First thing is that we will be picking the book for this month. I took three suggestions from the group and added them to a poll on our site. So that we can all start reading next week please vote by Monday June 18, I will announce the book Tuesday morning!
TO PICK ONE, GO TO OUR SITE http://bookclub.meetup.com/797/ , and go to the POLL and vote! The choices are down below!
Also, NEW THEME ADDED TO THE CLUB!
BOOK SWAPPING! Since we are all readers, we all have books at our house. So when you come to the next club bring a book you have an possibly swap it with someone there for another book. Its up do the two of you whether you will return the books or if it is a permit swap!
Some rules/guidelines we came up with at the meeting:
I. Dates
a. Third Thursday of every month at 7:00pm.
b. No rescheduling unless due to inclement weather or holiday that falls on date.
c. Meeting will end at 8:30pm (feel free to leave when you like but this is to stop conversation for people who can not stay longer)
II. Guidelines/limits
a. Price Limit $20.00 per book /Range of entrees (reasonable)
b. Location
i. T accessible
III. Make effort to read book!
IV. Book selected should be “discussable”.
a. See if book has reading guide
V. Meeting agendas
a. If there are new people, everyone should go around and briefly introduce themselves. (need to make new people feel welcome and included and not scare them away!)
i. Name
ii. Where you live, work etc.
iii. Best book you’ve read recently etc.
VI. Poll will be drawn Monday after meeting to pick the next book and location!
VII. One meeting a month, meeting will be broken up into three groups. We will have discussion questions and someone chosen to keep the conversation going in each group at each meeting.
Here are the choices
Amazon.com
Daniel Mason's debut novel, The Piano Tuner, is the mesmerizing story of Edgar Drake, commissioned by the British War Office in 1886 to travel to hostile Burma to repair a rare Erard grand piano vital to the Crown's strategic interests. Eccentric Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll has brokered peace with local warlords primarily through music, a free medical clinic, and the "powers" of common scientific instruments, much to the dismay of warmongering officers suspect of such unorthodox methods. Drake is an introspective, well-mannered soul who, once there, falls in love with Burma and stays long past the piano-fixing to aid Carroll's political agenda. Drake's arduous journey to reach the outpost, however, takes far too long (nearly half the book) and the plotting is rather heavy-handed at times (one night, Drake learns of a mysterious "Man with One Story" who rarely speaks, and the very next morning the Man tells all to Drake). The story is ambitious, the language florid and sure to please, but the dialogue and melodrama are sometimes tedious. While out on the town with Carroll's love interest, Khin Myo (who enchants Drake), Mason offers the townspersons' view of Drake:
It is only natural that a guest be treated with hospitality, the quiet man who has come to mend the singing elephant is shy, and walks with the posture of one who is unsure of the world, we too would keep him company to make him feel welcome, but we do not speak English.... They say he is one of the kind of men who has dreams, but tells no one.
From Publishers Weekly
Mosse's page-turner takes readers on another quest for the Holy Grail, this time with two closely linked female protagonists born 800 years apart. In 2005, Alice Tanner stumbles into a hidden cave while on an archeological dig in southwest France. Her discovery—two skeletons and a labyrinth pattern engraved on the wall and on a ring—triggers visions of the past and propels her into a dangerous race against those who want the mystery of the cave for themselves. Alaïs, in the year 1209, is a plucky 17-year-old living in the French city of Carcassone, an outpost of the tolerant Cathar Christian sect that has been declared heretical by the Catholic Church. As Carcassonne comes under siege by the Crusaders, Alaïs's father, Bertrand Pelletier,entrusts her with a book that is part of a sacred trilogy connected to the Holy Grail. Guardians of the trilogy are operating against evil forces—including Alaïs's sister, Oriane, a traitorous, sexed-up villainess who wants the books for her own purposes. Sitting securely in the historical religious quest genre, Mosse's fluently written third novel (after Crucifix Lane) may tantalize (if not satisfy) the legions of Da VinciCode devotees with its promise of revelation about Christianity's truths.
Harvesting the Heart:by Jodi Picoult
From Publishers Weekly
Picoult ( Songs of the Humpback Whales ) brings her considerable talents to this contemporary story of a young woman in search of her identity. Abandoned by her mother when she was five years old, Paige O'Toole has been left with painful doubts about her self-worth. She leaves her Chicago home for Cambridge, Mass., at 18 to fulfill herself as an artist, but must work in a diner because she can't afford art school. When she marries Harvard medical student Nicholas Prescott, his parents disown him, disapproving of their Irish Catholic daughter-in-law. Again Paige is forced to sideline her creative needs and work as a waitress in order to support Nicholas until he is able to establish his career as a cardiac surgeon. Paige is soon overwhelmed by the demands of Nicholas's socially sophisticated world, and after the birth of their son, Max, she becomes emotionally and physically exhausted. Unable to communicate her terrors about herself to Nicholas, she leaves him to search for her mother, who may hold the answers to her life. Told in flashbacks, this is a realistic story of childhood and adolescence, the demands of motherhood, the hard paths of personal growth and the generosity of spirit required by love. Picoult's imagery is startling and brilliant; her characters move credibly through this affecting drama.
