Books - Book Clubs by Janna

Is your book club looking for a facilitator or guest speaker?

Here’s a list of just some of the book titles in Janna’s private BookTalks archives:

*Click on the picture of title to go to the Chapters.ca page on the book*

The list of books has been organized into the following 3 categories:

1) Critically Acclaimed & Popular Bestsellers
2) Jewish & Israeli
3) Classics & Academic

Private Lecture Book Choices

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED & POPULAR BESTSELLERS

The Long Song(2010) *available for BookTalks beginning fall, 2011

By Andrea Levy

Set in Jamaica during the island's slave rebellion of 1832, the unreliable narrator tells the story of a woman called July, who is taken as a house slave when she is eight years old. Related in July's lilting patois, the narrative encompasses scenes of shocking brutality and mass carnage, but also humour, sometimes verging on farce. Levy's satiric eye registers the venomous racism of the white characters and is equally candid in relating the degrees of social snobbery around skin color among the blacks themselves.© Reed Business Information.

Radiance(2007)

By Shaena Lambert

Set in 1950s America during the Atomic Age and McCarthyism, this novel tells the story of Keiko, a teenaged “Hiroshima Maiden” brought to New York City to have her scar removed and act as a spokesperson for The Hiroshima Project. With beautiful, nuanced imagery and description, Lambert tells the story through the lens of Keiko’s “host mother,” Daisy, a surprising and complex suburban housewife.

The Madonnas of Leningrad(2006)

By Debra Dean

Shifting between 1941 Leningrad and contemporary America, this book is about the impact and power of memory. Debra Dean conveys this elegant and touching story through the eyes of Marina, an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's.

The Birth House(2006)

By Ami McKay

Set during World War I in the isolated village of Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, this is the evocative, compelling story of Dora Rare who struggles to preserve the art of midwifery amidst fierce opposition and tumultuous time.

Water for Elephants(2006)

By Sara Gruen

As the elderly Jacob Jankowski thinks back on his life, we are introduced to a cast of strange and compelling characters (both human and animal) struggling to survive as participants in a traveling circus during the Great Depression. Much of this fascinating story is inspired by Gruen’s research of actual life in traveling circuses in the 1930s.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005)

By Lisa See

Through this story about intimate, lifelong friends, Lily and Snow Flower, Lisa See depicts a vivid, fictionalized portrait of the intriguing lives, rituals, and secrets of women living in nineteenth century rural China. This novel was a favourite for many of my readers -- most will probably find that it's a "page turner" - a very emotional, engaging book about the lives of women in a completely different (and very interesting) context. It has images of footbinding, etc. (some have compared it to Memoirs of a Geisha) and themes of female friendship, survival, and empowerment.

The Girls(2005)

By Lori Lansens

This fictional autobiography is told from the perspectives of two narrators: craniopagus twins Rose and Ruby Darlen. Lansens deftly portrays the ordinary within the extraordinary and the familiar within the unfamiliar, approaching autobiography, family, and self-knowledge in unique and thought-provoking ways.

The Kite Runner(2004)
By Khaled Hosseini

This novel takes its readers on a journey through Afghanistan’s recent tumultuous history through the eyes of one of its native sons. It is a truly remarkable story that will stay in your heart and mind for years to come.

Persepolis(2004) *available for BookTalks beginning spring, 2011
By Marjane Satrapi

Satrapi's memoir-in-comic-strips is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over. Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her.

The Secret Life of Bees(2003)
By Sue Monk Kidd

Set in South Carolina, 1964, Lily and her black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, discover the power of female community amidst a trio of black beekeeping sisters. This coming of age novel about young, observant Lily Owens is fresh and sweet as honey from the hive.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(2002)
By Dai Sijie

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The Dress Lodger(2000)

By Sheri Holman

Set during the cholera epidemic of 1831 in Sunderland, England, this is the story of Gustine – a teenage mother and dress lodger who must prostitute herself in order to care for her baby. Holman’s creative approach to narrative point-of-view, her imagery, and her attention to historical details leave a lasting impression.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995)

By Gregory Maguire

Maguire revisits the story of The Wizard of Oz through the eyes a green-skinned girl named Elphaba, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West. Through this intriguing fantasy world, we are prompted to consider class conflict, violence, and the nature of good and evil.

Kiss of the Fur Queen(1999)

By Tomson Highway

Born into a magical Cree world in snowy northern Manitoba, Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis are all too soon torn from their family and thrust into the hostile world of a Catholic residential school. Their language is forbidden, their names are changed to Jeremiah and Gabriel, and both boys are abused by priests. As young men, estranged from their own people and alienated from the culture imposed upon them, the Okimasis brothers fight to survive. Wherever they go, the Fur Queen--a wily, shape-shifting trickster--watches over them with a protective eye. For Jeremiah and Gabriel are destined to be artists. Through music and dance they soar.

Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories(1997)

By Shyam Selvadurai

Arjie Chelvaratnam is a young Tamil boy growing up in Sri Lanka amid escalating political tensions. Shyam Selvadurai gives readers the tender story of a young man's coming of age surrounded by turmoil and violence, his journey from childhood to adulthood, and his discovery of his homosexuality. Funny Boy, one of the highest acclaimed literary debuts, won the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and The Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men's Fiction.

Lives of the Saints (1990)

By Nino Ricci

Winner of the Governor General’s Award, The Books in Canada First Novel Award, The F.G. Bressani Prize, The Betty Trask Award, and the Winnifred Holtby Prize. Set in Valle del Sole, a tiny village nestled in the folds of the Italian Appenines like a world forgotten, Lives of the Saints tells the story of Vittorio Innocente and his mother, Christina, whose affair with a blue-eyed stranger shatters the innocence of Vittorio's childhood.

Obasan (1983)

By Joy Kogawa

Obasan is a mesmerizing, poetic, and poignant story of five-year-old Naomi and her protective and dignified aunt Obasan. When Naomi grows up, she returns to her memories of the aftermath of Pearl Harbour in WWII, when Japanese-Canadians were treated like aliens in their own country, and dares to break the silence of that heartbreaking time in Japanese-Canadian history.

JEWISH & ISRAELI

The Postmistress(2010)
By Sarah Blake

*available for BookTalks beginning spring, 2011

Set in 1940 as France is occupied and bombs are dropping on London, American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, travels overseas to report on the war. At the same time, Blake intertwines Frankie’s story with the wartime experiences of the residents of a small town on Cape Cod. The way these characters are brought together is fascinatingly beautiful. This is a story about love, war, and how voices from a distance can touch our lives.

Light Fell(2008)
By Evan Fallenberg

About the book (from the publisher): Awarded the 2009 Stonewall Prize for Fiction. Twenty years have passed since Joseph fell in love with a man, a rabbi, and left his family and his religious Israeli community. Now, for his fiftieth birthday, Joseph is preparing for his five sons to spend the Sabbath with him in his Tel Aviv penthouse. This will be the first time that they have all been together in almost two decades.

The Girl From Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home(2008)
By Sadia Shepard

About the book (from the publisher): Who is Rachel Jacobs? the 13-year-old asks her Muslim grandmother Rahat Siddiqi; that, Nana tells her, was my name before I was married. Thus does a grandmother's stunning reply and a granddaughter's promise to learn about her ancestors set Shepard's three voyages of discovery in motion: her grandmother's history; the story of the Bene Israel (one of the lost tribes of Israel that, having sailed from Israel two millennia ago, crashed on the Konkan coast in India); and her own self-discovery.

Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter: A Novel (2008)
By Peter Manseau

About the book (from the publisher): Manseau uses an alter ego to tell the story of fictional Yiddish poet Itsik Malpesh, born in the Moldovan city of Kishinev in 1903. Moving from Revolutionary Russia to New York’s Depression-era Lower East Side to milennium’s-end Baltimore, this is a novel which is at once an immigrant’s epic saga, a love story, and a magical tale about the power of (Yiddish) words and language.

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World(2008)

*available for BookTalks beginning spring, 2011
By Lucette Lagnado

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.

Fault Lines(2007)
By Nancy Huston

About the book (from the publisher): Fault Lines (Lignes de Failles) was a bestseller in France with more than 400,000 copies in print. It won the Prix Femina in 2006. Told through the eyes of four six-year-old children, each telling the history of one family, from present day California working backwards to the Holocaust era. With each successive child narrator, the reader moves closer to the family secret at the heart of Fault Lines.

A Pigeon and a Boy(2007)
By Meir Shalev

About the book (from the publisher): During the 1948 War of Independence--a time when pigeons are still used to deliver battlefield messages--a gifted young pigeon handler is mortally wounded. In the moments before his death, he dispatches one last pigeon. The bird is carrying his extraordinary gift to the girl he has loved since adolescence. Intertwined with this story is the contemporary tale of Yair Mendelsohn, who has his own legacy from the 1948 war.

Caspian Rain(2007)

By Gina B. Nahai

About the book (from the publisher): In the decade before the Islamic Revolution, Iran is a country at the brink of explosion. Twelve-year-old Yaas is born into an already divided family: Her father is the son of wealthy Iranian Jews who are integrated into the country’s upper-class, mostly Muslim, elite; her mother was raised in the slums of South Tehran, one street away from the old Jewish ghetto ... At once a cultural exploration of an as-yet unfamiliar society, and a psychological study of the effects of loss, Caspian Rain takes the reader inside the tragic and fascinating world of a brave young girl struggling against impossible odds.

Natasha and other stories(2004)
By David Bezmozgis

A touching, humorous, wise and poignant collection of linked short stories chronicling the lives of the Bermans - a family of Russian Jews who seek to reinvent themselves and carve out new, improved identities in the so-called cultural mosaic of Toronto.

Fatelessness(2004)

By Imre Kertesz

Translated by Tim Wilkinson

Winner of the Nobel Prize (2000). At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew.” In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. Description cited from: http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400078639

CLASSICS & ACADEMIC