Happy New Year! January 2015 - Leela's Book

Hi everyone! Happy New Year for 2015! We will start our reading club with "Leela's Book" by Alice Albinia with a story centered between New Delhi, India and New York City, US.

Here's a Book Summary:

Bold and entertaining, Leela’s Book weaves a tale of contemporary Delhi that crosses religious and social boundaries. 

Leela—alluring, taciturn, haunted—is moving from New York back to Delhi, where her return will unsettle precariously balanced lives. Twenty-five years earlier, her sister was seduced by the egotistical Vyasa. Now an eminent Sanskrit scholar, Vyasa is preparing for his son’s marriage. But when Leela arrives, she disrupts the careful
choreography of the wedding, with its myriad attendees and their conflicting desires. Gleefully presiding over the drama is Ganesh—divine, elephant-headed scribe of the Mahabharata, India’s great epic. The family may think they have arranged the wedding for their own selfish ends, but according to Ganesh it is he who is directing events—in a bid to save Leela, his beloved heroine, from Vyasa.

We will be meeting in the West Portal neighborhood at the Greenhouse Cafe on Sunday January 25th at 2pm!

Happy Reading!

Next Books to Read in 2015:
February: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
March: When the ground turn in its sleep by Sylvia Sellers-García
April: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

November 2014: The Bastard of Istanbul

Hi everyone!

We will be celebrating our last book club meeting for 2014 next month in November by discussing the book "The Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif Shafak. 

Here's a Book Summary: 

In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazancı family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya's mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster.  

Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazancı sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. 

Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, the Bastard of Istanbul is a bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of international fiction. 

We will be meeting near Fisherman's Wharf at a wonderful coffee shop called Black Point Cafe with an incredible view on Sunday November 9th at 2pm. 

Stay tune for books to read in 2015!

October 2014 - Americanah

Hi everyone!
Our next book to discuss will be "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Here's a Book Summary: 

A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
 
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

http://chimamanda.com/books/americanah/

We will be meeting in the Pacific Heights neighborhood on Sunday October 19 at 2pm. 

Next Books to Read:

November: The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak

September 2014: The Rent Collector

We will now be traveling to Cambodia to discuss the book "The Rent Collector" by Camron Wright. 

Here's a Book Summary:

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the bad-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money - a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one woman's journey to save her son and another woman's chance at redemption.

http://www.therentcollectorbook.com/about.htm
 
We will be meeting at Mojo Bicycle Cafe in NOPA neighborhood on Sunday September 14th at 2pm, cross street is Fulton. 

http://www.punchbowl.com/parties/c0d51ea80ce4013b25a1

Next books to read:

October - Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

August 2014: Ghana Must Go

***Apologies for not posting this on the blog on time****


We will focusing August on reading and discussing the book "Ghana Must Go" by Taiye Selasi, released in 2013.
Here's a Book Summary:

Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana Must Go is their story. Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go is a testament to the transformative power of unconditional love, from a debut novelist of extraordinary talent.

Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts the Sais’ circuitous journey to one another. In the wake of Kweku’s death, his children gather in Ghana at their enigmatic mother’s new home. The eldest son and his wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; the baby sister, now a young woman: each carries secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told, the crimes committed in the name of love. Splintered, alone, each navigates his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered—until, in Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge.

Ghana Must Go is at once a portrait of a modern family, and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, Ghana Must Go teaches that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.
We will be meeting in the Mission neighborhood at the Atlas Cafe (between Alabama and Florida Street) on 20th Street. 

Next Books to Read:
September - The Rent Collector by Camron Wright
October - Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

July 2014 - Across Many Mountains by Yangzom Brauen

We are now heading over to Tibet in the month of July with a discussion of "Across Many Mountains: A Tibetan Family's Epic Journey from Oppression to Freedom" by Yangzom Brauen. 

Here's a Book Summary:
A powerful, emotional memoir and an extraordinary portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao’s Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom.

Kunsang thought she would never leave Tibet. One of the country's youngest Buddhist nuns, she grew up in a remote mountain village where, as a teenager, she entered the local nunnery. Though simple, Kunsang's life gave her all she needed: a oneness with nature and a sense of the spiritual in all things. She married a monk, had two children, and lived in peace and prayer. But not for long. The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 changed everything. When soldiers arrived at her mountain monastery, destroying everything in their path, Kunsang and her family fled across the Himalayas only to spend years in Indian refugee camps. She lost both her husband and her youngest child on that journey, but the future held an extraordinary turn of events that would forever change her life--the arrival in the refugee camps of a cultured young Swiss man long fascinated with Tibet. Martin Brauen will fall instantly in love with Kunsang's young daughter, Sonam, eventually winning her heart and hand, and taking mother and daughter with him to Switzerland, where Yangzom will be born.

