Books Read in 2016

1. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
2. Ella Minow Pea:  A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
3. The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
4. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende    
5. Why Gender Matters by Dr. Leonard Sax
6. The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright
7. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
8. Yearning for the Living God: Reflections from the Life of F. Enzio Busche by Tracie A. Lamb
9. The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas
10. A Heart Like His by Virginia H. Pearce
11. Light's Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel

December's Meeting

Book Club Christmas Party 

Dec 15th (3rd Thurs)
7:30pm at Erica S.'s 

Please bring a cookbook, new or used for the book exchange and a treat to share.

November's Book

Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath
by Ted Koppel

November 17th (3rd Thurs)
7:30pm at Rebecca L's 


Summary:
In this New York Times bestselling investigation, Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America’s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared.

Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before.  

It isn’t just a scenario. A well-designed attack on just one of the nation’s three electric power grids could cripple much of our infrastructure—and in the age of cyberwarfare, a laptop has become the only necessary weapon. Several nations hostile to the United States could launch such an assault at any time. In fact, as a former chief scientist of the NSA reveals, China and Russia have already penetrated the grid. And a cybersecurity advisor to President Obama believes that independent actors—from “hacktivists” to terrorists—have the capability as well. “It’s not a question of if,” says Centcom Commander General Lloyd Austin, “it’s a question of when.”  

And yet, as Koppel makes clear, the federal government, while well prepared for natural disasters, has no plan for the aftermath of an attack on the power grid.  The current Secretary of Homeland Security suggests keeping a battery-powered radio.

In the absence of a government plan, some individuals and communities have taken matters into their own hands. Among the nation’s estimated three million “preppers,” we meet one whose doomsday retreat includes a newly excavated three-acre lake, stocked with fish, and a Wyoming homesteader so self-sufficient that he crafted the thousands of adobe bricks in his house by hand. We also see the unrivaled disaster preparedness of the Mormon church, with its enormous storehouses, high-tech dairies, orchards, and proprietary trucking company – the fruits of a long tradition of anticipating the worst. But how, Koppel asks, will ordinary civilians survive?

With urgency and authority, one of our most renowned journalists examines a threat unique to our time and evaluates potential ways to prepare for a catastrophe that is all but inevitable.


From the Hardcover edition. 
Summary from Amazon.com


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http://tedkoppellightsout.com/

October's Book

A Heart Like His:
Making Space For God's Love in Your Life
by Virginia H. Pearce

*Date & Time Change!

Oct. 27th (4th Thurs) 
7:30pm at Janice F.'s


This book is not available through our local library.  However, Mary S. has a couple of copies and is willing to lend them out.  Please contact her if you're interested in borrowing one.


Summary & Reviews from Desert Book:
The ability to feel God's love doesn't just make life nicer or more comfortable - it changes everything.  When filled with God's love, we can do and see and understand things that we cannot do and see and understand on our own. As our own hearts are softened by these blessings, our overriding desire becomes to help others experience this joy also.  but how do we do that in the normal course of our everyday lives?  Presented in the form of an experiment undertaken by eight friends, this step-by-step guide helps us discover the one change we can make within ourselves that will automatically increase our ability to feel the love of God and to extend the love to others.

"Yes, this book is written for women.  Yet, Pearce makes its content graspable for women everywhere.  I love that is has been easy for me to share this book with some of my Christian friends active in other faiths.  We could use more books like this.
I believe A Heart Like His is a book for women in all season of life - a must read that has the potential to transform lives.  It did mine.  Buy it, borrow it - somehow get your hands on it." -Catherine K. Arvesth, Meridian Magazine

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September's Book

The Persian Pickle Club
by Sandra Dallas

Sept. 22th (4th Thurs) - Date Change!
8pm at Ashley C.'s

Disclaimer:
We apologize in advance, if the book's content is offensive in any way.  If you'd like to learn more about the book it was previously discussed in R.R. Book Club August 2008  Please note our local library only has 3 copies.

Summary:
In 1930s Harveyvile, Kansas, Rita Ritter, a recent arrival, is invited to join the Persian Pickle Club, but her interest in journalism brings her dangerously close to a secret the club has sworn to keep.

summary from PCPL

Review:

http://www.cahners.com/ Hard times in Depression-era Harveyville, Kansas, are softened by the conviviality of a weekly quilting circle called the Persian Pickle Club. Queenie Bean, the "talkingest" member of the group, narrates the novel with snappy style. Over the course of a year, during which the club experiences more sorrow than sewing, Queenie and her pals depend on one another more than ever. When Queenie forms a fast friendship with the newest "Pickle," a flashy, big-city gal named Rita, the equilibrium of the group changes, for Rita is a novice newspaper reporter intent on making a name for herself. The story Rita most wants to crack involves the mysterious death of one of the club ladies' husbands. Will secrets long stitched into the collective fabric of friendship hold? This and other suspenseful questions of small-town life will entertain readers who enjoyed Fannie Flag's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Random, 1987), Olive Ann Burns's Cold Sassy Tree (LJ 10/15/84), or Dallas's first novel, Buster Midnight's Cafe (LJ 4/15/90). Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.

