April 3rd choices

Vote for April too! (also by Sunday 2/12 at midnight). We're going to get one month ahead of ourselves so voting doesn't cut into reading time. I took the liberty of recycling some choices from a couple years ago that sound interesting:

1) The Wild Things by Dave Eggers

Max is a rambunctious eight-year-old whose world is changing around him: His father is absent, his mother is increasingly distracted, and his teenage sister has outgrown him. Sad and angry, Max dons his wolf suit and makes terrible, ruinous mischief, flooding his sister’s room and driving his mother half-crazy. Convinced his family doesn’t want him anymore, Max flees home, finds a boat and sails away. Arriving on an island, he meets strange and giant creatures who rage and break things, who trample and scream. These beasts do everything Max feels inside, and so, Max appoints himself their king. Here, on a magnificent adventure with these funny and complex monsters, Max can be the wildest thing of all. In this visionary adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic work, Dave Eggers brings an imaginary world vividly to life, telling the story of a lonely boy navigating the emotional journey away from boyhood.

2) Still Life with Rice by Helie Lee

As a way to explore and affirm her Korean heritage, Lee reconstructs the life of her maternal grandmother. Born in 1912 into a well-to-do merchant family, Hongyong Baek had a traditional upbringing, culminating in her wedding day, when she met her husband for the first time. Marriage to her charming and somewhat feckless husband turned out to be happy, and Baek was content with her severely circumscribed role. But life was disrupted by political events. To escape Japanese oppression, Baek and her family joined other Korean refugees in China, where her resourcefulness helped her prosper as a dealer first in sesame oil and later in opium. When 36 years of Japanese occupation ended, she and her family returned home. But peace and prosperity came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of civil war. After incredible hardships, family members were reunited, and Baek used her skills as a healer to restore some measure of financial security. Written with great narrative power and attention to detail, a testament to the will to survive.

3) The Know It All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Man in the World by A.J. Jacobs

When Jacobs, a pop-culture junkie and magazine editor, got a bee in his bonnet to read the entire abridged set of the Encyclopedia Britannica to stave off the decline of his recalled knowledge, his wife, family, and coworkers looked on with disbelief, amusement, and annoyance. They thought he'd give up on his quest, but fortunately he did not, for his recap manages to impart the joys of learning, along with a lot of laughs. The alphabetical arrangement of his book allows Jacobs to share highlights, many of which show his fixation on the morbid, the insane, and the grotesque in history. Cortés had syphilis. Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women. Throughout, the author digresses with anecdotes about such things as his trip to a Mensa meeting, his visit with Alex Trebek, and (mainly) his wife's attempts to get pregnant. As Jacobs wraps up, he leaves readers with the sense of satisfaction and wistfulness that often occurs when finishing a particularly satisfying book, only multiplied by the magnitude of what he has accomplished. This is a love note to human knowledge and the joys of obtaining it.

March 6th Choices

If you didn't come to our meeting on February 7th, you missed out on talk about ancient civilizations in the Americas, Botox, and breast size during pregnancy and nursing among other things. Plus Cristin's presentation of our choices for March 6th (vote before midnight on Sunday, February 12th):

1) The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education by Craig M. Mullaney

In this surprise bestseller, West Point grad, Rhodes scholar, Airborne Ranger, and U. S. Army Captain Craig Mullaney recounts his unparalleled education and the hard lessons that only war can teach. While stationed in Afghanistan, a deadly firefight with al-Qaeda leads to the loss of one of his soldiers. Years later, after that excruciating experience, he returns to the United States to teach future officers at the Naval Academy. Written with unflinching honesty, this is an unforgettable portrait of a young soldier grappling with the weight of war while coming to terms with what it means to be a man.

2) Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place---and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end---but instead she discovers it is only just beginning. With a vibrant cast of vividly realized characters, Moloka'i is the true-to-life chronicle of a people who embraced life in the face of death.

3) One For the Money by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is so smart, so honest, and so funny that her narrative charm could drive a documentary on termites. But this tough gal from New Jersey, an unemployed discount lingerie buyer, has a much more interesting story to tell: her Miata has been repossessed, she's so poor she just drank her last bottle of beer for breakfast, and her only chance out of her present rut is her repugnant cousin Vinnie and his bail-bond business. She blackmailed Vinnie into giving her a bail-bond recovery job worth $10,000 (for a murder suspect), even though she doesn't own a gun and has never apprehended a person in her life. And the guy she has to get, Joe Morelli, is the same creep who charmed away her teenage virginity behind the pastry case in the Trenton bakery. If that hard-luck story doesn't sound compelling enough, Stephanie's several unsuccessful attempts at pulling in Joe make a downright hilarious and suspenseful tale of murder and deceit. Along the way, several more outlandish (but unrelentingly real) characters join the story, including Benito Ramirez, a champion boxer who seems to be following Stephanie Plum wherever she goes.