The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana - May 6th

Let's travel to Damascus, Syria! Our next book club will meet to discuss the book The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana.

Here's a Book Summary

In 2004, twenty-seven-year old Stephanie Saldaña arrives in Damascus with a broken heart and a haunted family history that she has crossed the world to escape. She has come on a fellowship to study the role of Jesus in Islam, but speaks very little Arabic, has no friends in the city, and has no place to live. Nor is it an ideal time to be in the region—the United States has recently invaded neighboring Iraq, and refugees are flooding into the streets of Damascus. Still, Stephanie does the only thing she can think of: she begins knocking on doors in the Christian Quarter, asking strangers if they have a room to rent.

So begins The Bread of Angels, the unforgettable memoir of one woman’s search for faith, love, and the meaning of her life in the place she least expects to find it.

We're meeting on Sunday May 6th at 2pm at the Epicenter Cafe in the SOMA neighborhood.

Next Book:

June 2012 - The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Coming from a consensual interest from the book group, we'll be discussing People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks in our next book club meeting.

Here's a book summary:
Inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, People of the Book is a sweeping adventure through five centuries of history. From its creation in Muslim-ruled, medieval Spain, the illuminated manuscript makes a series of perilous journeys: through Inquisition-era Venice, fin-de-siecle Vienna, and the Nazi sacking of Sarajevo.

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed manuscript, which has been rescued once again from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with figurative paintings. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she becomes determined to unlock the book’s mysteries. As she seeks the counsel of scientists and specialists, the reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its creation to its salvation.

We'll be meeting at a coffee shop in the Russian Hill neighborhood on Sunday April 8 at 2pm.

Country under my Skin; A memoir of love and war

Let's discuss our next book based in Nicaragua with the book "The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War" by Gioconda Belli.

Here's a book summary:

An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer and central figure in the Sandinista Revolution.

Her memoir is both a revelatory insider’s account of the Revolution and a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age under extraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both striking lyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: about her family, her children, the men in her life; about her poetry; about the dichotomies between her birth-right and the life she chose for herself; about the failures and triumphs of the Revolution; about her current life, divided between California (with her American husband and their children) and Nicaragua; and about her sustained and sustaining passion for her country and its people.

Looking forward to meeting you at the Coffee Bar in Potrero neighborhood on Sunday March 11, 2012 at 2pm.

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean

Next book club we're discussing about women from Russia with The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean.

Here's a book summary:
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye.

Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city.

Join us in Nob Hill on Sunday February 12 at 2pm at La Galleria Cafe.

Next Book:
March: The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War by Giaconda Belli

The Lacuna - Mexico and US not blending in each other

Let's start the new year in Mexico City and discuss the book The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

Here's a book summary:

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

 

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. 

We will meet in Portrero Hill neighborhood on Saturday January 21, 2012 at 2pm.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Come join our last book club discussion of the year! We will be discussing our December WOW Book Club on The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. 

Here's a book summary:

The double bind that torques women’s lives is Divakaruni’s key theme in lambent novels and short stories about women who immigrate to America from India, and the curious ways the deep past seeps into the present. Divakaruni often weaves glimmering threads from the Hindu sagas into her fiction. 

Now, in her twelfth book, she goes directly to the source, the Mahabharat, India’s most magnificent epic, and boldly retells this Homeric tale of a battle for supremacy between two branches of a ruling dynasty––and dramatization of the internal war between emotion and reason––from the point of view of its central female character. Smart, resilient, and courageous Panchaali, born of fire, marries all five of the famously heroic Pandava brothers, harbors a secret love, endures a long exile in the wilderness, instigates a catastrophic war, and slowly learns the truth about Krishna, her mysterious friend.

By rendering the women characters as complexly as the men, and fully illuminating the “insanity of war” and the fragility of civilization, Divakaruni’s historic and transporting variation adds new and truly revelatory psychological and social dimensions to the great epic’s indelible story of sacrifice and spiritual awakening. Divakaruni has triumphantly fulfilled a profound mission. 

We'll be meeting at the Haight neighborhood!

Happy Reading!

Sky Burial - A love story of Tibet

Reading a short book (161 pages), as we have short time to read for November - Sky Burial, an Epic Love story of Tibet by Xinran.

Here's a book summary:

It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the author of The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet an oddly dressed woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China. Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet.

In the haunting Sky Burial, Xinran has recreated Shu Wen’s journey, writing beautifully and simply of the silence and the emptiness in which Shu Wen was enveloped. The book is an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love loss, loyalty, and survival.

We'll be meeting in the Folsom/Mission area at Stable Cafe on Saturday (not Sunday) Nov 12 @ 2pm.