Welcome to the Reading Circle: 2006-2007    

In first term we will be discussing the books below. For each title you will find a brief summary of the plot and some questions to start you off.

 

Your task is to respond to the questions posed using your Reading Response Journals as a guide. Below each title you will find several questions to guide you in your discussions. The questions have been selected to challenge you to create evaluative responses to the novel you are reading. Share these reactions with the group. Each student is required to post at least one insightful comment or statement, for every book under discussion.

 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus. 

"Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's debut, begins with the politics, climate, social customs, and, above all, food of Nigeria (balls of fufu rolled between the fingers, okpa bought from roadside vendors) unfold like the purple hibiscus of the title, rare and fascinating. Fifteen-year-old Kambili is the dutiful and self-effacing daughter of a rich man, a religious fanatic and domestic tyrant whose public image is of a politically courageous newspaper publisher and philanthropist."

 

 

Archer, Jeffrey. Kane and Abel.

 

"Kane and Abel are born on the same day the same year on each side of the Atlantic. William Kane are born in one of the richest families of Boston and grows up to be a banker on Wall Street. Abel Rosnovski is born in the Polish countryside and has to spend many years in Siberian prison camps before he travels to New York and eventually creates one of the world's largest chains of hotels. The confrontation between these two men, both striving for power and success, will make the finance capital of the world tremble."

 

 

Hoeg, Peter. Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

 

"The title of this absorbing suspense novel by a Danish author only suggests the intriguing story it tells. After young Isaiah Christiansen falls from a snow-covered roof in present-day Copenhagen, something about his lone rooftop tracks--and the fact that the boy had a fear of heights--obsesses Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen, a woman who had befriended him. Smilla is 37, unmarried, and, like Isaiah, part of Denmark's small Eskimo/Greenlander community. She is also a minor Danish authority on the properties and classification of ice. Her search for what had frightened the boy leads her to uncover information about his father's mysterious death on a secret expedition to Greenland, a mission funded by a powerful Danish corporation involved in a strange conspiracy stretching back to WW II."

 

Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meaney.

 

"Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras."

 

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible.

 

"When Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement."

 

Levy, Andrea. Small Island.

 

"Andrea Levy's award-winning novel, Small Island, deftly brings two families into crisp focus. First a Jamaican family, including the well-intentioned Gilbert, who can never manage to say or do exactly the right thing; Romeo Michael, who leaves a wake of women in his path; and finally, Hortense, whose primness belies her huge ambition to become English in every way possible. The other unhappy family is English, starting with Queenie, who escapes the drudgery of being a butcher's daughter only to marry a dull banker."

 

Malouf, David. Remembering Babylon

 

"A quietly masterful tale from Australia's colonial past, depicting the savage and painful nuances of racism evoked when a white youth raised by aborigines returns to his own people."

 

Michaels, Ann. Fugitive Pieces.

 

"A survivor of his family's annihilation by the Nazis, young Jakob Beer hides in a Polish forest alone and traumatized, longing for his parents and sister Bella. He stumbles upon a Greek scientist, Athos Roussos, and is smuggled to the Greek island of Zakynthos. The novel, written like a memoir, weaves together Jakob's memories of his family and his life with Athos into a tapestry of pain and eventual healing. Reminiscent of Elie Wiesel's Night."

 

Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion.

 

"In the Canadian wilderness, early in this century, Patrick Lewis grows up a child apart. Some time later in Toronto, an immigrant worker, suspended beneath the bridge he is helping to build, rescues from mid-air a nun swept away by the wind. The paths of these three people eventually cross, with explosive results."

 

Pears, Iain. An Instance of the Fingerpost.

 

"England of the 1660s was full of political and intellectual turmoil & speculation. It is firmly within this maelstrom that Pears (The Last Judgment, LJ 2/1/96) has set this massive historical whodunit. A fellow of New College, Oxford, is found dead of arsenic poisoning (from a fancy carafe of brandy), and a young woman of the evening is accused, sentenced, and hanged for his murder. Case seemingly closed. But no, four very different versions of what really happened to the late Professor Grange related by four eyewitnesses to the crime weave a convoluted fabric of religious, scientific, and political intrigue. Basing his novel loosely upon an actual case from the period, Pears pits the key minds of the day?Boyle, Locke, Wren, and others against one another as each takes a shot at gaining from the event. Strange bedfellows indeed. Followers of Brother Cadfael and the works of Anne Perry and Umberto Eco will revel in this smartly paced, rather tongue-in-cheek tour de force."

 

Ravel, Edeet. Look For Me.

 

"As the second volume in a trilogy about the effects of war on human relationships, this is a compelling story about an Israeli woman's search for her long-missing husband. Dana is a writer of trashy romance novels. She is also a humanitarian who attends peace rallies and photographs the suffering she encounters. Years ago, her husband Daniel disappeared after being badly burned in a military accident. Dana is certain that he is still alive but hiding, and that the army knows where he is but will not reveal his location. After eleven years, she is still searching for him. While pursuing a promising lead on his whereabouts, she falls in love with a fellow activist. A thought-provoking portrait of the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

 

Vidal, Gore. Creation.

 

"In 445 B.C., Cyrus Spitama, the grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, is the Persian ambassador to the city of Athens. Of course, Cyrus Spitama speaks with a very modern, ironic voice but his delightfully wicked observations are the icing on a narrative of truly epic scope--out of his desire to understand the origins of the world, Cyrus undertakes journeys to India, where he encounters disciples of the Buddha, and China, where he engages Confucius in philosophical conversation while the great sage fishes by the riverside. Creation offers insights into classical history laced with scintillating."

 

 

Source of cover art and annotation: http://www.amazon.com