Friends of the Knox County Library

It's arrival night to begin a week at Edisto Island, South Carolina. I unpack my clothes, make up the bed, and then line up the books, the annual vacation ritual. Day One, and I choose Triangle, a novel lent by a good reader friend.
Based on the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Manhattan, the author, Katharine Weber, blends fact and fiction to draw the reader into the life of Esther Gottesfeld, the last living survivor of the tragic fire.
Esther's grand daughter, Rebecca, has heard her grandmother's story of her personal experience countless times. When a historian, Ruth Zion, pursues several discrepancies of Esther's story, Rebecca and her partner, a well-known composer George Botkin, begin an investigation of their own to get at the truth of the events that resulted in Esther's survival, even as hundreds, including her sister Pauline died.
One of the most fascinating parts of the story is George's music. Inspired by patterns in nature and human events, he ultimately composes a piece based on the Triangle fire and the fate of Esther, Pauline, and Sam, her sister's fiancé, a triangle of their own.
Triangle is at once a love story, or several; a tale of survival, sacrifice, and heroism; a detective story; and a fascinating glimpse of how music and stories are created. Finally, it is the perfect way to begin a week of reading, relaxation, and rejuvenation.
Ginna Mashburn

ADULT READING CHALLENGE

The Knox County Public Library is proud to partner with the YWCA's Committee on Social Justice to bring a special reading program to you. This summer, you are invited to join the "Passport Program" as part of the KCPL Adult Reading Challenge. The YWCA has designed discussion groups around THE KITE RUNNER and THE NAMESAKE to encourage each of us to view the world from a different perspective. Please see the KCPL calendar for a list of times and dates for these discussions.

Middlemarch: A Book Review

The Breakfast Book Club had an ambitious goal for its March 13th meeting: to read the lengthy but impressive 19th century novel, Middlemarch, by George Eliot. The discussion was lively and members seemed gratified that they had met the challenge. Some of the group pointed out that they would forever measure other novels they read by the high standard set by George Eliot. Not only is her writing so perfect for the subject matter, it is full of impressive quotations by the omniscient narrator, a persona impossible to separate from the author herself.

As Eliot explores relationships of all sorts: parent-child, husband-wife, sibling, friend, uncle or aunt, she shows that the people who are successful in life are those who can live outside themselves and show love to other people. In fact, Eliot has Dorothea, the main character, express her view of what constitutes a life well lived: "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."

At once a love story, or several; a look at the marriages that do not work as well as those that do; a satire of the gossip and eavesdropping that characterize middle-class social life; and a picture of the ways that good, but imperfect, people affect those around them, Middlemarch is abundantly worthy of its selection as an outstanding book in English literature. Ina Hughs, writing in a Sunday, March 18th News Sentinel review, noted that The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books (W. W. Norton, $14.95), edited by J. Pedar Zane, chose Middlemarch as one of its ten greatest works of literature of all times. Others listed in this assessment were Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), Madame Bovary (Flaubert), Lolita (Nabokov) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain), Hamlet (Shakespeare), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), In Search of Lost Time (Proust), and The Stories of Anton (Chechov).

Ginna Mashburn

Writer Recommendations

I've just read a little book that some of you might enjoy, Nora Ephron's hilarious I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts On Being A Woman. While those of us women over fifty might identify with it more, I think men and women of all ages will find it funny, sad, and thoughtful. One chapter is entitled "On Rapture," and it's about her love affair with fiction. She writes, "And finally, one day, I read a novel that is probably the most rapture-inducing book of my adult life. On a chaise lounge at the beach on a beautiful summer day, I open Wilkie Collin's masterpiece, The Woman In White, probably the first great work of mystery fiction ever written . . . , and I am instantly lost to the world."

Her reference to Collins echoes a recommendation by Elizabeth Kostova, author of
The Historian, when she was here in November. She was asked what author aspiring writers should read, and she cited Collins' The Moonstone as well as The Woman in White. Collins is a 19th century British novelist, contemporary of Charles Dickens, and I'm looking forward to reading these two novels over the holidays. After all, two fine writers' recommendations deserve our attention.

