Fall Re-Start of Book Club ~ See Our Choices for 2015-2016

Fall has arrived in all it’s magnificent glory!  I had mentioned this in an earlier post, but I really do believe, fall is my favourite season of the year.

The air is crisp and clean with no trace of oppressive heat or bitter cold. Maybe it is just me, but I think the sun shines more often in the autumn too.  The hustle, bustle and constant activity of the summer are just a fun memory.  Fall brings with it not only beautiful days but home gardens and Farmer’s Markets bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables.

After a summer hiatus, for me, the fall of the year also brings the much-anticipated resumption of our Monday Night Book Club (Which has morphed into our Wednesday Night Book Club). Schedule wise and psychologically wise, Wednesday most likely works better for most of us anyway. Let’s face it. Mondays are tough enough to get through without adding a late night at book club into the mix.

Photo attribution – Oak lawn Images

I thought it would be fun to share our selections for the upcoming year and possibly get some suggestions from books on your “have read” and “must read” lists.

Our Wednesday Night Book Club Choices for 2015 – 2016 are:

The Birthday Lunch by Joan Clark ~

“From the bestselling author of Latitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs: utterly engrossing, unsettling and beautifully written, The Birthday Lunch is the story of one pivotal week in the life of a family facing a tragic loss…In The Birthday Lunch, Joan Clark explores the shock of unexpected death and the (occasionally comical) business of grieving. Each member of Lily’s family comes alive in their unique confrontation of loss: Hal’s open sorrow, her daughter Claudia’s re-examination of her own choices, her son Matt’s determination to expose the young truck-driver’s liability. And, unforgettably, Laverne’s eccentricity and isolation, her intensifying conflict with Hal, illuminates the brutal territory of blame and regret. Suspenseful and moving, with a powerfully evoked Maritime setting, The Birthday Lunch is an extraordinary novel from one of our most gifted storytellers.” Goodreads

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova ~ (I have already read this book and I loved it!)

“Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children—Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus. Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son’s teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it’s a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe….A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future… ” Goodreads

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes ~

“Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.
Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.” Goodreads

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kid ~

“…Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love…” Goodreads

The Husband’s Secret by Lianne Moriarty ~

“…Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret…”  Goodreads

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes ~

“Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.
Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.
What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.” Goodreads

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr ~

“Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel…” Goodreads

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe ~

” ‘What are you reading?’ That’s the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, often in six months or less.” Goodreads

And, just for fun, because maybe you are looking for some more good books, below are our selections from the past two years.

Our Monday Night Book Club Choices for 2014 – 2015 were:

• The Sea Captains Wife by Beth Powning
• Outside the Lines by Anne Hatvany
• The Rosie Project Graeme Simsion
• Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
• Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Our Monday Night Book Club Choices for 2013 – 2014 were:

• The Birth House by Ami McKay
• The Town That Drowned by Reil Nason
• Town House by Tish Cohen
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• With or Without You by Dominica Ruta
• The Light Between the Oceans by H.L. Stedman

Have you read any of these books?

What are you reading now?

Any book suggestions to share?

Do you belong to a Reading Group or Book Club?