Here is an interesting list of books whose stories take place in boarding schools (not Hogwarts.)
http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/63026-10-best-boarding-school-books.html
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Hemingway's Best Novels
Nancy W. Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway (Rowman & Littlefield), ranks Ernest Hemingway's fiction books. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/62748-best-hemingway-books.html
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
WILD: FROM LOST TO FIND ON THE PACIFIC COAST TRAIL, BY CHERYL STRAYED
Book Discussion date and time: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 at 11:00 AM.
The inspiring memoir of a young woman who, reeling from personal catastrophe, set out alone to hike over a thousand miles from the Mohave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. (An Oprah's Book Club pick.)
Reviews
DOWNLOAD A READER'S GUIDE PREPARED BY THE STAFF
- Publishers Weekly:
- /* Starred Review */ In the summer of 1995, at age 26 and feeling at the end of her rope emotionally, Strayed resolved to hike solo the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,663-mile wilderness route stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian and traversing nine mountain ranges and three states. In this detailed, in-the-moment re-enactment, she delineates the travails and triumphs of those three grueling months. Living in Minneapolis, on the verge of divorcing her husband, Strayed was still reeling from the sudden death four years before of her mother from cancer; the ensuing years formed an erratic, confused time “like a crackling Fourth of July sparkler.” Hiking the trail helped decide what direction her life would take, even though she had never seriously hiked or carried a pack before. Starting from Mojave, Calif., hauling a pack she called the Monster because it was so huge and heavy, she had to perform a dead lift to stand, and then could barely make a mile an hour. Eventually she began to experience “a kind of strange, abstract, retrospective fun,” meeting the few other hikers along the way, all male; jettisoning some of the weight from her pack and burning books she had read; and encountering all manner of creature and acts of nature from rock slides to snow. Her account forms a charming, intrepid trial by fire, as she emerges from the ordeal bruised but not beaten, changed, a lone survivor. Agent: Janet Silver, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Agency. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed January 2, 2012) (Publishers Weekly, vol 259, issue 01, p)
- Library Journal:
- Strayed delves into memoir after her fiction debut, Torch . She here recounts her experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995 after her mother's death and her own subsequent divorce. Designated a National Scenic Trail in 1968 but not completed until 1993, the PCT runs from Mexico to Canada, and Strayed hiked sections of it two summers after it was officially declared finished. She takes readers with her on the trail, and the transformation she experiences on its course is significant: she goes from feeling out of her element with a too-big backpack and too-small boots to finding a sense of home in the wilderness and with the allies she meets along the way. Readers will appreciate her vivid descriptions of the natural wonders near the PCT, particularly Mount Hood, Crater Lake, and the Sierras—what John Muir proclaimed the "Range of Light." VERDICT This book is less about the PCT and more about Strayed's own personal journey, which makes the story's scope a bit unclear. However, fans of her novel will likely enjoy this new book. [See Prepub Alert, 10/1/11.]— Karen McCoy, Northern Arizona Univ. Lib., Flagstaff --Karen McCoy (Reviewed February 15, 2012) (Library Journal, vol 137, issue 03, p119)
- Kirkus:
- /* Starred Review */ Unsentimental memoir of the
author's three-month solo hike from California to Washington along the
Pacific Crest Trail. Following the death of her mother, Strayed's
(Torch, 2006) life quickly disintegrated. Family ties melted away; she
divorced her husband and slipped into drug use. For the next four years
life was a series of disappointments. "I was crying over all of it," she
writes, "over the sick mire I'd made of my life since my mother died;
over the stupid existence that had become my own. I was not meant to be
this way, to live this way, to fail so darkly." While waiting in line at
an outdoors store, Strayed read the back cover of a book about the
Pacific Crest Trail. Initially, the idea of hiking the trail became a
vague apparition, then a goal. Woefully underprepared for the
wilderness, out of shape and carrying a ridiculously overweight pack,
the author set out from the small California town of Mojave, toward a
bridge ("the Bridge of the Gods") crossing the Columbia River at the
Oregon-Washington border. Strayed's writing admirably conveys the rigors
