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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Place this one on hold! Nov or Dec pick:

State of Wonder by Anne Patchett

it seems to be VERY high in demand!
At my local library there are 21 copies and I am number 71!  Another D.R.E.A.M. member is #94!!!!
We'll aim for November!

Synopsis:
In State of Wonder, pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Marina Singh sets off into the Amazon jungle to find the remains and effects of a colleague who recently died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. But first she must locate Dr. Anneck Swenson, a renowned gynecologist who has spent years looking at the reproductive habits of a local tribe where women can conceive well into their middle ages and beyond. Eccentric and notoriously tough, Swenson is paid to find the key to this longstanding childbearing ability by the same company for which Dr. Singh works. Yet that isn’t their only connection: both have an overlapping professional past that Dr. Singh has long tried to forget. In finding her former mentor, Dr. Singh must face her own disappointments and regrets, along with the jungle’s unforgiving humidity and insects, making State of Wonder a multi-layered atmospheric novel that is hard to put down. Indeed, Patchett solidifies her well-deserved place as one of today’s master storytellers. Emotional, vivid, and a work of literature that will surely resonate with readers in the weeks and months to come, State of Wonder truly is a thing of beauty and mystery, much like the Amazon jungle itself. --Jessica Schein

SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK: Freedom

I am going to try to start announcing picks earlier.  Depending on where you live, it may take longer to receive a book once you place a hold.  In that spirit, I'll try to post choces 6 weeks before we talk about them, and ones that I can tell are in demand, I'll try to give a 3 month lead.  -Emily


Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Published 2010

SYNOPSIS:
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul, Minnesota—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Baby Boomers. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why is Walter working away from home so much? What has happened to their teenage son? Why has Patty, the bright star of Barrier Street, become "a very different kind of neighbor," coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? And what exactly is eccentric rocker Richard Katz—Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture?
As the story explores the nature of love, it also tackles our tenuous relationship with nature. When Walter fights to preserve a habitat for an endangered bird, the troubled history between Patty, Richard and himself threatens to topple the deal, along with everything he believes about truth and illusion.