December -

The Zookeeper's Wife

Diane Ackerman (368 pages)

A true story — as powerful as Schindler's List— in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw — and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen guests hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors.

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Leader/Host: Fanny
Discussion Meeting: Sunday Dec 14th (Time TBD)

Location: Lincoln Park Zoo - tentatively @ the conservatory to enjoy a nice "tropical" weather and maybe see the xmas lights.

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This will be a discussion/xmas celebration, so... bring lots of joy & the wraped book for secret book-worm-santa!!!
As planed on our last meeting each one of us picked a member.
For next meeting please bring a book for that person as a gift. A book (from your personal colection/new/used) that you think that person will enjoy/find iteresting.

Please note,there will be a price for most original wrapping ... so feel free to get creative!!! And Feel free to bring beberages & snacks.
- Bring a back-up book in case your 1st choice has already been read, you don't have to wrap the back-up.
- Our very first dicator-style-book-discussion will take place at our 1st discussion meeting in 2009. Here we will have 10-minute mini discussions in which each one of use will review/talk about the book we received as gift on the xmas meeting: was it a good match? would I recomend it to the rest of the group? etc etc..

November -

Veronika Decide Morir

By Paulo Coelho (240 pages).

Veronika es una joven que tiene los mismos sueños y deseos que cualquier persona de su edad. Es guapa, cuenta con un buen trabajo y no le faltan pretendientes. Su vida transcurre sin mayores sobresaltos, sin grandes alegrías ni grandes tristezas. Pero Veronika no es feliz. Por eso, la mañana del 11 de noviembre de 1997, Veronika decide morir. Sueños y fantasías. Deseo y muerte. Locura y pasión. Veronika, en su camino hacia la muerte, descubre que cada segundo de la existencia es una opción que tomamos entre la alternativa de sequir adelante o de abandonar. Veronika experimenta placeres nuevos y halla un nuevo sentido a la vida, un sentido que le había permanecido oculto hasta ahora, cuando ya es demasiado tarde para echarse atrás.

Discussion Meeting: Sunday November 16th - 1pm

Discussion leader/host: Iris
Location: NoFriction Café (2023-A N. California Ave)

October -

Drown

By Juno Diaz

The 10 tales in this intense debut collection plunge us into the emotional lives of people redefining their American identity. Narrated by adolescent Dominican males living in the struggling communities of the Dominican Republic, New York and New Jersey, these stories chronicle their outwardly cool but inwardly anguished attempts to recreate themselves in the midst of eroding family structures and their own burgeoning sexuality. The best pieces, such as "Aguantando" (to endure), "Negocios," "Edison, NJ" and the title story, portray young people waiting for transformation, waiting to belong. Their worlds generally consist of absent fathers, silent mothers and friends of questionable principles and morals. Diaz's restrained prose reveals their hopes only by implication. It's a style suited to these characters, who long for love but display little affection toward each other. Still, the author's compassion glides just below the surface, occasionally emerging in poetic passages of controlled lyricism, lending these stories a lasting resonance.

Discussion Mee9ting: Wednesday October 15th 6pm.

Discussion leader/host: Amy

Location: Piece Brewery & Pizzeria (1927 W. North Ave)

August -

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
("Tlon and Uqbar" & "Funes el memorioso")

First published in 1945, his Ficciones compressed several centuries' worth of philosophy and poetry into 17 tiny, unclassifiable pieces of prose. He offered up diabolical tigers, imaginary encyclopedias, ontological detective stories, and scholarly commentaries on nonexistent books, and in the process exploded all previous notions of genre.

Discussion Meeting: Saturday August 9th 6pm. Discussion leader/host: Sarah
Location: Sarah's place. 180 N. Jefferson #2302
Clinton green/pink line or 56 Milwaukee bus.

In addition to movies and pizza, we'll have the 2 year-aniversary contest.
Dress-up as a character of any of the readings for a chance to win a special prize.

July -

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards (401 pages)
This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.




Water for Elephants: A Novel
by Sara Gruen (332 pages)
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for.

Host/Discussion Leader: Open
Discussion Meeting: Sunday July 13th 11am.
Time/Location: Earwax Cafe in wicker park (1561 N Milwaukee Ave).

May -

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz (352 pages)

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuk — the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Host/Discussion Leader: Amy
Discussion Meeting: Sunday May 18th
Location: El Sitio, 1255 N Pulaski (Humboldt Park)

Time: 2pm

April -

Eat, Pray, Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert

At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.

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Host/Discussion Leader: Fanny

Discussion Meeting: Sunday April 13th 2.30pm

Time/Location: Santullos Eatery
1943 W North Ave
(North/Milwaukee)

March -

The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger (518 pages)

Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut 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 is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.


Host/Discussion Leader: Fanny
Discussion Meeting: Sunday March 16th (tentatively)
Time/Location: To be determined

February -

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

by Marjane Satrapi

Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, where it elicited comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Host/Discussion Leader: Sarah

Discussion Meeting: Sunday Feb 17th

Time/Location: 4.30pm @ Sarah's apt.

Followed by a Roller Derby evening.

http://www.windycityrollers.com/