A to Z Blogging Challenge - Z

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

Well, here we are at our final letter. It's been an interesting Challenge and I've connected with some really nice bloggers. So, without further ado...

Z is for Zusak, Markus - The Book Thief

From Amazon:

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

It somehow seems appropriate that my last author tells a story about a young book thief who spreads the joy of reading to others, and in so doing, helps them during troubled times. We all read, to learn, to dream or to just get away from our own place in time, if only for a little while. 

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

Also considered:

Zenter, Alexit - Touch

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - Y

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

Only two letter so go so, for today,

Y is for Young, Wm. Paul - The Shack

From Amazon:

Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

Those of us in our reading group were split on this one. Those who liked this novel, liked it a lot. Those who didn't, really, didn't like it at all. I guess it's one of those novels that speaks to each of us individually, so you'll have to read it, to see what it says to you.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - X

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

OMG, I'm grabbing at straws, here!!!! The only book who's author's last name  begins with  the letter 'X', is a Chinese author who writes all kind of Chinese books, which fine, if you're Chinese.

So in desperation I  have looked to other sources. Being a retired nurse, and a mother, the existence of X chromosome was near and dear to me, having given birth to four daughters. So, with a slight departure from the theme, I've not highlighted  a novel or book, but a medical fact and an author.

So, X is for  the 'X' chromosome, discovered by Mary F. Lyons.


The Author - Mary F. Lyon 
Mary Lyon was born in Norwich, England in 1925, and received her higher education at Cambridge University (B.A. 1946; Ph.D. 1950; ScD 1968). She then joined a group in Edinburgh set up to study the genetic hazards of radiation, using mutagenesis experiments in mice. In 1955 she moved with this group to the MRC Radiobiology Unit, Harwell, where she headed the Genetics Section from 1962-86. It was while working on radiation hazards in 1961 that she discovered X-chromosome inactivation, for which she is best known. She has also done extensive work on the mouse t-complex, and made many other contributions to mammalian genetics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her awards is the Wolf Prize for Medicine in 1997. 

The sex chromosomes differ from all others in that they are the only ones that vary in number between different individuals within a species. The severe developmental defects that accompany rare extra copies of autosomes raised the question of how XX females and XY males can accommodate different numbers of X-chromosomes.  In mammals the almost complete inactivation of one X-chromosome in each cell of a female provided an answer. The discovery of X-chromosome inactivation arose from a synthesis of three or four separate observations in different areas of genetics. Although discovered in the mouse, it proved to be a general mechanism among mammals. 

 I'm happy for her discovery because I have given birth to four beautiful daughters (xx chromosones), who have, collectively given birth to seven awesome grandchildren, so far, :-). Five with xy and two with xx chromosomes.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - W

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

There were several good reads by 'W' authors, but I had to make a choice.

So, 'W' is for White, Sue - Ten Thousand Truths

 

From Amazon:

A moving story of losing family but finding a new one. Thirteen-year-old Rachel is bad news, or so her foster care worker tells her. She's been shuttled from one rotten foster family to another ever since her mother and brother died in a car accident five years ago, and she's running out of options. So when she gets caught shoplifting and is kicked out of her latest home, the only place left to send her is the last resort for kids like her: a farm in the middle of nowhere run by a disfigured recluse named Amelia Walton, whom Rachel nicknames "Warty" because of the strange lumps covering her face and neck. Rachel settles into life at the farm, losing herself in her daily chores and Amelia's endless trivia, and trying to forget her past and the secret she's holding inside. But when a letter arrives for her out of the blue, Rachel soon realizes that you can't hide from your past-or your future.

We, at our real Monday Night Reading Group, were quite partial to this novel. For one thing the author Sue White, was the facilitator at our  meeting. We picked her brains for over 30 minutes about writing in general and she patiently answered all our questions before  we even got to discussing the great book.