and rewards of long-distance hiking. Along the way she suffered aches,
pains, loneliness, blistered, bloody feet and persistent hunger. Yet the
author also discovered a newfound sense of awe; for her, hiking the PCT
was "powerful and fundamental" and "truly hard and glorious." Strayed
was stunned by how the trail both shattered and sheltered her. Most of
the hikers she met along the way were helpful, and she also encountered
instances of trail magic, "the unexpected and sweet happenings that
stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail." A candid,
inspiring narrative of the author's brutal physical and psychological
journey through a wilderness of despair to a renewed sense of
self.(Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2012)
READ A NY TIMES REVIEW BY DANI SHAPIRO
READ AN ARTICLE FROM SFGATE (SAN FRANCISCO)
VISIT THE AUTHOR'S WEBSITE
MY 1,000-MILE WALK BACK TO HAPPINESS (MORE ABOUT CHERYL STRAYED'S LIFE)
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY: A NOVEL, BY RACHEL JOYCE
Discussion Leader: Edna Ritzenberg
Harold Fry, recently retired, lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated with almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn't seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye. Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person, and he sets off on foot, determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospital in Berwick-upon-Tweed, because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessy will live.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT, BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT
Discussion Leader: Ellen Getreu
Claire Limye Lanme--Claire of the Sea Light--is an enchanting child born into love and tragedy in Ville Rose, Haiti. Claire's mother died in childbirth, and on the girl's seventh birthday, her father, Nozias, decides to give her away to a local shopkeeper, who lost a child of her own, so that Claire can have a better life. Claire disappears, and as Nozias and others look for her, we are brought deep into the intertwined lives of the people who live in this small seaside town.
READ A REVIEW FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE
Watch Edwidge Danticat's TED talk
Download the Readers' Guide, prepared by H-WPL Staff
Watch Edwidge Danticat's TED talk
Download the Readers' Guide, prepared by H-WPL Staff
Monday, March 24, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
THE LOWLAND: A NOVEL, BY JHUMPA LAHIRI
Discussion Leader: Candace Plotsker-Herman
Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.
Lahiri’s (The Namesake) haunting second novel crosses generations, oceans, and the chasms that despair creates within families. Subhash and Udayan are brothers, 15 months apart, born in Calcutta in the years just before Indian independence and the country’s partition. As children, they are inseparable: Subhash is the elder, and the careful and reserved one; Udayan is more willful and wild. When Subhash moves to the U.S. for graduate school in the late 1960s, he has a hard time keeping track of Udayan’s involvement in the increasingly violent Communist uprising taking place throughout West Bengal. The only person who will eventually be able to tell Subhash, if not quite explain, what happened to his brother is Gauri, Udayan’s love-match wife, of whom the brothers’ parents do not approve. Forced by circumstances, Gauri and Subhash form their own relationship, one both intimate and distant, which will determine much of the rest of their adult lives. Lahiri’s skill is reflected not only in her restrained and lyric prose, but also in her moving forward chronological time while simultaneously unfolding memory, which does not fade in spite of the years. A formidable and beautiful book. (Publishers Weekly)
Pulitzer Prize winner Lahiri's (The Interpreter of Maladies ) unparalleled ability to transform the smallest moments into whole lives pinnacles in this extraordinary story of two brothers—so close that one is "the other side" of the other—coming of age in the political tumult of 1960s India. They are separated as adults, with Subhash, the elder, choosing an academic career in the United States and the more daring Udayan remaining in Calcutta, committed to correcting the inequities of his country. Udayan's political participation will haunt four generations, from his parents, who renounce the future, to his wife and his brother, who attempt to protect it, to the daughter and granddaughter who will never know him. VERDICT Lahiri is remarkable, achieving multilayered meaning in an act as simple as "banging the edge of the lid three or four times with a spoon, to break the seal"; her second novel and fourth title is deservedly one of this year's most anticipated books. Banal words of praise simply won't do justice; perhaps what is needed is a three-word directive: just read it . (Library Journal)
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