Many stories lie hidden until the right person arrives to tell them. In rescuing the story of her now 90-year-old inspirational grandmother and her mother, Yangzom Brauen has given us a book full of love, courage, and triumph, as well as allowing us a rare and vivid glimpse of life in rural Tibet before the arrival of the Chinese. Most importantly, though, ACROSS MANY MOUNTAINS is a testament to three strong, determined women who are linked by an unbreakable family bond.


We will be meeting in the Hayes Valley neighborhood at the Arlequin Cafe on Sunday July 20 at 2pm.

Next Books to Read:

August - Ghana must Go by Taiye Selasi

September - The Rent Collector by Camron Wright

June 2014: Mayada, Daughter of Iraq

Hi everyone!

Let's travel to Iraq and discuss the book "Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman's Survival under Saddam Hussein" by Jean Sasson.

Here's a book summary:

A member of one of the most distinguished and honored families in Iraq, Mayada grew up surrounded by wealth and royalty. But when Saddam Hussein’s regime took power, she was thrown into cell 52 in the infamous Baladiyat prison with seventeen other nameless, faceless women from all walks of life. To ease their suffering, these “shadow women” passed each day by sharing their life stories.

Now, through Jean Sasson, Mayada is finally able to tell her story—and theirs—to the world.

We will be discussing this book on Sunday June 22 at 2pm in the Castro neighborhood.

May 2014 WOW Book Club: The Memory of Love

Hi everyone!

We are now traveling to Freetown, Sierra Leone through the book "The Memory of Love" by Aminatta Forna.

Here's a Book Summary:

Since its publication in hardcover, Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love has been hailed as a book of rare beauty and importance, and has been shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and selected for the January 2011 Indie Next List. With astounding depth and elegance, it takes the reader through the haunting atmosphere of a country at war, delicately intertwining the powerful stories of two generations.

In contemporary Freetown, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a man who has stories to tell from the country’s turbulent postcolonial years that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer by Adrian, a British psychiatrist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.

We will be meeting in the SoMA area, near Market street at The Roastery on Saturday May 10 at 1pm (DATE AND TIME DIFFERS FROM USUAL TIME).

Next Book to Read:

June - Mayada, Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson

April 2014: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Hi everyone!

 

Due to Easter holidays, our next book club discussion will be Sunday April 13, and we'll be sharing perspectives on "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity" by Katherine Boo. 

Here's a Book Summary:

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting“ in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl“—will soon become its first female college graduate. 

Please join us on Sunday April 13 at 2pm, in the Financial District of San Francisco at the Station SF coffee shop.

Next Books to Read:

May: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

June: Mayada, Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson

March 2014: The Siege by Helen Dunmore

Hi everyone!

Apologies for having to skip February!

Nevertheless, we will meet on Sunday March 9th to read our next book "The Siege" by Helen Dumnore, about Leningrad.

Here's a Book Summary:

The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in their small apartment, held together by the unlikely courage and resourcefulness of twenty-two-year-old Anna. Though she dreams of an artist's life, she must instead forage for food in the ever more desperate city and watch her little brother grow cruelly thin. Their father, a blacklisted writer who once advocated a robust life of the mind, withers in spirit and body.

At such brutal times everything is tested. And yet Dunmore's inspiring story shows that even then, the triumph of the human heart is that love need not fall away. Amid the turmoil of the siege, the unimaginable happens -- two people enter the Levins' frozen home and bring a kind of romance where before there was only bare survival. A sensitive young doctor becomes Anna's devoted partner, and her father is allowed a transcendent final episode with a mysterious woman from his past. 

We will be meeting in the Castro neighborhood on Sunday March 9 at 2pm!

Next Books to Read:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (India)

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

Mayada, Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson

January 2014 - Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Happy New Year!

Let's start the year with a bit of San Francisco and Latin America with Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Here's a Book Summary:

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chien--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive Joaquín gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom

Please join us Sun January 19 in the Noe Valley neighborhood!!