We really liked the local setting to this novel and the way Rachel wound her way from being the 'rebellious kid' to getting inside your heart and mind and becoming someone to admire. It's a story about seeing past what is obvious on the surface to seeing what real love looks like.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

Also considered and enjoyed:

Walls, Jeannette - Half Broke Horses, The Glass Castle

White, Sue - The Year Mrs. Montague Cried

Winnman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbitt

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - V

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

So, 'V' is for Verghese, Abraham - Cutting for Stone

From Amazon:

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel — an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him — nearly destroying him — Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

There was a lot of lively discussion surrounding this sweeping novel as it wound it's way from one period of time and continent to another, then, into our hearts as we journeyed with the twins until they found each other and their birth father once again.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

A to Z Blogging Challenge - U

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

The kind and every so diligent readers in our  facebook , book club, "What to read Next?", came through for me again, with their reading suggestions.

So without further ado.

U is for Urquart, Jane - Sanctuary Line

 

From Amazon:
Set in the present day on a farm at the shores of Lake Erie, Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth-century past, in Ireland and Ontario, into a gradually unfolding contemporary story of events in the lives of the members of one family that come to alter their futures irrevocably. There are ancestral lighthouse-keepers, seasonal Mexican workers; the migratory patterns and survival techniques of the Monarch butterfly; the tragedy of a young woman's death during a tour of duty in Afghanistan; three very different but equally powerful love stories. Jane Urquhart brings to vivid life the things of the past that make us who we are, and reveals the sometimes difficult path to understanding and forgiveness.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Also considered: 

Uris, Leon - The Haj

Wordless Wednesday - April 24, 2013 Spring Blossoms {with Linky}

First Spring Blossoms

Linky

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - T

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club have read, as a group, separately or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

This was another tough letter. Surprisingly from all the books read as a group, none of them had authors whose last names began with the letter 'T'. We did however, have a few mentioned in our online group. (Thank you, thank you, kind members!!) So it was from those that I selected this book.

So,  T is for Tyson, Sylvia (Yeh, the same one from Ian & Sylvia and Quartet) - Joyner's Dream

From Amazon:

Joyner’s Dream is the sweeping story of a family and its dubious legacy: an abiding love of music coupled with a persistent knack for thieving. Beginning in England in the 1780s, continuing in Halifax at the time of the Great Explosion, and ending in Toronto in the present, eight larcenous generations from all walks of life—craftsmen and highwaymen, aristocrats and servants, lawyers and B-movie actors—are connected by music, a secret family journal and one long-lived violin. When the branches of the family are reunited and lingering secrets are revealed, we have come full circle in a hugely satisfying and surprising tale.

This multi-generational story—told in a spellbinding series of historical voices—abounds in such rich social detail and sharply rendered characters, it affords the deep reading pleasures to be found in the novels of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

I think this too might be a consideration of our small Monday night reading group, given the local color and the rich historical history.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

Also considered:

Torday, Paul - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Thuy, Kim - Ru

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - S

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight authors and their books.I have chosen ones that we, in our book club have read as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

I found this letter to be a very difficult one. Not because there were no authors beginning with 'S', but because there were so many. We have read several and they were all good. But, a choice had to be made.

So, the letter 'S' is for Skloot, Rebecca - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

From Amazon:

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
        
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Three of us in our 'actual' Book Club, are retired registered nurses. We are all mothers to either humans, fur babies, or both. The  fact that this could actually happen and the unsettling facts exposed during the author's search for the truth and how that impacted Henrietta's family in both the past and present was almost unbelievable. 

An absolute, must read from our perspective!

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, Book Club, please  select the link,  What to Read Next

Also considered and greatly enjoyed were:

Stein, Garth - The Art of Racing in the Rain

Sparks, Nicholas - Safe Haven, The Wedding

Sebold, Alive - The Lovely Bones 

See, Lisa - Snow Flower  and the Secret Fan

Shaffer, Mary Ann and Barrows, Annie - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Schlink, Bernhard -The Reader

Stockett, Kathryn - The Help

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - R

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have read, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, called, ‘What to Read Next?’

So, R is for de Rosnay, Tatiana - Sarah's Key

From Amazon:

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. 

