Welcome to Books
I was adrift on the living room floor, in some kind of waterless shipwreck. The task was daunting: packing up nearly twenty years of family life into a few boxes for a major move. How was I ever going to sort through it all? My books were proving the greatest challenge, many of them felt like … friends. Authors and characters had become teachers, mentors, travelling companions. The adventures they took us on, the insights they provided, the questions they raised, were now a precious part of my story. Like the treasured community of people we were leaving, my life had also been significantly impacted and enriched by the stories held inside the worn covers of my favourite books.
Books hold a unique ability to illuminate the recesses of our lives. With a book, the imagination and the five senses are free to explore. A vulnerable willingness to linger over the written words and ponder the images evoked heightens curiosity and anticipation. Allowing new thoughts and ideas to trickle through our minds and hearts can bring insight and understanding to our own experience. Laughter ensues, tears shed, questions asked, discoveries made.
In my experience, this wondrous potential and staying power of stories becomes most evident when we share them; because they place us in community. They inform our own stories, even change us. So I invite you to join us in exploring books and tell us about your own favourite reads!
“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.” Madeleine L’Engle
“I am unable to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient. And it was sufficient.” Elie Wiesel, ‘The Gates of the Forest’
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen
Mary, March 2019
Mr. Kato Plays Family by Michiko Flašar
“Mr. Kato Plays Family” by Michiko Flašar is a quiet, sensitive novel that stays with you long after reading. Anyone expecting a loud, dramatic story will be surprised—for this book draws its strength from small moments, in the gaps of everyday life. At the center is Mr. Kato, a man who can be hired to play the role of a family member. He steps in where closeness is missing: as a temporary husband, father, or son. What initially seems like a bizarre idea quickly turns out to be a touching exploration of loneliness, longing, and the question of what family actually means.
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin
This novel tells the story of Violette, a cemetery caretaker in a small town in Burgundy(France). Visitors, both occasional and regular, come to her home to warm up and chat. We discover her past through a poignant narrative, tinged with humor and suspense.
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
This month’s international women’s book club reading told the story of Grace, a 72-year old widow who abandons her gray life in England to take possession of a small house she mysteriously inherits in Ibiza. A retired maths teacher, Grace needs to solve the puzzle of this unforeseen event.
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn tells the story of seven women who live in the Briarwood Boarding House in Washington D.C. in the 1950’s. The book takes place during the Cold War and the McCarthy Era, when fear of being turned over to the government for having “communist leanings”exists and causes mistrust and secrecy. The book begins with a murder taking place in the house on Thanksgiving night. Each of the women and their guests are potential suspects and in the pages that follow, we learn about their individual stories.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store By James McBride
James McBride once again brings to the reader an exquisite tale mixing raw reality with life-giving hope and love. Set in the 1920’s and 30’s in eastern United States, it is a time of Jewish immigration from Europe and the on-going black migration from the South toward the North. Music of Big Band Swing, Jazz, the Blues, and the Cuban-Afro touch is moving through dance theaters, Jim Crow laws are eagerly lived out, and those that consider themselves the “real Americans” are busily establishing their appropriate ancestral ties with the use of tall tales and imagination.
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
Set in the south of England, in 1957, we meet Jean Swinney, a downtrodden dutiful daughter, who lives with and cares for her mother, and works at the local newspaper. At the start of the book, Jean seems resigned to her drab existence, fuelled by ‘duty and decency’, and her aspirations are low. When she is assigned a story investigating an alleged virgin birth, little does she know that this will change her life beyond recognition.
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
Within the pages of 96-year- Old Doris’s red address book are the names of all those she has loved and lost, telling the story of a colorful life. Living alone in Stockholm, she is comforted by the weekly calls of her grand-niece Jenny, who is haunted by a painful childhood. Finally, Doris decides to put pen to paper, using her address book to recall the memories of a life well-lived. From Paris runways of the 1930s to narrow New York escapes during World War II. What she and Jenny discover may well change their lives forever…
A Girl Returned (L’Arminuta) by Donatella di Pietrantonio
This book is a riveting story of a 13 year old girl who, after having been raised in an affluent home in the city by a couple she knew as her parents, was suddenly returned with no explanation to her poverty stricken birth family that she hadn’t even known existed. This novel is set in central Italy in the 1960s and is based on the author’s memories of hearing about poor families with numerous children who would give one of their kids to a relative unable to have children to unofficially adopt and raise.
What You Can See From Here by Mariana Leky
Luise is at the center of the story. In the first part of the book, she is in the fourth grade, later a grown woman. Her school friend Martin, her grandmother Selma, and her grandmother’s platonic friend, the optician, play important roles in her life. They all live in a village and are a small community of destiny. This story that deals with the big themes of life – friendship and love, courage and despair, tradition and change, life and death.
The Door by Magda Szabo
The Door was written and takes place in Budapest, Hungary during the communist regime ( which is why it was not published until 1987). It is a fascinating story about a 20 year relationship between a struggling writer and her housekeeper. Emerence the housekeeper is an elderly, private woman with a traumatized past. She has a strong and driven personality and is very rude and frank. Although she is extremely helpful to everyone, she will not accept help for herself.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
We were waiting for our flight out to California and having a few minutes free, I decided to check the offerings at the airport bookstore. Often, a few new popular reads are tucked in between the usual fare. I was not disappointed! Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden caught my eye and after taking a photo of the cover, I had to wait another two weeks before checking it out of our local library. It was definitely worth the wait.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
This is a historical fiction based on a few facts and enigmas surrounding the son of a very famous author, who remains unnamed in the book. Maggie O’Farrell cleverly weaves these fragments into a story that shifts the spotlight to his wife, and the cataclysm that rocks the family when they lose their son to plague.
