Discussion Books, Resources and Activities for 2013
LAVA discussed (or will soon discuss) the following books during 2013.  Click book names for reading resources, or browse month by month.  Resources for books read in other years are also available.
January We met at Bill and Andi's house to share a meal and exchange opinions on books on the 2013 voting list.  Here are the voting results.
February The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton, 328 pages, 1998.

This novel tells the story of a woman growing up in a small Illinois town in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances. It won the Pen/Ernest Hemingway award for best first novel. Boston Globe: "A sly and wistful, if harrowing, human comedy." Los Angeles Times: "Jane Hamilton's novel is authentically Dickensian. . . The real achievement of this first novel is not so much the blackness as the suggestion of resilience. At the end, Ruth begins to put together her shattered body, spirit and life." Amazon: "Hamilton has perfect pitch. So perfect that you wince with pain for confused but fundamentally good Ruth as she walks a dead-end path. The book ends with the prospect of redemption, thank goodness."

Review of the novel in the Los Angeles Times

The story takes place in the fictional community of Honey Creek in Illinois near the Wisconsin border. The novel says it is near the actual town of Freeport which is not far from a small river named Sugar River. The author herself lives on a farm in Wisconsin not far from Illinois.

An excellent interview with the author

The Wikipedia article on Jane Hamilton

Discussion questions from the publisher

The web site for the author sponsored by her publisher.

March Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea, 368 pages, 2009.

Every March we open our meeting to the general public to discuss the book chosen for the "If All of Rochester Read the Same Book..." program by Writers & Books.  This year's choice, Into the Beautiful North follows a band of young Mexicans to steal across the border into the U.S. to recruit men who will help them dislodge criminals who have taken over their village.

Writers & Books always provides a good interview with the author and a great discussion guide.

An aerial photo of the border between Tijuana (right) and the U.S. (left).

Scenes from a documentary film called the Tijuana Project, which is about life in the Tijuana gargage dump.

Some of the characters in the novel occasionally use Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English.

The quest at the heart of the story is ultimately based on Seven Samurai, an influential film by Kurosawa. Urrea stated that the character of Atomico in this novel is based on the character played by Toshiro Mifune in that film.

April The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, 150/167 pages, 2011.

Amazon: "This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about--until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present... But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world." This novel won the Booker Prize for 2012.

The author's web site has lots of resources, including a video (scroll down) about the process of designing cover art for a novel like this, which doesn't have many suitable visual images. Even further down that page is a list of book reviews. I found this one in the New York Times to be helpful.

An eight-minute audio interview with the author about his writing process

The Wikipedia article on Julian Barnes

The publisher's discussion questions

Sir Frank Kermode was a prominent modern critic of English literature whose most important book was also called The Sense of an Ending. According to two of his obituaries, that book "was a brilliant investigation of the idea that the longing for an ending brings order to both life and literature, giving shape to the endless flux of time" (The Telegraph) and "a still-stimulating reflection on the relationship between the senses of ending -- of satisfying or inevitable conclusion -- offered in religion and myth, and those offered in literary fiction" (The Observer). Kermode's book itself describes its goal as "making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives."

A review in The Independent finds parallels between this novel and a poem by Philip Larkin called "Love Again" (warning: strong language). Among other things, Tony suspects "damage a long way back" while the poem refers to "violence a long way back."

This novel has generated much speculation on the web about "what really happened." One literary blogger posted his opinion on the matter and received over 300 comments with a variety of alternate explanations. Another literary blogger has posted a list of what she considers to be common misguided explanations of the ending.

An important symbol in the novel is the Severn Bore; the river flows backwards when the tide comes in.

After 40 years, Tony and Veronica met again on the Wobbly Bridge.

Barnes also writes crime novels under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.

What is it about wrists in this story? Adrian commits suicide by slitting his wrists, and the author calls our attention to them by including clinical details of the process. Tony wears his watch with its face turned toward his wrist, and he says, "I know this much: that there is objective time but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies." Tony and Veronica have "infra-sex" by way of his wrist (and not just any wrist, mind you, but specifically the left wrist, where he wears his watch). Is the wrist some sort of symbol here? I doubt it. I suspect it was simply a way for the author to bring together in one spot several themes of the story: sex and death ("Eros and Thanatos") and the unsettling mysteries of the passage of time.

May Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, 318 pages, 2011.

Caleb, the son of an Indian chieftan, and Bethia, a minister's daughter, secretely become friends on Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s. When the minister trains Caleb for entry into Harvard, Bethia eavesdrops on the lessons, and when Caleb goes to Harvard, Bethia works as a servant nearby.

This interview with the author provides insights into the novel.

The author's website

Several reviews

Wikipedia article on Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard.

Wikipedia article on Martha's Vineyard, the setting for the novel and also the author's home since 2006.

The Gay's Head Cliffs, which appear on the cover of the book.

In the novel, Bethia's father, John Mayfield, brought a young Native American named Iacoomes into his home to educate him. In the actual history of Martha's Vineyard, Thomas Mayhew brought a young Native American named Hiacoomes into his home to educate him.

On pages 59-61, Bethia describes a newly-built pond and grist mill where Noah Merry lived. Here is a photo of the mill pond, which is still there. Brooks and her husband, writer and journalist Tony Horwitz, live near the pond, as she explains near the beginning of this lecture on ecology (click "show transcript" or "download audio." Their beautiful home was built not too long after the events in this novel.

June A Mercy by Toni Morrison, 196 pages, 1995.

