The Book Discussion Group meets on the first Thursday of
every month at 7:30 PM at the home of a member.
Call Carol Auer for location: 732-671-8327
On Thursday October 14, 2010 we will discuss:
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
by Mark Twain
Hi All,
We meet on the 1st Thursday of every month at a member's house, alternating between fiction and non-fiction, EXCEPT FOR THE NEXT MEETING which will be held on the 2nd Thursday. All RBH members are welcome.
Our next fiction book will be “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by that great humanist Mark Twain. The meeting will be held on October 14.
From Wikipedia:
... Commonly recognized as one of the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn…
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that was already out of date by the time the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
Our next non-fiction book will be “Collapse” by Jared Diamond
From Booklist:
Defining collapse as "extreme decline," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, which posed questions about Western civilization's domination of much of the world, now examines the reverse side of that coin. Diamond ponders reasons why certain civilizations have collapsed. With an eye on the implications for the present and future, he bases his analysis on his newly phrased version of an old maxim about what history teaches: "The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn."… In addition, Diamond casts his critical but acute and inclusive gaze on the issue of why civilizations fail to see collapse coming. A thought-provoking book containing not a single page of dense prose.
Brad Hooper, Copyright © American Library Association.
We have also agreed to read “To Live” by Yu Hua for December since the vote split evenly between it and Huck Finn.
Books we have read in the past:
2010:
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“Cosmos” by Cal Sagan
“City of Thieves” by David Benioff
“Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism” by Susan Jacoby
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Berbery
“The Healing of America, A global quest for better, cheaper and fairer health care” by T. R. Reid
“The View from Castle Rock” by.Alice Munro
“Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion” by Edward J. Larson.
2009:
“Madame Bovary” by Gustav Flaubert
“The Meaning of it All” by Richard Feynman
“Bel Canto” by Ann Patchet
“Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists” by Jean H. Baker
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.
“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga.
“Apollo 13” by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
"A Death in the Family" by James Agee
"The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by Sean B. Carroll
2008:
"The Joke" by Czech author Milan Kundera
“Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama
“Palace Walk” by Naguib Mahfouz
“Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
“Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri
"Incompleteness" by Rebecca Goldstein.
2007:
"The Exception" by Christian Jungersen.
"Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini.
"Crimes Against Logic" by Jamie Whyte.
"Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris.
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