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Day After Night by anita Diamant

Gibson's Book Club 2011-2012

[] [|Gibson's Book Club]



__ Monday, December 5, 2011, at 7 PM __ Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer and great writer, turned her attention last year to Cleopatra and gave us one of the best reads of the year. [|//Cleopatra//]will be in paperback in November, but you can also buy it now in hardcover at 25% off to get a head start. Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled both their ends. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff **

__ Monday, January 2, 2012, at 7 PM __ I admit it--sometimes I use this book club to make myself get around finally to classics I should have read years ago. This novel by Sarah Orne Jewett is one of them. I didn't nominate it, but I'm glad someone else did! The story of an endearing, unlikely friendship set against the backdrop of a remote and beautiful Maine coastal town,[|//The Country of the Pointed Firs//] is one of Sarah Orne Jewett's most loved works, and it quickly earned her a reputation as a talented writer upon its publication. Praised by Alice Brown for its "idyllic atmosphere of country life," Jewett's moving novel shows her intimate understanding of New England and its unique inhabitants, whose prickly exteriors often concealed a warm and loyal nature. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Country of the Pointed Firs **

__ Monday, February 6, 2012, at 7 PM __ Each February, our book club not only discusses but does dramatic readings of a play by the immortal Bard. We find that the language of the plays is easier to grasp if you're reading it out loud. This year, we've chosen [|//The Merchant of Venice//]. Please join us! This is always a fun event. We use the Folger editions, which are inexpensive and have great notes. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice **

__ Monday, March 5, 2012, at 7 PM __ Like Michael Cunningham in //The Hours//, Colm Toibin captures the extraordinary mind and heart of a great writer in a beautiful and profoundly moving novel. Afictionalized study based on many biographical materials and family accounts of Henry James's life, tells the story of a man born into one of America's first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers. In stunningly resonant prose, Toibin captures the loneliness and the hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably failed those he tried to love. As background to our discussion of this novel, we're asking book club members to read either of these two shorter works by Henry James--[|//Daisy Miller//], or //[|The Turn of the Screw]//. Ambitious readers are encouraged to tackle both! ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Henry James, and The Master **

__ Monday, April 2, 2012, at 7 PM __
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Evidence, by Mary Oliver **
 * Mary Oliver ** has long been one of our most popular poets. In [|//Evidence//], she offers us poems of arresting beauty that reflect on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world. Inspired by the familiar lines from William Wordsworth, "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," she uncovers the evidence presented to us daily by nature, in rivers and stones, willows and field corn, the mockingbird's "embellishments," or the last hours of darkness. ||

__ Monday, June 4, 2012, at 7 PM __ The winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, beating out Franzen's //Freedom//in both cases in highly publicized and controversial contests, [|//Visit from the Goon Squad//]was one of the most important novels of 2010. A novel in the form of loosely linked short stories, //Goon Squad//paints rich and compelling portraits of some self-destructive but entertaining characters as they grope their way through life and the modern music business, which is delineated hilariously in all its comic majesty. So which novel is better, // Freedom //or // Goon Squad //? How do we judge these matters? Attend our May and June meetings to hash it all out. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Visit from the Goon Squad **

__ Monday, May 7, 2012, at 7 PM __ One of the most important novels of 2010, [|//Freedom//]comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Walter and Patty Berglund as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time. Packed with details, full of story. We're reading //Freedom//in May and //Visit from the Goon Squad//in June. Yes, we're re-fighting the epic battles that shook the literary world last year. Which novel is better? Which one deserved the highest honors? Come prepared. Freedom will be in paperback in October 2011. The hardcover will also be discounted 25% if you'd like to get an early start before that. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen **

__ Monday, July 2, 2012, at 7 PM __ Here's a wild card, a Booker winner from 10 years ago, but certainly one of those classics I never got around to: [|//The True History of the Kelly Gang//], by Peter Carey. In //True History of the Kelly Gang//, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist. ||
 * ** Gibson's Book Club reads True History of the Kelly Gang **

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Still Alice by Lisa Genova