October/November 2010

Ensayo Sobre la Ceguera / Blindness

Por Jose Saramago

La novela relata cómo una extraña epidemia de ceguera azota todo un país. Los afectados son puestos en cuarentena, pero resulta imposible contener la enfermedad y las calles acaban llenándose de ciegos que son víctimas de este inexplicable mal consistente en una infinita ceguera blanca, como un mar de leche. A medida que aumenta el temor y la crisis en el país, gradualmente las personas se convierten en presa de los más bajos instintos del ser humano, llegando a los extremos más miserables.
El profundo egoísmo que marca a los distintos personajes en la lucha por la supervivencia, se convierte en una parábola de la sociedad actual, trascendiendo así el significado de ceguera más allá de la propia enfermedad física.
- Tomado de wikipedia.

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Leader/Host: Open

Discussion Meeting: Saturday, December 4th (1pm)

Location: Cafe Mustache (2313 N Milwaukee, California blue line)

http://www.cafemustache.com/

September 2010

Then we Came to the End.
By Joshua Ferris

In this wildly funny debut from former ad man Ferris, a group of copywriters and designers at a Chicago ad agency face layoffs at the end of the '90s boom. Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative "we" brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris's cast makes a real impression.
- From Publishers Weekly.


Leader/Host: Open
Discussion Meeting: Sunday, October 24th (~2pm)
Location: Casava (3338 N Clark Street)
http://www.cassavachicago.com/

August 2010

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larson (600 pages)

Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan

Leader/Host: Open

Discussion Meeting: Thursday, September 16^th (~6.30pm)

Location: Ipsento Coffee House (2035 N Western Ave, blue line Armitage stop).

Check out the Dragon Gallery:
http://picasaweb.google.com/spanglishbookclub/DragonTattoo?feat=directlink

July 2010

Can You Keep a Secret?
by Sophie Kinsella (368 pages)

The author of the Shopaholic trilogy offers up a delightful new novel, filled with her trademark wit and humor. When her plane en route from Glasgow to London experiences horrible turbulence, Emma Corrigan is convinced she is going to die. She babbles all of her most intimate thoughts and secrets to the handsome American man sitting next to her. But the plane lands safely, and Emma bids him an awkward good-bye. When she enters the office on Monday and learns the CEO of the company, Jack Harper, is in for a visit, Emma is horrified to learn Jack is actually the man in whom she confided on the flight. He knows everything, including that she hates her job and that she is not quite sure she loves her boyfriend. But Jack does not fire her on the spot; instead, he quietly replaces the office coffeemaker she hates and gives her advice about her personal life, which she finds infuriating. So why can't she stop thinking about him? Kinsella has another irresistible hit on her hands. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association

Leader/Host: Iris

Discussion Meeting: Sunday July 25^th Noon – Brunch!

Location: The Waterfront Café (Edgewater)

6219 North Sheridan Road

June 2010

La invencion de Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares. (112 pages).

A fugitive hides on a deserted island somewhere in Polynesia. Tourists arrive, and his fear of being discovered becomes a mixed emotion when he falls in love with one of them. He wants to tell her his feelings, but an anomalous phenomenon keeps them apart.

The Island of Doctor Moreau inspired this 1940 novella. Set on a mysterious island, The Invention of Morel is a story of suspense and exploration as well as an unlikely romance, where every detail is both crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Leader/Host: Colleen?

Discussion Meeting: Thursday, July 1st – 6.30pm

Location: tbd

May 2010

La Isla de la Pasion
by Laura Restrepo (352 pages)

En 1908, el capitán mexicano Ramón Arnaud y su esposa adolescente parten hacia un pequeño atolón en el Pacífico, conocido por los exploradores españoles como la Isla de la Pasión. Acompañado de once soldados y sus familias, el capitán tiene órdenes de defender la isla ante la improbable invasión francesa. Con su peligroso arrecife de coral y una laguna estancada, la isla es amenazadora e inhóspita y sus nuevos habitantes deben luchar para sobrevivir. Logran crear una comunidad viable, pero entre la agitación política en su país y los comienzos de la primera Guerra Mundial, se ven olvidados en medio del Pacífico.

Abandonados a la intemperie, uno a uno van cayendo víctimas del escorbuto, el hambre, la desesperación, la rivalidad, la lujuria y la irremediable violencia. Alicia, una mujer resuelta e ingeniosa termina convirtiéndose en el punto de apoyo para los demás, cuya supervivencia dependerá en su valentía y astucia.

Leader/Host: Open

Discussion Meeting: Thursday, June 3rd – 6pm

Location: Ñ (2977 N Elston Ave)

April 2010

El Viejo Que Leia Novelas de Amor
By Luis Sepulveda (144 pages)

Antonio Jose Bolivar Proana takes refuge in his books. He readers paperback books about faraway places while cursing the gringos that bring tragedy into his life, the mayor who brings corruption into his life, and gold prospectors who bring opportunism into his life. He is an old man who curses all those who use and abuse the colorful jungle of his homeland, the rain-soaked Ecuadoran jungle .

Leader/Host: Open

Discussion Meeting: Sunday, May 2nd – 11am (Brunch).

Location: Fanny's home

March 2010

Breath, Eyes, Memory
by Edwidge Danticat (256 pages)

Distinctive new voice with a sensitive insight into Haitian culture distinguishes this graceful debut novel about a young girl's coming of age under difficult circumstances. "I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place where you carry your past like the hair on your head," says narrator Sophie Caco, ruminating on the chains of duty and love that bind the courageous women in her family. The burden of being a woman in Haiti, where purity and chastity are a matter of family honor, and where "nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms," is Danticat's theme.

Leader/Host: Open

Discussion Meeting: Sunday April 3rd - 11am

Location: Victories Banner (Roscoe Village).
http://www.victorysbanner.com/

February 2010

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot (368 pages)

From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley (amazon.com review).

New York Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/books/03book.html?th&emc=th

Leader/Host: Fanny

Discussion Meeting: Sunday March 7th - 1pm

Location: Isabella's New Casa

January 2010

El Beso de la Mujer Araña
by Manuel Puig (288 pages)

El esquema de esta novela es de genial simplicidad. Se configura como una sucesión de escenas dialogadas entre dos presos recluidos en una misma celda de una prisión bonaerense. Así, Martín, un homosexual de gran imaginación, irá relatando viejos melodramas cinematográficos a Valentín, activista político e idealista, para aliviarle de los efectos de las sesiones de tortura a que lo somete la policía política de la dictadura.

En la conversación de los presos, Puig lleva a sus últimas consecuencias uno de sus más originales procedimientos narrativos: el empleo de elementos de la cultura pop como correlato objetivo de las vivencias de los protagonistas. La confrontación entre los dos hombres se resolverá en una profunda transformación interior, para cerrarse en un sacrificio estéril sólo en apariencia: inmolándose verán al fin su verdadero rostro, llegarán a ser ellos mismos.

El beso de la mujer araña consolidó la fama de Manuel Puig en el ámbito internacional gracias al extraordinario éxito de su versión cinematográfica y teatral, y fue, también, su novela más popular. En palabras de Mario Vargas Llosa: «La obra de Puig es una de las más originales de los últimos años del siglo XX».

Leader/Host: Sarah

Discussion Meeting: Saturday Jan 6th - 11am

Location: Sarah's Casa (putlock!)