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August's Book

Yearning for the Living God:  Reflections from the Life of F. Enzio Busche
by Tracie A. Lamb

Thurs. Aug. 18th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Amanda C.'s 

A note from Amanda:
I could not find this book at the library and it seems quite expensive even as an e-book.  I found some used copies and ordered 2.  So for those interested we can pass them around.  I've already read it so as soon as I get them I can start rotation them.

Summary:
F. Enzio Busche, emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, was born in Germany in 1930, three years before Hitler's rise to power.  Fifteen years later, when World War II ended, Enzio was a prisoner of war, having been drafted into the German army at age fourteen.  The war left Enzio with many questions:  Is there a God?  What is the purpose of Life?  What happens after death?  In time, he learned the answers.  Yearning for the Living God is a collection of Elder Busche's experiences -- both before and after his conversion -- and an account of the life-changing awakening that can come to all who search for truth in this world.

summary from the Deseret Book website 

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July's Book

The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Thurs. July 21st (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Andi M's

Summary:
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession.  In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer.  Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love ito his tightly repressed existence.

summary from the PCPL website

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June's Book

The Rent Collector
by Cameron Wright

June 16th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Aimeè's 

Summary:
The Rent Collector is the story of a young mother, Sang Ly, struggling to survive by picking through garbage in Cambodia's largest municipal dump.  Under the threat of eviction by an embittered old drunk who is charged with collecting rents from the poor of Stung Meanchey, Sang Ly embarks on a desperate journey to save her ailing son from a life of ignorance and poverty.  It's a tale of discovery and redemption in which she learns that literature, like hope, is found in the most unexpected places.  Though the book is a work of fiction, it was inspired by real people living at Stung Meanchey.

Summary from the book's website

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May's book

Why Gender Matters 
by Dr. Leonard Sax

May 19th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Rebecca L.'s 

Summary from Amazon:
Are boys and girls really that different? Twenty years ago, doctors and researchers didn’t think so. Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends.

It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated. 

In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations. 

For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female. 

Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say.

Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes. 

A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.


From the author's website:
My main motivation for writing Why Gender Matters was to make sense of what I had been seeing in my own clinical practice, as a board-certified family doctor - and as a PhD psychologist - among the children who I had come to known, practicing for many years in the same town in Montgomery County, Maryland.  I tried to make sense of these observations by linking them to emerging research in psychology and neuroscience.  Some of those efforts were more successful than others.  On this Web page, I would like to provide updates and corrections for those points where my discussion in Why Gender Matters is now clearly out-of-date or inaccurate.


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April's Book

The Neverending Story 
by Michael Ende

April 21st (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Kristin P.'s

Summary
This epic work of the imagination has captured the hearts of millions of readers worldwide since it was first published more than a decade ago.  Its special story within a story is an irresistible invitation for readers to become part of the book itself.  And now this modern classic and bibliophile's dream is available in hardcover again.  

The story begins with a lonely boy named Bastian and the strange book that draws him into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica.  Only a human can save this enchanted place--by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name.  But the journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monster, and magic--and once Bastian begins his quest, he may never return.  As he is drawn deeper into Fantastica, he must find the courage to face unspeakable foes and the mysteries of his own heart.

Readers, too, can travel to the wondrous, unforgettable world of Fantastica if they will just turn the page...

summary from goodreads.com

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March's Book

The Crossover
by Kwame Alexander

March 17th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Lisa D.'s

Summary
"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks...The cours is SIZZLING.  My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering," announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell.  He and his twin borther Jordan are awesome on the court.  but Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.  

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with the growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.

summary from goodreads.com

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February's Book

Ella Minnow Pea  
A Novel in Letters
by Mark Dunn

February 18th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Andi M.'s 

Summary:
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina.  Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."  Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the islands Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as the fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.  As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel.  The result is both a hilarious and moving story of the girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

summary from PCPL

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January's Book

I am Malala
by Malala Yousafzai


January 21st (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Amanda C.'s 


Summary:

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world. (From the publisher.)

Be sure to listen to Screen Thoughts with Hollister & O'Toole as they review the book and 2015 movie: He Named Me Malala. 

Summary from litlovers.com

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