Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Book No. 14

Good evening Clubbers,

We hope that you have enjoyed our last reads and are ready to comment and begin fervent discussion on past and present reads with your fellow literature loving lumberjacks. For now though let's introduce Book No. 14...

The Life Of Pi by Yann Martel

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? "Life of Pi" is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.

Happy, happy reading!

:)

Saturday, March 10, 2012

it's nearly time

... to announce the second read for 2012. In a few short days we will be announcing The Book Club's 14th read. A classic? A modern classic? One that fits an alternative genre?
Stay tuned to find out!

We will also be updating our reading list in the next short while, as there have been plenty of suggestions sent in by our current members. If you have any more - keep them coming! And if you'd like to invite anyone to join, please send us an email
{ thebookclub.est09@gmail.com }
so we can keep them updated and perhaps send them their first read free!

Lastly, while you're pottering around The Book Club page please leave a comment for Love In The Time Of Cholera - let's generate some discussion!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Book No.13

Welcome back to The Book Club!

After a bit of a fizzier in 2011, we're ready to make 2012 a year full to the brim of great reads, to nourish the mind and of course the imagination!

The first book off the shelf this year is ::

Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is a brilliantly crafted, beautifully written story of love and the love-sick. Spurned as a young man, Florentino Ariza has a half century of waiting to fill before a chance to redeclare his love for Fermina Daze comes, when her husband is killed retrieving a parrot from a mango tree. Funny, poignant and heartfelt - enduring and unrequited love have rarely been more movingly expressed.

Sink your teeth into this one my literature loving fiends. Be sure to comment and keep your fellow bookworms enthralled with your insights, views and or next reading suggestions!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Book No. 12

It is June, and finally, we're pleased to announce our second read of 2011 and our twelfth book in the history of The Book Club... the all-time classic ::

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

'Shoot all the bluejays you want,
if you can hit 'em,
but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes if literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

"No one ever forgets this book"
Independent

Friday, February 11, 2011

Moral Illumination :: Quote Of The Week

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” - Elizabeth Hardwick

Friday, February 4, 2011

No Advantage :: Quote Of The Week

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” - Mark Twain

Friday, January 28, 2011

A charming echo :: Quote Of The Week

“The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes