• Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman
• The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
• The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Soon after graduating from Smith College, Kerman was enticed into helping a friend who was involved with drug smuggling. Years later, an executive at a non-profit organization, she is appalled to find that her brief fling with the romance of crime had caught up with her and that she is going to prison. Her story of acclimating to the culture of prison has been described as revealing, moving, enraging and often hilarious. Los Angeles Times: "This book is impossible to put down because [Kerman] could be you. Or your best friend. Or your daughter."   LAVA's reading resources

Kerman's web site

While in prison, Kerman's friends maintained a web site, called "The Pipe Bomb", that tracked her situation.

Three videos about Kerman, including a five-minute interview with both Kerman and the actress that played her in the TV series.

The review of the book in the New York Times

An article by Larry Smith, Kerman's husband, in the New York Times

This article in New York magazine includes a photo of Kerman and her husband that was taken moments after she was released from prison.

Discussion questions from the publisher

A 32-minute audio interview with Kerman by National Public Radio about the book

The official web site for the Danbury Federal Prison provides a 33-page booklet of regulations and a list of items that can be purchased, in sharply limited quantities, in the commissary.

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, The Snow Child was inspired by the Russian folktale The Snow Maiden. This version of the story takes place in Alaska in 1920.

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

The author's web site

Discussion questions from the publisher

A brief bio of the author along with links to four interviews

It seems likely that the story takes place in the Matanuska River valley. It is the main agricultural area in Alaska, and the author herself works in an interesting bookstore in Palmer, a small town in that valley less than an hour's drive from Anchorage. The author describes the town as artsy; I wonder if Sarah Palin, who lives about ten miles away in Wasilla, visits the bookstore often.

An article about farming in Alaska

This is the story of an actual trip that Theodore Roosevelt took in 1913 down an unexplored tributary of Amazon known as the River of Doubt. From the publisher: "Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died." The author, a former staff writer for National Geographic, includes interesting details about the people and wildlife of the Amazon.

The author's web site

A large collection of photos from Roosevelt's trip down the River of Doubt. They are hosted by a web site devoted to all aspects of his life.

Videos of Roosevelt's trip from the Library of Congress. There are seven segments, each lasting about four minutes. The latter ones are about the voyage down the River of Doubt. Some of the footage is from the 1926 retracement of the journey.

An eleven-minute video of the author speaking on Roosevelt and his journey down the River of Doubt. There is some excellent information about Roosevelt in this video that is not in the book.

The Wikipedia article on Candido Rondon

Review in the New York Times

Here is Roosevelt's book about his voyage down the River of Doubt. Click on "Generated HTML" unless you want the Kindle version.

The explorers hoped that Brazil nuts would form part of their diets.

The Amazon River carries more water than the next seven largest rivers combined.

In this novel, Dr. Marina Singh journeys deep into the Amazon to find her former mentor, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug and who turns out to be suppressing information about it.

An early part of the story takes place in Manaus, a city in the Amazon with a population of nearly two million. The average high temperature there is in the high 80s or more every month of the year, and it is accompanied by high humidity.

Several reviewers compared this novel to Patchett's Bel Canto, which LAVA read in 2010, but came up with different results. The reviewer in the Globe and Mail loved Bel Canto but was somewhat disappointed by this novel. The reviewer in the Seattle Times had a similar opinion. The reviewer in the Telegraph had the opposite opinion: she was disappointed by Bel Canto but loved this book.

Several reviewers noted the resemblance of this novel to Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. In both cases, according to the reviewer in the Los Angeles Times, "A powerful figure goes into the jungle and cuts ties to civilization; a messenger is sent to discover what has happened and whether it will be possible to bring that person back. But Patchett replaces the savagery in Joseph Conrad's tale with fecundity."

Marina first met Dr. Swenson at the Manaus Opera House.

The author's web site.

This interview with Powell's Books provides several insights into the novel. It also includes the origin of the story about the anaconda, the name of the Lakashi people, and the names Barbara and Jack Bovender.

Discussion questions from the publisher.

Here is a half-hour video interview with Patchett about this novel. Also, here is a three-minute video presentation of the novel by Patchett.

Kilgore Trout, an aging writer who also appears in other Vonnegut novels, travels to "Midland City" to be honored at an arts festival. A mentally unstable businessman there becomes convinced by one of Trout's novels that he is the only person who is not actually a robot.

