Book Club 2008.
We meet in the store the first Thursday of each month at 7pm and the
third Wednesday of each month at
9am.
We usually average 5 - 10 participants, no fee, no reservations required.
All are welcome. Call us for any other information you need: 425-775-2789.
See just below for the current book club choices; see the
bottom of the page for books from 2008
and 2009; and see here for a
partial list of books
we have chosen in earlier years.
2010 Book Club Books.
March
4 & 17, 2010: Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi
Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by
Ben MacIntyre.
Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also
one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the
traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for
Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and
the other began. Based on recently declassified files, Agent Zigzag tells
Chapman’s full story for the first time. It’s a gripping tale of loyalty, love,
treachery, espionage, and the thin and shifting line between fidelity and
betrayal.
April
1 & 21, 2010: Guernica by
Dave Boling.
An extraordinary, sweeping epic of love, family and war set in the Basque town
of Guernica before, during, and after its destruction by the German Luftwaffe on
the eve of World War II.
In 1935, Miguel Navarro finds himself on the wrong side of the Spanish
Nationalists, so he makes his way to Guernica, the most ancient town of the
Basque region. In the midst of this idyllic, isolated bastion of democratic
values, Miguel finds more than a new life - he finds a love that not even war,
tragedy or death can destroy.
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award Winner.
May
6 & 19, 2010: Dreamers of the Day by
Mary Doria Russell.
With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary
Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story
that brilliantly elucidates today’s headlines.
Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, has come into a modest
inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy
Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference
convenes, she is freed for the first time from her mother’s withering influence
and finds herself being wooed by a handsome, mysterious German. At the same
time, Agnes–with her plainspoken American opinions–is drawn into the company of
Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell, who will, in the
space of a few days, redraw the world map to create the modern Middle East. As
they change history, Agnes too will find her own life transformed forever.
June
3 & 16, 2010: The English Major by
Jim Harrison.
The English Major is a wryly funny novel that sparkles with the generous
humanity of his vision.
“It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim
Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man,
divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an
ex-wife, on a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the
United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds to overcome
the banal names men have given them. Cliff ’s adventures take him through a
whirlwind affair with a former student from his high school–teacher days
twenty-some years before, to a “snake farm” in Arizona owned by an old
classmate; and to the high octane existence of his son, a big-time movie
producer who has just bought an apartment over the Presidio in San Francisco.
The English Major is the map of a man’s journey into—and out of—himself, and it
is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked
wit.
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Books we have discussed so far in 2010:
February
2010: Mrs. Dalloway by
Virginia Woolf.
January 2010: A Fine Balance by
Robinton Mistry.
Books we discussed in 2009:
November
2009: Wise Blood by
Flannery O'Connor.
October
2009: Olive Kitteridge by
Elizabeth Strout.
September
2009: Justinian's Flea: The First
Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire by
William Rosen.
August
2009: People of the Book by
Geraldine Brooks.
July 2009: Infidel by
Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
June 2009: Run: A Novel by
Ann Patchett.
May 2009: The Street of a Thousand
Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama.
April 2009: The White Cascade: The
Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by
Gary Krist.
March 2009: Mistress of the Art of
Death by Ariana Franklin.
February 2009: The Last Chinese Chef:
A Novel by Nicole Mones.
January 2009: The Bridge of Sighs by
Richard Russo.
Books we discussed in 2008:
November 2008: Loving Frank:
A Novel by Nancy Horan.
October 2008:
Returning to Earth: A Novel by Jim Harrsison.
September 2008: Truck: A
Love Story by Michael Perry.
August 2008: The Summer Book
by Tove Jansson,
July 2008: Out Stealing Horses:
A Novel by Per Petterson, translated by Anne
Born.
June 2008: Extremely Loud & Incredibly
Close: A Novel by Jonathan
Safran Foer.
May 2008: Water for Elephants: A Novel by
Sara Gruen.
April 2008: Three Cups
of Tea: One Man's Mission
to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson
and David Oliver Relin
March 2008: Restless: A
Novel by William Boyd.
February 2008: The History of Love: A
Novel by Nicole Krauss.
January 2008: The Grapes of Wrath by
John Steinbeck.
See here for a list of even more books
our book club has chosen to discuss over the past several years.