the man behind the icon—patient, protective, surprisingly goofy, occasionally thoughtless and self-involved, yet capable of extraordinary generosity and kindness. She reveals what John really had in mind for his political future, how he handled media attention, and the reality of life behind the scenes at George magazine. She also shares how she dealt with the ultra-secretive planning of John and Carolyn’s wedding on Cumberland Island—and the heartbreak of their deaths.

Fairy Tale Interrupted is a deeply loving story and a fascinating adventure, filled with warmth, humor, insight, and five years’ worth of unforgettable memories.

Michael J Fox

In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when “life goes skidding sideways.” He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor. Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. He learned Economics as a starving artist; an unexpected turn as a neophyte activist schooled him in Political Science; and his approach to Comparative Literature involved stacking books up against their movie versions.

It only has a 3.4 rating on Goodreads, but I really love him.

Coming Soon To A Theater Near You

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
by Michael Lewis

Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities - his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission - but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers - numbers! - collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors." "What these geek numbers show - no, prove - is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base on balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics." Billy paid attention to those numbers - with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to - and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride : before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.

The book is recommended by Dominic and Tony.

The movie is starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

The Stranger Beside Me intrigues me. I don't read many true crime books, but Ted Bundy and his obvious charm and seemingly normal life makes me want to read this one. I haven't read any Ann Rule books, but from her reviews on Amazon it seems I'm missing out!

This story is so chilling, so frightening, it grips you in the gut. Ann Rule has simply stated the facts. No sensationalism, no gratuitous gore, no psychobabble, just the facts as they happend. And even though the reader might think of Ted Bundy as "old news," and even though he was executed in 1989, this book makes one check to see that the doors and windows are locked.

There are actually two stories here: one describes the gradual disintegration of a seemingly normal, affable, brilliant man into a sexual psychopath so evil, so methodical in his vicious killings, that one wonders if he was at all human. The other story is that of Ann Rule herself, a decent, hard-working, middle-aged mother of four who meets and befriends a nice young man working beside her in a crisis clinic. A man she regards as a younger brother; a man she views as a close and trusted friend. The slow but inexorable realization on Rule's part that this man is in fact an unspeakably violent serial killer is as painful to read as it was for her to experience.

Each victim is described in terms of such respect and such anguish that even a family member can feel that his or her daughter has been given a chance to shine, a chance to be more than a victim, more than a nameless number (8th girl killed, and so forth). The poignancy of these girls' very human preoccupations and lives serves to outline the contrasting horror in even more detail. That is why Rule does not have to defile the victims with intricate detail. The contrast between their young lives and their terrible deaths is enough in itself.

Rule's new Afterward, written in 2000, is fascinating. She has not "recovered and moved on"; there is no real "closure." She has come to accept that the incomprehensible contrast between "Ted the Dear Friend" and "Ted the Monster" will never leave her, and will never be fully explained, no matter how many facts she sifts, no matter how much progress has been made in understanding the sexual psychopath. It is her fate to have known Bundy in all his skins; it is our privilege to read her account of it.

Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant Escape from India's Caste System by Narendra Jadhav

This type of story always amazes me. One, because it is 2011 and things like this should not be happening, and two, the resilence of people and the fortitude they have. I haven't read this, but came across it while looking at Amazon's best seller list. I have definitely put this on my "to read soon" list.

Every sixth human being in the world today is an Indian, and every sixth Indian is an untouchable. For thousands of years the untouchables, or Dalits, the people at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, have been treated as subhuman. In this remarkable book, at last giving voice to India's voiceless, Narendra Jadhav tells the awe-inspiring story of his family's struggle for equality and justice in India. Based on his father's diaries and family stories, Jadhav has written the triumphant story of his parents--their great love, unwavering courage, and eventual victory in the struggle to free themselves and their children from the caste system. He vividly brings his parents' world to light and unflinchingly documents the lives of untouchables--the hunger, the cruel humiliations, the perpetual fear, and the brutal abuse. Untouchables is an eye-opening work that gives readers insight into the lives of India's 165 million Dalits, whose struggle for equality continues even today.

Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

I chose non-fiction this week for no particular reason. I read this book about 8 years ago and fell in love with the writing style of David McCullough. Although you are reading about history, I know many of those reading this blog hate it, he tells the story through narrative style which makes it so much more interesting to read. I've also read John Adams and 1776 and plan to read his newest; The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. He tells a tale like no other; you are missing out if you haven't read any of his books.

The history of civil engineering may sound boring, but in David McCullough's hands it is, well, riveting. His award-winning histories of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal were preceded by this account of the disastrous dam failure that drowned Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889. Written while the last survivors of the flood were still alive, McCullough's narrative weaves the stories of the town, the wealthy men who owned the dam, and the forces of nature into a seamless whole. His account is unforgettable: "The wave kept on coming straight toward him, heading for the very heart of the city. Stores, houses, trees, everything was going down in front of it, and the closer it came, the bigger it seemed to grow.... The height of the wall of water was at least thirty-six feet at the center.... The drowning and devastation of the city took just about ten minutes." A powerful, definitive book, and a tribute to the thousands who died in America's worst inland flood.

ERMA BOMBECK

This past Saturday was The Susan G Komen Race For The Cure. I thought I would highlight an author who battled breast cancer.

