Book Clubs

Someone asked me if I was able to get books here. If I couldn't have found books to read, I think I would have taken the next flight home. My main sources of books have been downloading ebooks from my public library at home onto my Google Nexus and the Anglistik (English) library at the university. A lot of the books that I want to read are not available, so I've been reading whatever I can get my hands on and stockpiling requests for August when we get home. However, some of the books I've happened upon but never heard of before have been good discoveries, e.g.
Songs at the River’s Edge: Stories from a Bangladeshi Village by Katy Gardner, Don't mean nothing: short stories of Vietnam by Susan O'Neill, short stories by a former nurse during the war, and My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story by Abraham Verghese, who also wrote Cutting For Stone. The latter is his story of being the primary AIDS doctor in a small town in Tennessee at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

And I have been able to find some books that my book groups are reading at home or that people have recommended. A friend replied to my Christmas letter suggesting the book below, a journal of what Will Schwalbe read with his mother while taking her to chemo for pancreatic cancer. I usually like books about books.

 

This week I also got to be part of two book clubs. Back in April we had dinner with the German L'Abri representatives and Ruth was intrigued with the idea of book clubs and asked if I would help her start a bilingual German/English book club. I gave her a list of books that were short and I thought would make for a good beginning discussion. She asked me if I would lead. Anyway, we read Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, which I had read before. Some read it in German and some in English, and the invitation she sent encouraged everyone to speak in whichever language was most comfortable. Ruth made fish and chips and apple crumble to go with the British novel. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so. It's witty and easily read in an evening. The queen feels obliged to check out a book from the bookmobile parked near Buckingham Palace and reading changes her life. A lot of the book is her musings on why and how she reads, which led to a good discussion of how and why we read. A little awkward switching back and forth, so German predominated. Ruth and I will do a postmortem on Wednesday before our next meeting.

Yesterday I attended the International Women's Association  English Literature Group discussing Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a book about the Biafran civil war. I had read it before, but reread it. A sense of doom pervades, which means it certainly isn't a fun read, but it's a fairly good portrayal of the cruelty, insecurity, and starvation. I kept thinking of parallels to the situation in Syria, since the Biafran rebels kept hoping that the world would come to their aid, but arms were supplied only to the Nigerian conquerors. An interesting assortment of women from Germany, Austria, Scotland, England, and one other American. The German woman who gave me a ride also participates in a French book club, and she writes children's books, so I enjoyed chatting with her in the car.

My current bookshelf contains Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which my Claremont book club is reading, and Stoner by John Williams, which was mentioned in the NY Times as a book that didn't sell well when it came out because its style was out of fashion in the 60s, but it has now been republished and is getting some attention. I just started both, so it's too early to tell, but I like both so far.