-- Ginna Mashburn

UT Faculty Women’s Evening Book List Selections, 2005–2006

Sept. 26 The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell
Oct. 24 Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Nov. 28 Blood Done Sign My Name, Timothy Tyson
Dec. 12 Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, Ted Kooser
Jan. 23 Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang
Feb. 27 The Great Influenza, John M. Barry
Mar. 27 The Master, Colm Toibin
April 24 The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
May 22 Transplant: From Myth to Reality, Nicholas Tilney
June 26 Saturday, Ian McEwan
July 17 The Sunday Philosophy Club, Alexander McCall Smith
Aug. 28 Selection of books for the next year
Sept. 26 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Betsy's Book Club

The members of our book group, which meets the last Tuesday evening of every
month in our homes, have adopted the practice over the past several years of
choosing eleven months of reading in one sitting, in January. This book
selection evening turns out to be great fun and proceeds amazingly smoothly. And
choosing the year's reading all at once saves time at monthly gatherings, while
allowing us to buy the books all together, often saving money. We also have a
better chance of reserving the books in advance at the library.

Each member who chooses to do so sends a list of suggested books to a volunteer
scribe. In listing the books, members give details: author, title, genre, number
of pages, and a brief summary (taken from a book review, a book store employee's
recommendation, personal experience, etc.). The scribe compiles all the
recommendations in alphabetical order by title.

At the January meeting each member is given a ballot, again listing the
suggested books in alphabetical order. We run through the (lengthy!) pages of
recommendations, commenting on books that individuals consider particularly
appealing. Then we vote. From among the top 15 or so top favorites, we choose 11
books, trying to balance out fiction and nonfiction to our satisfaction. Next we
designate a member's home and a book for each month of the year.

We are pleased with our method of selecting books! For next January, though, we
are considering limiting each member's recommendations to about five and asking
that the descriptive material be limited to a paragraph or two. Last January we
plowed through more than 30 pages of recommendations, single spaced! Even so,
discussion and voting were completed in about two hours while we simultaneously
sipped wine and snacked on tasty treats.

By Gail Anderson

The Chocolate Lovers’ Book Club Top Ten

The Chocolate Lovers’ Book Club
Established June 2002
Top 10
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
The Brothers K, David James Duncan
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
Rosie, Anne Lamott
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
The Good Earth, Pearl Buck

Other favorites
Wicked
Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand
Blackbird House
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Quite a Year for Plums, Bailey White
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland
Bee Season, Myla Goldberg
Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan
Memoirs of a Geisha
Sammy’s Hill, Kristin Gore

Others read (some enjoyed!)
Emma, Jane Austen
Blackbird, Jennifer Lauck
The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Grapes of Wrath
Brick House
Learning to Float, Lili Wright
The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Rats
Maggie Darling
Three Junes

Book Review - The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong

The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong is a memoir of the author's spiritual struggle and transcendence, of searching for her own voice and establishing a personal relationship with the divine. Margaret Gunning said in her review for January Magazine that the book spoke to her core, and she attributes that feeling to the "gut-deep level of honesty" that Armstrong reveals. Our book club members had a similar reaction to the book.

Armstrong's spiritual struggle begins when she enters a convent at age seventeen to become a nun. After seven years of searching, she realizes she does not have a calling in the church and leaves to confront a world that has changed so radically that she no longer feels she fits.

She also experiences devastating loneliness, serious health issues, and professional disappointment. Yet the book is one of hope, for us as individuals searching for purpose and for our world.

Armstrong becomes a scholar of world religions with a special focus on the characteristics they share, especially the notion summed up in the Christian Golden Rule.

Other books by Armstrong include A History of God, books about Jerusalem,the Crusades, Mohammed, Buddha, and her latest one The Great Transformation:The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions.

Gay Hurst
200 Suburban Rd
Knoxville, TN 37923
865-357-3318