Erma was a stay at home mom who, in the early 60's started writing a humorous column for a local newspaper, for a whopping $3 a column. It quickly became popular and was syndicated nationwide. She soon began writing for the popular magazines of the 70's, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Family Circle, Mccall's and Readers Digest. She also lectured across the country.

I remember reading her column in the Post. I also enjoyed reading her books The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank and If Life Is A Bowl of Cherries, Why Am I In The Pits? She wrote several others.

Here's a word of advice from Erma. Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. She was a funny lady. Check her out.

The Lady and The Panda

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time.

Ruth was the toast of 1930s New York, a dress designer newly married to a wealthy adventurer, Bill Harkness. Just weeks after their wedding, however, Bill decamped for China in hopes of becoming the first Westerner to capture a giant panda–an expedition on which many had embarked and failed miserably. Bill was also to fail in his quest, dying horribly alone in China and leaving his widow heartbroken and adrift. And so Ruth made the fateful decision to adopt her husband’s dream as her own and set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

This book by Vicki Croke is on my 100 list. I saw that it was being discussed at The Buder Branch Library on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at
1:00 PM.

Take Action

I'm reading "Seth Godin: Unboxed", offered by Daily Lit. These are exerpts from his new book, just released in March, called Poke The Box. It definitely gives you something to think about!

Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-– in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organizations (and most careers)-– the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”

Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.

THE MAN, THE CAN

Unlike the friendly but fictional food faces of Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, Chef Boyardee - that jovial, mustachioed Italian Chef - is real. Ettore "Hector" Bioardi(that's how the family really spells it) founded the company with his brothers in 1928, after the family immigrated to America from Italy.

Though Ameria came to know him as Chef Boyardee - in the apron and trademark tall hat - Anna Boiardi knew hom simply as Uncle Hector. Anna carried on her family's culinary tradition; her new book, Delicious Memories, is part cookbook, part family history and part homage to her ancestors - immigrants who made their way in a new country.

I heard Anna on NPR radio the other day. Her book sounds like it would be a two for one - nostalgia and recipes!

David Thorne's Hair Tour

Did you know that a lock of Justin Bieber's hair is currently on tour? Said tour inspired the hilarious David Thorne, author of the way too funny new book The Internet Is a Playground, to launch a tour of his own locks. (check out www.HelpMeSellMoreBooksThanJustinBieber.com)

His hair is visiting Subterranean Books in the Loop, but only til tonight at 8pm. For $1, you can take a picture with The Hair, and that money will go to the National Children's Cancer Society, as will $200 from Tarcher, Thorne's publisher, for every participating bookstore.

 
David Thorne is a humorist, satirist, Internet personality and author. His website, 27bslash6.com, typically receives several thousand hits a day, he has more than 60,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook, and his work has been featured on the BBC, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He now lives in the United States.

Coming Soon

The Story of Charlotte's Web by Michael Sims will be released on June 7. I will definitely be reading this, since that was my favorite children's book of all.

As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats-White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people." It's all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E. B. White. With Charlotte's Web, which has gone on to sell more than 45 million copies, the man William Shawn called "the most companionable of writers" lodged his own character, the avuncular author, into the hearts of generations of readers.

In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole" by mining the raw ore of his childhood friendship with animals in Mount Vernon, New York. translating his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into an al-time classic. Blending White's correspondence with the likes of Ursula Nordstrom, James Thurber, and Harold Ross, the E. B. White papers at Cornell, and the archives of HarperCollins and the New Yorker into his own elegant narrative, Sims brings to life the shy boy whose animal stories--real and imaginery--made him famous around the world.

Lost In Shangri-La

This is a true story of survival, adventure and the most incredible rescue mission of WWll by Mitchell Zuckoff.

Near the end of World War II, a plane carrying 24 members of the United States military, including nine Women’s Army Corps (WAC) members, crashed into the New Guinea jungle during a sightseeing excursion. 21 men and women were killed. The three survivors--a beautiful WAC, a young lieutenant who lost his twin brother in the crash, and a severely injured sergeant--were stranded deep in a jungle valley notorious for its cannibalistic tribes. They had no food, little water, and no way to contact their military base. The story of their survival and the stunning efforts undertaken to save them are the crux of Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff’s remarkable and inspiring narrative. Faced with the potential brutality of the Dani tribe, known throughout the valley for its violence, the trio’s lives were dependent on an unprecedented rescue mission--a dedicated group of paratroopers jumped into the jungle to provide aid and medical care, consequently leaving the survivors and paratroopers alike trapped on the jungle floor. A perilous rescue by plane became their only possible route to freedom. A riveting story of deliverance under the most unlikely circumstances, Lost in Shangri-La deserves its place among the great survival stories of World War II. --Lynette Mong

I haven't read many war stories, other than ones about the holocaust, but I read an exerpt on Amazon and I think I would like it.

New Movie

Eyes of a Dreamer is a new movie that is in the production phase with Brad Wyman serving as the director. It is set in 1969 and based on the cult leader, Charles Manson. The 24-year old actress Lindsay Lohan is considering the role as Sharon Tate in the film.

If you want to read a good book on this subject, read Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi. It was written in 1974 and is the #1 best selling true crime book ever because of three things: It is the story of one of the highest profile murder cases in the world's history, even 30+ years after the fact, it is still an amazing and unique story, and finally, Vincent Bugliosi is a fabulous writer. Most books written by non-writers might tell a good story but not in a dramatic way that a true author otherwise might. Bugliosi has no problem doing that with his books.