2Peas Refugees Book Club! Vote for the Oct and Nov titles!
Aug 5, 2014 22:20:21 GMT
gottapeanow and luckyexwife like this
Post by leannec on Aug 5, 2014 22:20:21 GMT
Hey Bookies!
Thanks so much for following me over here to the 2Peas Refugees Book Club
Our title for September is Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen ... our first discussion takes place on Friday, September 12th ... everyone is welcome to join in
Now is the time to vote for our October and November titles so we all have time to get our hands on them ... place your vote by commenting on the thread
The top pick will be October's title, second place will be our selection for November!
"All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.
"Big Little Lies" by Liane Moriarty
A murder . . . a tragic accident . . . or just parents behaving badly?
What's indisputable is that someone is dead.
But who did what?
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline's youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline's teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline's ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn't be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
"The Vacationers" by Emma Straub
An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family's two-week stay in Mallorca.
For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.
This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
"Delicious!" by Ruth Reichl
In her bestselling memoirs Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts.
Billie Breslin has travelled far from her California home to take a job at Delicious, the most iconic food magazine in New York and, thus, the world. When the publication is suddenly shut down, the colourful staff, who have become an extended family for Billie, must pick up their lives and move on. Not Billie, though. She is offered a new job: staying behind in the magazine''s deserted downtown mansion offices to uphold the "Delicious Guarantee"--a public relations hotline for complaints and recipe inquiries--until further notice. What she doesn''t know is that this boring, lonely job will be the portal to a life-changing discovery.
Delicious! carries the reader to the colourful world of downtown New York restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors. And from the lively food shop in Little Italy where Billie works on weekends to a hidden room in the magazine''s library where she discovers the letters of Lulu Swan, a plucky twelve-year-old, who wrote to the legendary chef James Beard during World War II. Lulu''s letters lead Billie to a deeper understanding of history (and the history of food), but most important, Lulu''s courage in the face of loss inspires Billie to come to terms with her own issues--the panic attacks that occur every time she even thinks about cooking, the truth about the big sister she adored, and her ability to open her heart to love.
"Longbourn" by Jo Baker
For millions of book lovers, Pride and Prejudice holds a place in the heart usually reserved for first loves and best friends. It was the first book that completely transported so many of us into a story, made fiction feel truly real. Jane Austen opened the door to a family that even now, two hundred years later, seems so alive and so familiar - she made us feel the joys and the pains of Elizabeth, Jane, and all the residents of Longbourn House and Netherfield Park as if we were Bennets ourselves. Which is why reading Jo Baker’s new novel Longbourn feel so much like going home. Baker has taken the lives in Pride and Prejudice and brilliantly reimagined them through the eyes of the Bennets’ servants, but this is not merely some literary piggybacking. The staff “below stairs” are living, richly drawn characters who have their own tales to tell, and their stories are just as compelling, romantic, and full of twists as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s, and Baker tells them with compassion and a wit that does Jane Austen proud. Your heart will ache and leap for them as much as it did for the girls who live upstairs. After being immersed in the lives of Sarah (the maid), Mrs. Hill (the housekeeper), and James (the footman), I know it will be impossible to read Pride and Prejudice the same way ever again. Baker’s writing is simply that good. She has a vocabulary that echoes Austen, but she never tries to steal her voice. She uses Austen’s characters, but never abuses them – every word rings true, every phrase is a familiar song. Jo Baker, thank you for letting us go home to Longbourn.
"Frog Music" by Emma Donoghue
From the [HASH]1 international bestselling author of Room
It is 1876, and San Francisco, the freewheeling "Paris of the West," is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, Blanche will risk everything to bring Jenny''s murderer to justice-if he doesn''t track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women and damaged children. It''s the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue''s lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boom town like no other. Like much of Donoghue''s acclaimed fiction, this larger-than-life story is based on real people and documents. Her prodigious gift for lighting up forgotten corners of history is on full display once again in this unforgettable novel.
