April's Book

Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick

April 16th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Amanda C.'s

Summary:

In NOTHING TO ENVY, Demick follows the lives of six people: a couple of teenaged lovers courting in secret, an idealistic woman doctor,  a homeless boy, a model factory worker who loves Kim Il Sung more than her own family and her rebellious daughter.

Demick spent six years painstakakingly reconstructing life in a city off-limits to outsiders through interviews with defectors, smuggled photographs and videos. The book spans the chaotic years that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, the devastating effects of a famine that killed an estimated twenty percent of the population, and an increase in illegal defections.

While many books focus on the North Korean nuclear threat, NOTHING TO ENVY is one of the few that dwells on what everyday life is like for ordinary citizens.  With remarkable detail, Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime in the world today.  She gives a portrait as vivid as walking oneself through the darkened streets of North Korea.

Reviewers have compared the book  to John Hersey’s Hiroshima and to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  NOTHING TO ENVY is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism. Both the New Yorker and Paris Review have published excerpts of  the book.

Summary from nothingtoenvy.com

Click here for discussion questions from www.litlovers.com

Click here to visit the library website 

February's Book

North & South
by Elizabeth Gaskell

Feb. 21st (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Emily P.'s

There's also a BBC miniseries that closely mirrors the novel.  It's available at the library, netflix, and amazon instant video.

Summary:
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to go to the library website

November's Book

Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

November 13th, 8pm
at Kristi's

Summary:
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask--but Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life--from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing--and his conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. The authors show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives--how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In this book, they set out to explore the hidden side of everything. If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.--From publisher description