The Buddha in the Attic – Julie Otsuka
Looking for a future, a group of young Japanese women board a ship bound for San Francisco to become brides of fellow countrymen already living there. With only their fiancés’ photograph and a few belongings, they make the arduous journey with hopes of better days ahead. When they arrive in America they are met with many challenges and hardships. These women must find the strength and resilience needed to survive in an environment that is not only indifferent but often hostile to them.
River Sing Me Home – Eleanor Shearer
The setting for this story rooted in history is the Caribbean of the 1830’s..We meet Rachel, a woman defined by no memory of a mother or father, a life of exhausting field work, and the loss of her eleven children. When faced with the bitter truth of the ambiguities of British Emancipation, she flees the plantation during the night. Desperation and fear move her to run, and keep running, seeking a freedom she has never known, and deeply longing to once again hold the five children that were taken from her and sold.
2023 Nobel Prize Winner Jon Fosse’s “A Shining”
A man bored with life decides to act. Inspired, he gets in his car and drives, turning right at the first intersection and then left at the following intersection and then right at the next corner and so on. Eventually, he gets stuck in the deep snow of a dense forest. The story thus begins. The 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Jon Fosse, gives us in “A Shining” a short but stunning look into the mind of his unnamed protagonist.
The Power of Books
In our new BookClub we read the book: The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukava.
A boy, Rintaro, lives in a little second hand bookshop with his grandfather. He loves reading, sitting in this world of wonderful books, which has become a refuge for this reclusive, orphaned high-school student.
When his grandfather dies, Rintaro is left completely alone. He cannot decide what to do. Sell the shop? Where to live? Continue school?
The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri
This book is so good that I could not stop reading.
A family lives a simple life in a little Greek village. Their life goes up in flames when a fire breaks out, running to avoid the flames, swimming to hang on to a piece of wood.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
This delightful book offers the reader a taste of just about everything: drama, intrigue, comedy, history, politics, romance, culture, action, and even a bit of culinary education! With a significant historic backdrop, the author thoughtfully and humorously explores...
‘Der Salzweg’ – ‘The Salt Path’ by Raynor Winn
Der Salzweg Alles, was Moth und Raynor noch besitzen, passt in einen Rucksack. Sie haben alles verloren - ihr Zuhause, ihr Vermögen und Moth seine Gesundheit. Mit einem kleinen Zelt machen sie sich auf, den South West Coast Path, Englands berühmten Küstenweg, zu...
‘Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest’ – Suzanne Simard
My sister is the botanist. I love working in our garden, but when I have questions, she is the one I turn to. In light of this reality, I am not one to typically pick up a book about trees! Trees are necessary: for the environment, for many products that most of us...
Back in Time Recommendations – The Works of Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig is one of the writers often mentioned as someone who should have been awarded with The Nobel Prize for Literature, but never was. He was a Jewish Austrian born in Vienna in 1881 and died in Pétropolis, Brazil in 1942. In the 1920s and 1930s he was one of...
Un-filmable Books?
A cinema programme was sent to me by a friend, announcing a weekend of three films made on 'unfilmable books'. The three that were offered were: Lolita, by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 on Vladimir Nabokov's book American Psycho, by Mary Harron in 2000, based on the 1990's...
‘Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha’ – Roddy Doyle
It’s the late 1960’s and Ireland’s economy is taking off. Dublin is an expanding city, swallowing up the surrounding working-class neighborhoods and filling them with freshly tarred asphalt roads, public-housing projects, and construction sites. One of those small...
‘Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit’ – ‘The Discovery of Slowness’
Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit ist ein Roman von Sten Nadolny. Die Inspiration für die fiktive Hauptfigur ist der britische Polarforscher John Franklin. Obwohl Sten Nadolny biografisches Material verwendet, handelt es sich um eine Fantasy-Figur, die Ähnlichkeiten,...
‘Everything Sad is Untrue’
I just read an intriguing book; Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri. It is the author's own story; a biography written when he was an adult, but from the perspective of when he was a teenager. This gives a fascinating insight into the workings of a young...
Costa Book Awards
How do you decide what to read? One of the places I go to for book recommendations is the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Prize). I feel like I am aiming a little more realistically than the Booker Prize in terms of what for me personally is
Jolabokaflod
In Iceland there is a tradition they call Jolabokaflod, the ‘Christmas Book Flood’ “The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday … we give the presents on the evening of the
Naming Our Demons: Depression
Art is not only about lifting up the good, it is also about naming our demons, to help us face them. Closing ourselves to ourselves and to one another only weakens us. The first paragraph of Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon, a book about depression that won the...
“as long as we can read …”
This quote jumped out at me whilst watching the Booker Prize Awards on BBC iplayer (only available within the UK - this podcast of the event is available internationally.) "While Covid deprived us of so many cultural pleasures – live music, theatre, cinema, art...
‘The Underground Railroad’ – Colson Whitehead
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal'" Martin Luther King These powerful words of a new Western democracy were penned nearly 250 years...