SOTAREADING 2021-2024

Parker's blog response  September 29, 2015 to Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See As I will not be there until 4 today, here are my observations on Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See.   Despite the 500 plus pages, this was virtually a one-sitting read. Not often am I so completely absorbed in a novel and felt as if I had stepped into a different world and time.  Doerr blends layered storytelling, a detailed geographic setting (check out St. Malo and the Paris streets around the Jardin des Plantes on Google maps) and the historical setting of the Nazi invasion of France in the Second World War with characters whose lives are thrown into disarray, but through their own curiosity and intelligence, seemingly disparate individuals manage to circumnavigate the carnage unfolding around them to create a deeply resonating arc that bridges the world that was imploding around them. The plot is simple: the curator at the Museum of Natural History in Paris must hide its treasures ...

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson (Author)   Moderator: Brad Craddock Date: TBA   The Daylight Gate , an instant bestseller in the UK, is award-winning Jeanette Winterson’s singular vision of a dark period of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power in a time when politics and religion were closely intertwined. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, every Catholic conspirator in England fled to a wild, untamed place far from the reach of London law. On Good Friday, 1612, deep in the woods of Pendle Hill, ...

Go Set a Watchman: A Novel Hardcover –  by Harper Lee (Author)   Moderator: Susan Woodhams Date: TBA     From Harper Lee comes a landmark new ...

Wonder by R. J. Palacio (Author)   Moderator: Marcy Gamzon Date: TBA 'My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.' Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things - eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. But ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life. Now, for the first time, he's being sent to a real school - and he's dreading it....

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Author)   Moderator: Janice Kriegel Date: TBA   WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as ...

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt (Author), Stephen J. Dubner (Author)   Tuesday, April 28 Moderator: Zach Johnson ...

Meeting Tuesday, March 24 Moderator: Jim Tillotson Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffmann Author website: carlhoffman.com The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world and his powerful, influential family guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story. Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found. Soon after his disappearance, rumors surfaced that he'd been killed and ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat—a native tribe of warriors whose complex culture was built around sacred, reciprocal violence, head hunting, and ritual cannibalism. The Dutch government and the Rockefeller family denied the story, and Michael's death was officially ruled a drowning. Yet doubts lingered. Sensational rumors and stories circulated, fueling spec...