In 1986 Vonnegut spoke at the Unitarian Universalist Association's annual General Assembly, which was held in Rochester, NY, that year. Vonnegut's lecture is reprinted in chapter XVI of his book Fates Worse Than Death. Here is a sermon about Vonnegut by a UUA minister in Nashua, NH, who met Vonnegut at that 1986 assembly and who happened to get his degree from the nearby Colgate Rochester Divinity School.

The review in the New York Times was not entirely enthusiastic.

The Wikipedia articles on Kurt Vonnegut and Breakfast of Champions

You will love this one: a funny video of Vonnegut using graphs to explain how computers could be programmed to write stories.

A web site devoted to Vonnegut

An excellent biographical sketch by the Indiana Historical Society

The next time you are in Indianapolis, visit the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library

A dissatisfied young mother on Tennessee farm stumbles across a high valley covered with millions of butterflies that are supposed to be wintering in Mexico. The subsequent arrival of a team of scientists upends and opens up her world.

The Wikipedia article on the Monarch butterfly, which winters near Angangueo, Mexico.

The Wikipedia article on Kingsolver.

A two-minute video of the author talking about this book. It includes images of her sheep farm.

A 52-minute NPR interview with Kingsolver by Diane Rehm about this book.

On page 185 Dellarobia mentions rumors that Bobby Ogle, the preacher at her church, is a no-heller, a believer in a form of Universalism. Dovie responds that Ralph Stanley, the famous country musician from southwestern Virginia, is one also. It is true that Stanley is a member of the Primitive Baptist Universalist church (and he endorsed Obama too). His most famous song is O Death.

Some of the helpers at the Monarch site were from the 350.org organization, which was formed to raise awareness about global warming. Scientists estimate that 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for carbon in the atmosphere. We are now at 400 ppm and climbing at the rate of 2 ppm per year.

The scientists at the Monarch site measured air temperatures at different heights by sticking a series of iButtons to a long tape and hoisting it on a tree limb.

The reviewer in the New York Times loved the book, but the reviewer for Slate doesn't seem to be happy with the idea of "socially responsible" fiction.

In what one reviewer called "an intricate puzzle of self-belief and self-doubt," an elementary school teacher who has abandoned hopes for an artistic career becomes dangerously attached to a successful artist and also to the artist's husband and child.

The themes of Nora's artwork revolve around the lives of four women: Emily Dickenson, Virginia Woolf, Alice Neel, and Edie Sedgewick.

Nora often refers to a song called The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, sung by Marianne Faithfull, which was in the soundtrack for the movie Thelma and Louise

Nora also refers to Chekhov's story The Black Monk, which is about a man who fears he is doomed to mediocrity.

In Ibsen's Doll House, a woman named Nora struggles to discover and develop her true self.

The Wikipedia article on Claire Messud.

An NPR interview with Claire Messud in which the author reads from the novel in what she considers to be Nora's voice.

The reviews in the New York Times and the Guardian both have some good insights.

The publisher's reader's guide for the novel.

This non-fiction book follows the lives of several residents of the Annawadi slum, a settlement of some 300 huts near Mumbai's International Airport in India. The author, a journalist, spent three years working among them in order to understand their aspirations and tragedies and especially their life-crushing interactions with political corruption. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2001 for her investigative articles on abusive practices at group homes for people with mental problems, and she has been the recipient of a MacArthur 'Genius' grant. This book won the National Book Award.

The Wikipedia article on Katherine Boo

The Wikipedia article on the book has a handy list of characters, with a short description of each.

Several reviews

The book has its own web site that includes a collection of photos and a two-minute video of life in Annawadi.

The publisher's discussion guide

A Q&A session with the author conducted by her editor

A five-minute video of Katherine Boo discussing this book

The Wikipedia articles on the hijra (transsexual or transgender) people in India, the caste system in India, and Shiv Sena, the ultra-nationalist organization that loomed in the background of the slum-dwellers' lives.

The excellent web site about Carol Shields includes a biography with lots of photos.

An interview in the Guardian provides more biographical details.

Scholarly interest has been strong. There is a book-length study of Shield's work and a book specifically about The Stone Diaries. There also have been several academic papers on the book, such as this one.

A brief video of the author discussing the writing process.

When Daisy was young, her father was employed at a quarry that worked with Tyndall limestone, which contains some interesting fossils.

The Wikipedia article on Carol Shields and on The Stone Diaries.

A review of the novel in the New York Times.

The publisher's discussion questions.