"One Day" by David Nicholls
It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day-July 15th-of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.
Thanks so much for following me over here to the 2Peas Refugees Book Club
Our title for September is Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen ... our first discussion takes place on Friday, September 12th ... everyone is welcome to join in
Now is the time to vote for our October and November titles so we all have time to get our hands on them ... place your vote by commenting on the thread
The top pick will be October's title, second place will be our selection for November!
"All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.
"Big Little Lies" by Liane Moriarty
A murder . . . a tragic accident . . . or just parents behaving badly?
What's indisputable is that someone is dead.
But who did what?
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline's youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline's teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline's ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn't be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
"The Vacationers" by Emma Straub
An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family's two-week stay in Mallorca.
For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.
This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
"Delicious!" by Ruth Reichl
In her bestselling memoirs Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts.
Billie Breslin has travelled far from her California home to take a job at Delicious, the most iconic food magazine in New York and, thus, the world. When the publication is suddenly shut down, the colourful staff, who have become an extended family for Billie, must pick up their lives and move on. Not Billie, though. She is offered a new job: staying behind in the magazine''s deserted downtown mansion offices to uphold the "Delicious Guarantee"--a public relations hotline for complaints and recipe inquiries--until further notice. What she doesn''t know is that this boring, lonely job will be the portal to a life-changing discovery.
Delicious! carries the reader to the colourful world of downtown New York restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors. And from the lively food shop in Little Italy where Billie works on weekends to a hidden room in the magazine''s library where she discovers the letters of Lulu Swan, a plucky twelve-year-old, who wrote to the legendary chef James Beard during World War II. Lulu''s letters lead Billie to a deeper understanding of history (and the history of food), but most important, Lulu''s courage in the face of loss inspires Billie to come to terms with her own issues--the panic attacks that occur every time she even thinks about cooking, the truth about the big sister she adored, and her ability to open her heart to love.
"Longbourn" by Jo Baker
For millions of book lovers, Pride and Prejudice holds a place in the heart usually reserved for first loves and best friends. It was the first book that completely transported so many of us into a story, made fiction feel truly real. Jane Austen opened the door to a family that even now, two hundred years later, seems so alive and so familiar - she made us feel the joys and the pains of Elizabeth, Jane, and all the residents of Longbourn House and Netherfield Park as if we were Bennets ourselves. Which is why reading Jo Baker’s new novel Longbourn feel so much like going home. Baker has taken the lives in Pride and Prejudice and brilliantly reimagined them through the eyes of the Bennets’ servants, but this is not merely some literary piggybacking. The staff “below stairs” are living, richly drawn characters who have their own tales to tell, and their stories are just as compelling, romantic, and full of twists as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s, and Baker tells them with compassion and a wit that does Jane Austen proud. Your heart will ache and leap for them as much as it did for the girls who live upstairs. After being immersed in the lives of Sarah (the maid), Mrs. Hill (the housekeeper), and James (the footman), I know it will be impossible to read Pride and Prejudice the same way ever again. Baker’s writing is simply that good. She has a vocabulary that echoes Austen, but she never tries to steal her voice. She uses Austen’s characters, but never abuses them – every word rings true, every phrase is a familiar song. Jo Baker, thank you for letting us go home to Longbourn.
"Frog Music" by Emma Donoghue
From the [HASH]1 international bestselling author of Room
It is 1876, and San Francisco, the freewheeling "Paris of the West," is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, Blanche will risk everything to bring Jenny''s murderer to justice-if he doesn''t track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women and damaged children. It''s the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue''s lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boom town like no other. Like much of Donoghue''s acclaimed fiction, this larger-than-life story is based on real people and documents. Her prodigious gift for lighting up forgotten corners of history is on full display once again in this unforgettable novel.
"One Day" by David Nicholls
It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day-July 15th-of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.
refupea #245