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

We did read this heart wrenching novel in our book club. The struggles of the family in 1942 and Julia's own struggle, in 2002, to come to terms with her own situation made for a very compelling read and discussion in our group.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Also considered:

Rich, Robert - The Midwife of Venice

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 -Q

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have read either, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

We're heading into the last turn, everyone!! Yay!

So, Q is for Quindlen, Anna - Every Last One

From Amazon:

In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor.  Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount.  And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterwards is a testament to the power of a woman’s love and determination, and to the invisible line of hope and healing that connects one human being with another. Ultimately, in the hands of Anna Quindlen’s mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the the things we fear most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, to live a life we never dreamed we’d have to live but must be brave enough to try.

We have not read this one in our book club, but it came recommended by one of our on-line members. It may well become a group read after all.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

A to Z Challenge 2013 - P

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have read either, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

Today P is for Picoult, Jodi - Vanishing Acts

From Amazon:

How do you recover the past when it was never yours to lose?

Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her beloved, widowed father, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall...until a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret about herself that changes the world as she knows it -- and threatens to jeopardize her future. With Vanishing Acts, Jodi Picoult explores how life -- as we know it -- might not turn out the way we imagined; how the people we've loved and trusted can suddenly change before our very eyes; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat. Once again, Picoult handles an astonishing and timely topic with under-standing, insight, and compassion.

This entrancing novel, keeps the reader riveted to every page, just so they will keep turning, to find out what happens next. A truly enjoyable novel!

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

Also considered and very much enjoyed:

Pasricha, Neil - The Book of (Even More) Awesome

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - O

Well, we're on the downhill side, now. Congratulations to everyone who's still hanging in  there!

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight some of the authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have either read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

So, today 'O' is for Obama, Barack - Dreams from My Father

From Amazon:

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. 

We, in our book club found this one to be a very interesting read. To come across a book written by the present, President of the United States was indeed a read, not to be passed up.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club,please, select the link, What to Read Next?

 Also considered and still to be read:

Ondaatje, Michael - The Cat's Table

Wordless Wednesday April 17, 2013

An event we watch for every year, that heralds the beginning of Spring around here.

Melting Lake Ice on Darling's lake: L-R top-March 8, 2013, March 16, 2013, Bottom L-R March 26, 2013, April 8, 2013

It's finally all gone!

A to Z Blogging Challenge - N

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have either read, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

So, "N" is for Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Traveler's Wife

From Amazon:

Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry finds himself periodically displaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other, as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals -- steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

The Amazon review tells exactly what most in our book club felt about this book. Highly recommended.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club

Please, select the link, What to Read Next?

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - M

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have either read, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook Book Club, ‘What to read Next?’

So, 'M' is for Morton, Kate - The Forgotten Garden

From Amazon:

From the internationally bestselling author of The House at Riverton, an unforgettable new novel that transports the reader from the back alleys of poverty of pre-World War I London to the shores of colonial Australia where so many made a fresh start, and back to the windswept coast of Cornwall, England, past and present.

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book -- a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.

This is a novel of outer and inner journeys and an homage to the power of storytelling. The Forgotten Garden is filled with unforgettable characters who weave their way through its spellbinding plot to astounding effect.

As a group, we thoroughly loved this book, as it followed "Nell's" and Cassandra's journeys to find their roots. The twists and turns it took added to the incredible interest in the story.  Highly recommended.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,   What to Read Next?

Also considered:

Morrisey, Donna - Kit's Law

Mortenson, Greg - Three Cups of Tea

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - L

For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to

highlight some of the authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have either read, as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook group.


L is for Lam, Vincent - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

From Amazon:

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians – Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen – this debut collection from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor. Deftly navigating his way through 12 interwoven short stories, the author explores the characters’ relationships with each other, their patients, and their careers. Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and shares an insider’s perspective on the fears, frustrations, and responsibilities linked with one of society’s most highly regarded occupations. 

There were mixed feelings among our book club about this book. But those who liked it 'really' liked it.  I guess it's one of those books, you'll have to read for yourself to decide.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club

Please, select the link, What To Read Next?