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 - 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?