Club Read meets the Fourth Wednesday of the month January – October at the Lakeview Branch at 6:30 p.m.

2010 Club Read Schedule

January 27 Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull

February 24 Frankly My Dear…Gone With the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell
Author and movie critic Haskell brings us a scholarly look at her loving history of our "American Bible," Gone With the Wind. Profiles of author Margaret Mitchell, starlet Vivien Leigh, and film producer David Selznick re-humanize the work, now known more for its epic grandeur, iconic moments and controversial politics. Haskell draws thoughtful parallels between Mitchell and her protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, and also highlights the impact of the film on popular culture, but doesn't bring anything new to the discussion of America's fascination. Though perhaps too finely focused for casual readers, this sincere, detailed celebration should interest long-time fans and students.
 

March 24 Still Alice, by Lisa Genova
Neuroscientist and debut novelist Genova uses her own experience in her field to paint a portrait of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice Howland has a career not unlike Genova's—she's an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with her husband, John, arguing about the usual (making quality time together, their daughter's move to L.A.) when the first symptoms of Alzheimer's begin to emerge. First, Alice can't find her Blackberry, then she becomes hopelessly disoriented in her own town. Alice is shocked to be diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's after which her life begins steadily to unravel. She loses track of rooms in her home, resigns from Harvard and eventually cannot recognize her own children.
 

April 28 Blindness, by Jose Saramago
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature

May 26 Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan

Mamah Borthwick Cheney is famously known as the woman behind the destruction of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s first marriage. In her breakout novel, Nancy Horan presents a captivating fictionalization of the real-life intellectual and feminist whose affair with Wright sparked headlines across the country, as Wright and Cheney abandoned their families to be with each other, at great personal cost.

June 23 Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan

After a move from the city, Memphis schoolteacher Laura McAllen is struggling to adjust her family to southern farm life in the mid- 1940’s. Her husband, Henry, enjoys life in the Mississippi Delta, but Laura braces herself against the tirades of her racist live-in father-in-law and the woes of life without indoor plumbing and medical treatment. When Henry’s younger brother Jamie, and Ronsel Jackson, the black son of the McAllen’s sharecroppers return home from war against the Nazis, Jordan sets the stage for an unlikely friendship that will spawn rage and terror wrought by racism in the farmland.

July 28 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

Edgar Sawtelle is born into a family of dog breeders as the only son of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle. Although born a mute, he possesses an uncanny ability to communicate with dogs in a way he cannot with people. After his father’s death, Edgar senses foul play and becomes angry when his mother begins developing a close relationship with his uncle. When an accident occurs, Edgar fueled by guilt, escapes into the forest with three of his dogs thrusting him and his companions into a struggle of survival and growth.

August 25 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger, a member of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, vanished without a trace. Years later, her uncle continues to seek the truth behind her strange disappearance. Crusading journalist Michael Blomkvist, whose career has recently received a blow due to a libel conviction, is hired to take on the case. He teams up with 24-year-old, pierced and tattooed punk genius, Lisbeth Salander, and together they embark on a perilous journey, fraught with evil and corruption.

September 22 Falling Leaves, by Adeline Yen Mah

Yen Mah’s memoir of life growing up as an unwanted daughter to a wealthy Chinese family in the era of Mao and Deng is as heart wrenching as it is powerful. The memoir recounts the pain young Adeline suffered at the hands of her merciless stepmother and indifferent father. She was one of seven children, and her mother died while giving birth to her, which was considered an ill omen. Despite the injustice Adeline endured at the hands of her father and his new wife, this story depicts how Adeline is able to overcome the world’s cruelty through the love of one of her aunts and able to carve a new life for herself.

October 27 Piano Teacher, by Janice Lee

A tale of wartime love and betrayal transpires in Lee’s Piano Teacher, set in the 1940’s. Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite falls in love with Will, an Englishman who has just arrived in Hong Kong. Will is forced into an internment camp after the war strikes, leaving Liang to fend for herself. She finds herself entrenched in dangerous alliances with the head of the Japanese gendarmerie, who will stop at nothing to obtain a priceless collection of Chinese art, leading to a series of acts of betrayal. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton, the wife of a British civil servant, arrives in Hong Kong. While giving piano lessons to the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, she takes notice to the family’s attractive driver, Will. They soon commence an affair. As the story unfolds the secret motivations and twists behind past events are unveiled.