"In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith." The Times (London): "A stark story of the evils of possessiveness and the perils of dispossession emerges slantwise. Hints, suspicions, secrets, ambivalences, scarcely acknowledged motives and barely noticeable nuances serve as signposts to enormities and desperations." The story begins in 1682, overlapping in time with our previous book, Caleb's Crossing, which began in the 1660s.

There are several good reviews of the novel. I liked this review in the New York Times.

The Guardian published this helpful interview with the author.

A literary blog named Litreact posted this analysis of the novel.

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, did a six-minute video interview with the author about this novel.

A four-minute video of Morrison reading from the novel.

The Wikipedia article on Toni Morrison

On page 11, Jacob refers to the chaos created in Virginia by what is now known as Bacon's Rebellion.

We never learn exactly where Jacob's farm was, but it is called a patroonship, indicating that it was in what had been the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which was centered in what is now New York. (The British seized it in 1664.) The farm therefore was possibly located in the Hudson or Delaware Valley.

Discussion questions from the publisher.

July We did not meet in July.
August In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, 365 pages, 2011.

This is a true story of life in Berlin during Hitler's brutal climb to power as seen through the eyes of William E. Dodd, a fish-out-of-water academic who was the American ambassador, and his scandalously carefree daughter Martha. Larson also wrote The Devil in the White City, which LAVA read in 2011.

The Wikipedia article about this book has a handy list of characters with a link to each, including Martha's friend Mildred Harnack who is remembered by the University of Wisconsin.

The author's website provides a reading group guide with a timeline of key events, descriptions of key figures, and discussion questions.

A 38-minute NPR audio interview with Larson.

Here are several reviews of the book, but mostly they just summarize it.

A 45-minute Discovery Channel video about Ernst Udet, the Nazi aviator who was one of Martha Dodd's many lovers.

On page 38, Larson quotes Colonel House, Roosevelt's close advisor, who instructed Dodd that "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have for a long time." These pages from Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry, point out that while Jews were only 1% of Germany's population, they represented about a quarter of its academic physicists and chemists, greatly helping to make Germany the world leader in science. Instead of seeing that situation as a blessing, many people, including some in leading positions in the U.S., saw it as a problem, an attitude that led with distressing swiftness to the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Sept In September we ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant and saw The Butler at the Little Theater.
October Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, 397 pages, 2011.

A family that operates a gator-wrestling theme park in the Everglades begins to disintegrate after the death of the mother. The children, notably the thirteen-year-old daughter, each undergo trials that resemble Dantean journeys though Hell. The family pulls back together amid the almost surreal landscape of the Florida swamplands. This novel was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, a year in which the judges did not agree on a winner. The New York Times named it a Best Book of the Year. Karen Russell was recently named to the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of young writers with promising futures.

Several interviews with the author provide insights into the book, including those in the Paris Review, New Yorker and Bookbrowse.

PBS NewsHour has a video interview with the author (10 minutes), and NPR's "All Things Considered" has an audio interview (7 1/2 minutes).

Here are several reviews of the novel. The reviews in the Washington Post and the New York Times provide good insights.

Wikipedia has information on several terms in the novel, including the Everglades, Ten Thousand Islands and Melaleuca trees, plus a map of the Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands. It also has articles on this novel and its author.

The publisher's reading guide for this novel has more substance than most.

November Faith by Jennifer Haigh, 318 pages, 2011.

Publisher's description: "It is the spring of 2002 and a perfect storm has hit Boston. Across the city's archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care... Sheila McGann has remained close to her older brother Art, the popular, dynamic pastor of a large suburban parish. When Art finds himself at the center of the maelstrom, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him and his reputation. What she discovers is more complicated than she imagined. Her strict, lace-curtain-Irish mother is living in a state of angry denial. Sheila's younger brother Mike, to her horror, has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila's questions and refuses to defend himself." Haigh won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction.

This interview with the author has some good insights.

The review in the Washington Post praised the novel. Despite its depiction of criminal priestly misconduct, however, the review in the Wall Street Journal said "the novel leaves lingering doubts whether Ms. Haigh has truly confronted the blight of clerical abuse."

The Wikipedia article on the author

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal began in Boston. Here is the Wikipedia article on its beginnings.

The Catholic Church has changed in some ways in recent years. Masses are no longer done in Latin, the concept of limbo is out, and instead of alter boys, most congregations are now permitted to assign both girls and boys as alter servers. The changes began with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which introduced a process of aggiornamento ("bringing up to date").

The author reading a short story on YouTube (following a short introduction)

The publisher's discussion questions

December The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, 265 pages, 2011.

An eleven-year-old boy journeys to school in England on a ship from Sri Lanka in the 1950s. He is assigned to the "cat's table", the most insignificant table in the dining room, along with two other boys and adults with little social prestige. The results, sometimes amusing and sometimes disturbing and even tragic, have a lingering impact on several lives.

This lengthy article in The Observer is highly recommended, providing insights into the book and also background information about Ondaatje and his family. It includes a charming photo of Ondaatje as a young boy (when he also traveled alone by ship to school in England in the 1950s).

Reviews of the book.

A PBS six-minute interview with Ondaatje about the book.

The Wikipedia articles on Ondaatje and The Cat's Table.

Both Michael and Cassius went boarding school at St. Thomas in Lavinia in what was then called Ceylon.

Ondaatje has some interesting ancestors. He moved to Toronto be with his brother Christopher, who made a name for himself in a very different way. The Ondaatje family comes from a social grouping in Sri Lanka known as the Colombo Chetty, who speak English at home.

The publisher's discussion questions.