The theme for December's book is "winter." We will be reading books related to winter, cold, etc.
Please vote by November 16th.
Here are the contenders, in no particular order (all summaries have been
pulled from Amazon & Google Books). Please respond to the poll at the end. Thank you!
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (460 pages)
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no
one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local
fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named
Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing
trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's
guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the
fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a
white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife;
memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is
haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during
World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its
neighbors watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow
Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us
shaken and changed.
The Ice Storm by Rick Moody (288 pages)
The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an
exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cark skid out of control, men
and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs,
and even suicide. Here two families, the Hoods and the Williamses, com
face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of
their lives-in a novel widely hailed as a funny, acerbic, and moving
hymn to a dazed and confused era of American life.
City of Thieves by David Benioff (258 pages)
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is
arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome
deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are
given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous
directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use
in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and
suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt
through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to
find the impossible.
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg (512 pages)
In this international bestseller, Peter Høeg successfully combines the
pleasures of literary fiction with those of the thriller. Smilla
Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the
death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building.
Her childhood in Greenland gives her an appreciation for the complex
structures of snow, and when she notices that the boy's footprints show
he
ran to his death, she decides to find out who was chasing
him. As she attempts to solve the mystery, she uncovers a series of
conspiracies and cover-ups and quickly realizes that she can trust
nobody. Her investigation takes her from the streets of Copenhagen to
an icebound island off the coast of Greenland. What she finds there has
implications far beyond the death of a single child. The unusual
setting, gripping plot, and compelling central character add up to one
of the most fascinating and literate thrillers of recent years.
Tinkers by Paul Harding (191 pages)
An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by
his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and
out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished
childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer’s time winds down, his
memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant
peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness. At
once heartbreaking and life affirming,
Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.
The Snow Child by Eoywn Ivey (416 pages)
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for
recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he
breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from
loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first
snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow
child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running
through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina,
seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side,
skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the
Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child
who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to
love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place
things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about
Faina will transform all of them.
Again, please vote by November 16. Here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BCY9GZJ
