Please send your RSVP to Toni at tonilin@aol.com   Also send or bring book suggestions.

This month we will discuss Discrete Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa, 337 pages, 2015

Location: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1776, Palermo

[A] singular all-star performance . . . that proves that the Peruvian master is still at the top of his narrative game . . . The Discreet Hero is an exquisite concoction, a delicious melodrama of sex and betrayal, love and revenge. But what technique is needed! While real television soap operas are shaggy and plodding, Vargas Llosa’s novel is swift, seamless and as structurally symmetrical as a diamond. (Marcela Valdes The Washington Post)

The Discreet Hero, [is] an energetic book with a more straightforward narrative method than almost any other Vargas Llosa . . . [the book] is most memorable for its optimism . . . and for the way in which Don Rigoberto is forced away from his etchings and phonograph records and into the ‘sordid warp and woof’ of the world he has scorned. (Thomas Mallon The New Yorker)

The book is often funny; you turn the pages with relish; it offers plenty to think about and admire . . . it immerses you in the way you hope any novel will immerse you. (Francisco Goldman, The New York Times Book Review.

Pease join us, whether you have read the book or not.

Happy reading.

RSVP to Toni at tonilin@aol.com

July 5, 2016, 2 pm, Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

See dates and books for August and September below.

This month we will discuss Enduring Love, Ian McEwen, 274 pages – 2009

One Amazon reviewer said that “McEwan explores the dichotomy of science and religion, logic and intuition, sanity and delusion. The writing is beautiful, as sharp and witty as we’ve come to expect of McEwan, but far more intricate and thoughtful. All that and a page-turner? It’s a near-perfect read.”

August 9, 2016 — Emma – Jane Austin, 459 pages, more than 200 years old

One of England’s most beloved authors, Jane Austen wrote such classic novels as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. Published anonymously during her life, Austen’s work was renowned for its realism, humor, and commentary on English social rites and society at the time. Austen s writing was supported by her family, particularly by her brother, Henry, and sister, Cassandra, who is believed to have destroyed, at Austen s request, her personal correspondence after Austen’s death in 1817. Austen’s authorship was revealed by her nephew in A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869, and the literary value of her work has since been recognized by scholars around the world.

September 13, 2016 – Discrete Hero – Mario Vargas Llosa, 337 pages, 2015

[A] singular all-star performance . . . that proves that the Peruvian master is still at the top of his narrative game . . . The Discreet Hero is an exquisite concoction, a delicious melodrama of sex and betrayal, love and revenge. But what technique is needed! While real television soap operas are shaggy and plodding, Vargas Llosa’s novel is swift, seamless and as structurally symmetrical as a diamond. (Marcela Valdes The Washington Post)

The Discreet Hero, [is] an energetic book with a more straightforward narrative method than almost any other Vargas Llosa . . . [the book] is most memorable for its optimism . . . and for the way in which Don Rigoberto is forced away from his etchings and phonograph records and into the ‘sordid warp and woof’ of the world he has scorned. (Thomas Mallon The New Yorker)

The book is often funny; you turn the pages with relish; it offers plenty to think about and admire . . . it immerses you in the way you hope any novel will immerse you. (Francisco Goldman, The New York Times Book Review.

We will meet in July at Libros del Pasaje, 2 pm, on Tuesday, July 5.  Watch for the announcement.

Pease join us, whether you have read the book or not.

Happy reading.

RSVP to jendan@gmail.com.

Please join us for our June book discussion.

Date: Tuesday, June 7

Time: 14:00 (new time)

Location: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

For the month of June we will be discussing God Help the Child, by  Toni Morrison.  Published in 2015.  194 pages.  Available on Amazon and at  your local US library by electronic borrowing.

Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child—the first novel by Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment—weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.

“Emotionally-wrenching . . . [Morrison’s] literary craftsmanship endures with sparse language, precise imagery, and even humor. This haunting novel displays a profound understanding of American culture and an unwavering sense of justice and forgiveness.”
–Publishers Weekly

Please RSVP to Jennifer at  jendan@gmail.com if you are planning to attend.  Hope to see you there. 

We will be choosing the books for the next three months at this meeting.  If you are unable to make it, please email Jennifer with any suggestions that you may have.

Date: Tuesday, April 12

Time: 3:30 pm

Place: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

We will be discussing The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

THE RIVER OF DOUBT – it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of the unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt faced an unbelievable series of hardships: they lost their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and endured starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks.  In the end, three men would die, and Rooselvelt would be brought to the brink of suicide, but the expedition accomplished a seemingly impossible feat, and changed the map of the Western Hemisphere forever.

Please RSVP to jendan@gmail.com if you are planning to attend. Hope to see you there.  Below find descriptions of the books we will be discussing in March and April.
Time: 3:30 pm
Place: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

We will be discussing The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics

Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.

The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.

Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant.
Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Time: 3:30 pm
Place: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

April 12, 2016

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.
From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.

As always, please email Jennifer (jendan@gmail.com) with any ideas you have for future books to read and discuss.

Date:  February 9, 2016

Time:  3:30 pm

Location: Libros del Pasaje, Thames 1762

RSVP: Jennifer at jendan@gmail.com

Empire by Niall Ferguson

The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of World War II, around a quarter of the world’s land surface was under some form of British rule. Yet for today’s generation, the British Empire seems a Victorian irrelevance. The time is ripe for a reappraisal, and in Empire, Niall Ferguson boldly recasts the British Empire as one of the world’s greatest modernizing forces. An important new work of synthesis and revision, Empire argues that the world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain’s Age of Empire. The spread of capitalism, the communications revolution, the notion of humanitarianism, and the institutions of parliamentary democracy-all these can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain’s economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth. On a vast and vividly colored canvas, Empire shows how the British Empire acted as midwife to modernity. Displaying the originality and rigor that have made him the brightest light among British historians, Ferguson shows that the story of the Empire is pregnant with lessons for today-in particular for the United States as it stands on the brink of a new era of imperial power, based once again on economic and military supremacy. A dazzling tour de force, Empire is a remarkable reappraisal of the prizes and pitfalls of global empire.