November Book Club

Posted on September 25, 2012 by dawngill

To all fellow readers,

Many thanks to a truly insightful discussion at the last Book Club get together where we discussed the work of Andre Brink, a South African author.

For those of you who have never attended the monthly bookclub, please feel free to join our next get together:

Title: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of 2 cultures. (available on Amazon Kindle)

Author: Anne Fadiman
Date: Thursday 8 November 2012
Time: 14h00 – 16h00
Location: Recoleta

Here is the Amazon review of the book:
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia’s parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne Fadiman’s compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest. The current edition, published for the book’s fifteenth anniversary, includes a new afterword by the author that provides updates on the major characters along with reflections on how they have changed Fadiman’s life and attitudes.
Please RSVP to Lydsmiller@gmail.com to confirm your attendance and to
receive the directions.

Hope to see many of you there.

Regards,
The Bookclub Organizers

August Book Club Meeting

Posted on August 10, 2012 by dawngill

Join us for the August meeting of BAIN Book Club!

Date: Wednesday 29 August 2012
Time: 13h00 – 15h00
Location: Recoleta

The book club meeting for August will feature The Emperor’s Children by: Claire Messud

The New Yorker book reviews writes:
“In this witty examination of New York’s chattering classes, which opens in the spring of 2001, the despot of the title is Murray Thwaite, a famous journalist who made his name in the Vietnam era. The next generation, however, is having trouble gaining traction. Murray’s daughter, Marina, unable to complete a long-overdue book on the cultural significance of children’s clothing, has moved back into her parents’ Upper West Side apartment and is doing a lot of yoga. Her two best friends—Danielle, a television producer, and Julius, a gay freelance critic—are similarly ambitious and entitled, without being particularly driven. All three find sex the easiest way to transform themselves. Only Murray’s brainy and profoundly disenfranchised nephew from upstate aggressively pursues his belief in the true and the good, but he proves to be a sort of literary terrorist, threatening to blow the family apart. The humorous intimacies of Messud’s portraits do not, finally, soften the judgments behind them: If this is what’s become of the liberal imagination, is it worth fighting for?”

Please RSVP to milenanewhook@gmail.com

*exact address provided upon RSVP

This event is limited to current BAIN Downtown members only. To become a member of BAIN Downtown, email bain.downtown@gmail.com.

Hope to see you all there on the 29th!

July Book Club Meeting

Posted on July 12, 2012 by dawngill

Join us for the next book club meeting on Wednesday 25 July 1:00pm!

We are reading The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin, our second book that takes place in Buenos Aires.

Norman Thomas di Giovanni from The Times writes, “Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from those around him. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take considerable risks. Set in Argentina in a time of great change, The Story of the Night is a powerful and moving novel about a man who, as the Falklands War is fought and lost, finds his own way to emerge into the world. The Story of the Night is, in the end, a love story of the most serious and difficult kind. Toibin has told it with profound artistry and truth’ Tobias Wolff Nobody before Toibin has made such honesty stand so clearly for political and personal integrity …In each of his first three novels he has invented a strong central character but Garay is by far his most memorable’ Edmund White, Sunday Times A remarkable achievement …The ease, the fluidity, the economy, the precision of Toibin’s masterly prose make this novel sheer pleasure to read.”

Address: Recoleta (specific details to be sent to you on RSVP)

Please RSVP directly to dawn.e.gill@gmail.com

Looking forward to an interesting discussion!