The BAIN Book Group meets on the second Monday of each month. This month we will meet in Palermo. Please send your RSVP to tonilin@aol.com for the exact address. Do not communicate directly with bain.downtown@gmail.com, please. Bring suggestions for future books to the meeting or send suggestions to tonilin@aol.com. Books for the remainder of 2019 are listed below.
At the July meeting we will be discussing Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
The wildlife scientist Delia Owens has found her voice in WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature. … Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders — and dangers — of her private world. — New York Times
Books for the Remainder of 2019
August – Sea Stories, William H. McRaven, 353 pages.
Following the success of his #1 New York Times bestseller Make Your Bed, which has sold over one million copies, Admiral William H. McRaven is back with amazing stories of adventure during his career as a Navy SEAL and commander of America’s Special Operations Forces. Sea Stories is an unforgettable look back on one man’s incredible life, from childhood days sneaking into high-security military sites to a day job of hunting terrorists and rescuing hostages.
“A book to inspire your children and grandchildren to become everything that they can. … Most of all, it is a book that will leave you with tears in your eyes.”
―Wall Street Journal
September – The Dutch Wife, Ellen Keith, 352 pages
From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife braids together the stories of three individuals who share a dark secret and are entangled in two of the most oppressive reigns of terror in modern history. This is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong, as well as the capacity for ordinary people to persevere and do the unthinkable in extraordinary circumstances.
October — Timbuktu – Paul Auster, 204 pages
Meet discerning and sympathetic Mr. Bones, a dog who is unconditionally faithful to his troubled master, Willy G. Christmas. Auster’s leading human character is once again a tormented writer from Brooklyn who blindly believes in his ideals and willingly chooses to become a vagabond. But the real hero is the four-legged creature who follows him on his impromptu journeys and leads readers through the story.
This is not the kind of work Auster has been praised for, but it proves his hunger for innovation once again. Timbuktu will undoubtedly provoke mixed responses, but that is the price of originality. There is something plain yet mysteriously intricate beneath Auster’s trademark smooth writing.
AMirela Roncevic, “Library Journal”
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
November – Nothing to be Frightened Of – Julian Barnes, 258 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER, A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction. If the fear of death is “the most rational thing in the world,” how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty and an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for, against, and with God, and at his own bloodline, which has become, following his parents’ death, another realm of mystery.
Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.
December – The Island of Sea Women – Lisa See, 384 pages
A new novel from Lisa See, the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island.
A book that will make you cringe, but eventually pull you in to a friendship that was special and the lives of these women of the sea. It is well written, well researched and the prose is wonderful. It is a novel that shows how much we miss, misjudge, when we fail to forgive.
