Monday

August September 2017 Book Choice

Late summer book choice was A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
(we also read another book by him - My Grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry)
Here is a NYTimes 2016 review

Fredrik Backman got tepid responses when he sent out the manuscript for his debut novel, “A Man Called Ove.” Most publishers ignored him, and several turned it down.
After a few months and a few more rejections, he began to think perhaps there wasn’t a market for a story about a cranky 59-year-old Swedish widower who tries and fails to kill himself.
Image result for a man called ove“It was rejected by one publisher with the line, ‘We like your novel, we think your writing has potential, but we see no commercial potential,” said Mr. Backman, 35, who lives outside Stockholm with his wife and two children. “That note I kept.”
In hindsight, that critique seems wildly, comically off base. Four years later, “A Man Called Ove” has sold more than 2.8 million copies worldwide, making the book one of Sweden’s most popular literary exports since Stieg Larsson’s thriller “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
The novel’s protagonist, Ove, is a lonely curmudgeon who screams at his neighbors for parking in the wrong place and punches a hospital clown whose magic tricks annoy him. Six months after his wife’s death, he’s planning to commit suicide and has turned off his radiators, canceled his newspaper subscription and anchored a hook into the ceiling to hang himself. But he keeps getting interrupted by his clueless, prying neighbors. He strikes up a friendship with an Iranian immigrant and her two young daughters, who find Ove’s grumpiness endearing.

Peter Borland, who acquired United States rights to “Ove” for Atria, said he was struck by the book’s pathos and humor.

Image result for a man called ove


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPoaN2XROk8

Molly Hosted the Dinner Party: 

June/July 2017 Book choice

Our first summer read was a historic foodie book Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee by Thomas J. Craughwell 

Here is a brief overview by Goodreads:

Image result for thomas jefferson and creme bruleeThis culinary biography recounts the 1784 deal that Thomas Jefferson struck with his slaves, James Hemings. The founding father was traveling to Paris and wanted to bring James along “for a particular purpose”— to master the art of French cooking. In exchange for James’s cooperation, Jefferson would grant his freedom. 

Thus began one of the strangest partnerships in United States history. As Hemings apprenticed under master French chefs, Jefferson studied the cultivation of French crops (especially grapes for winemaking) so the might be replicated in American agriculture. The two men returned home with such marvels as pasta, French fries, Champagne, macaroni and cheese, crème brûlée, and a host of other treats. This narrative history tells the story of their remarkable adventure—and even includes a few of their favorite recipes! 


Sally hosted the dinner party 




May 2017 Book Choice

Our May 2017 book choice was The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer
Here is part of the 2015 book review from the Guardian writer Celeste Ng 

Image result for girl in the red coatKate Hamer’s debut novel has the trappings of a thriller. Sensitive eight-year-old Carmel –the red-coated girl of the title – is spirited away by a man who claims to be her estranged grandfather. As Beth, her mother, desperately searches for her, Carmel realises that her kidnapper has not taken her at random: he believes she has a special gift. Told in the alternating perspectives of the grieving mother and the missing daughter, it keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip.
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It’s no accident that the title calls to mind Little Red Riding Hood, the ultimate story of a young girl captured by a predator. Carmel is abducted from a storytelling festival, and both she and her mother make frequent reference to the fairytale nature of what’s happened. Beth wishes she’d kept her daughter “shut away in a fortress or a tower. Locked with a golden key that I would swallow.” Spotting her shadow on the wall beside her captor’s, Carmel muses: “We both look like the paper puppets … and I wonder what story we’d be telling if we were.” She steels herself by thinking: “Sometimes, it’s easier to think of things as stories … If I made these things into stories I could float away from them, and look at them sideways, or like they were happening inside a snow globe.”

Jeannie hosted the dinner party 






April 2017 Book post

The April 2017 book selection is Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman.
Here is a brief review from Goodreads:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro; the Father of Impressionism.

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel's salvation is their maid Adelle's belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle's daughter. But Rachel's life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father's business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Fréderick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.

Image result for marriage of oppositesBuilding on the triumphs of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things, set in a world of almost unimaginable beauty, The Marriage of Opposites showcases the beloved, bestselling Alice Hoffman at the height of her considerable powers. Once forgotten to history, the marriage of Rachel and Fréderick is a story that is as unforgettable as it is remarkable.





Kitty Hosted the Event:

Books of 2016 Looking Back


The Books of 2016 Looking back...


Image result for loving frank book
February 2016

Image result for let's pretend this never happened book
March April 2016


Image result for drowning ruth book
May 2016

Image result for my grandmother told me to tell you she's sorry
June 2016

Image result for the girl with all the gifts book
August 2016 
Image result for rocket girl book
September 2016 
Image result for shakespeare saved my life
October 2016 
Image result for all the light we cannot see
November December 2016