Book List for September 2024 to June 2025
3rd Tuesdays (in general) at 1 PM (on Zoom – email Susan H. for info)
September 17 Cutting for Stone (2009, 541-688 pages, depends on edition) by Abraham Verghese
This novel by Ethiopian-born Indian-American medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother’s death at their births and forsaken by their father. This book includes a deep description of medical procedures and an exploration of the human side of medical practices.
When it was first published, this novel was on The New York Times Best Seller list for two years and was received well by critics. With its positive reception, former United States president Barack Obama put it on his summer reading list and the book was optioned for adaptations.
October 15 Out Stealing Horses (2003, 258 pages) by Per Petterson
Out Stealing Horses is the story of Norwegian man Trond Sanders, aged 67, who goes to live quietly in a cottage in a remote part of Norway in 1999. He meets a neighbor, Lars, whom he recognizes from when they were boys, and this leads him to reflect on events that happened when he was a teen.
This novel is in many ways a coming-of-age story, as Trond’s memories develop themes including the relationship between humans and nature, the importance of solitude for self-discovery, and the impacts of childhood experiences, memories, and history.
November 19 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
(2013, 388 pages) by Haruki Murakami
When his close-knit group of friends abruptly cuts all relationships with him, a young Tsukuru is left depressed and without answers. Years later, Tsukuru attempts to reconcile with his old friends, embarking on a quest for truth and a pilgrimage for happiness.
Because of his former rejection, Tsukuru feels that nobody will ever truly love him or know why he feels that he is colorless and empty and why he compares himself to a train station. This novel also deals with father-son relationships.
No December meeting
January 21 Sea of Poppies (2008, 528 pages) by Amitav Ghosh
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies, and convicts.
Sea of Poppies delineates the contemporary class domination, exploitation, caste biasness, untouchability, male domination, and quest for identity. The book provides us with a very colorful historical overview of India and its stormy relationship with the British.
February 18 The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011, 356 pages) by Stephen Greenblatt
Greenblatt tells the story of how Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th-century papal emissary and obsessive book hunter, saved the last copy of the Roman poet Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from near-terminal neglect in a German monastery, thus reintroducing important ideas that sparked the modern age.
March 18 Foster (2010, 88 pages), Small Things Like These (2020, 128 pages) by Claire Keegan
Foster: In 1981 Ireland, County Wexford, a girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, while her mother gives birth. She has no notion of when she will return home. In the strangers’ house, she finds affection she has not known before, and slowly she begins to blossom in their care.
Small Things Like These is the tale, simply told, of Bill Furlong, an ordinary middle-aged man, who in December 1985, in a small Irish town, slowly grasps the enormity of the local convent’s heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies (one instance of which has been exposed as the scandal of the Magdalene laundries).
In this haunting tale of love and learning, the existential chaos of a life ravaged by circumstance takes on a rhythm
of its own, one bound by loss and loneliness, but also an intelligent awareness of self.
April 15 A Tale for the Time Being (2013, 432 pages) by Ruth Ozeki
In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century.
This novel explores themes of time, isolation, womanhood, family history, and identity to connect the narratives of Ruth and Nao: two people who are themselves searching for lost time, but also searching for a home inside themselves.
May 20 Day (2024, 275 pages) by Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham’s Day peeks into the lives of a family on a specific April date across three years as life changes because of Covid and other challenges. It is about the same family of brother, sister, her husband and their two young children, his brother, and baby mama. Cunningham takes a microscope to the intimate lives of each of these five adults and two children, capturing their nuances.
June 17 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884, 362 pages) by Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s classic novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is told from the point of view of Huck Finn, a barely-literate teen who fakes his own death to escape his abusive, drunken father. He encounters a runaway slave named Jim, and the two embark on a raft journey down the Mississippi River, and come across all sorts of interesting folks.
