Recap of upcoming book picks

November= Sister by Rosamund Lupton

December= State of Wonder by Anne Patchett


Plus, please get on the wait list for:
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides--- we'll aim for January with this one, but see if everyone's up on the waiting list first

November's Book Pick: Sister

Gong for a genre we haven't touched yet...


When the body of Beatrice’s beloved younger sister, Tess, is discovered in an abandoned building in Hyde Park and ruled a suicide, Beatrice knows the police have made a mistake. She’s certain her sister was murdered. Determined to uncover the truth, Beatrice impulsively begins to hunt for clues on her own. So begins Rosamund Lupton’s stunning debut, Sister, at once an engrossing thriller and a powerful meditation on the bonds of family. Writing her story as a letter to Tess, Beatrice gradually connects the strange, varied occurrences leading up to Tess’s death--Tess’s pregnancy; a trial drug from a pharmaceutical company; a man who may or may not have been a figment of Tess’s imagination. Beatrice’s former life falls apart as her search veers toward obsession, and she realizes she might pay a terrible price for the truth. An adrenaline-filled psychological thriller, Sister’s emotional impact comes from Lupton’s heartrending portrait of the love between Beatrice and Tess. --Lynette Mong

December Book Pick

 

Published 2011

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

Feb. 2012 Book Pick

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides  will be out:  Oct. 11

Review

In Eugenides' first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex (2002), English major and devotee of classic literature Madeleine Hanna is a senior at Reagan-era Brown University. Only when curiosity gets the best of her does she belly up to Semiotics 211, a bastion of postmodern liberalism, and meet handsome, brilliant, mysterious Leonard Bankhead. Completing a triangle is Madeleine's friend Mitchell, a clear-eyed religious-studies student who believes himself her true intended. Eugenides' drama unfolds over the next year or so. His characteristically deliberate, researched realization of place and personality serve him well, and he strikes perfectly tuned chords by referring to works ranging from Barthes' Lovers' Discourse to Bemelmans' Madeline books for children. The remarkably à propos title refers to the subject of Madeleine's honors thesis, which is the Western novel's doing and undoing, in that, upon the demise, circa 1900, of the marriage plot, the novel 'didn't mean much anymore,' according to Madeleine's professor and, perhaps, Eugenides. With this tightly, immaculately self-contained tale set upon pillars at once imposing and of dollhouse scale, namely, academia ('College wasn't like the real world,' Madeleine notes) and the emotions of the youngest of twentysomethings, Eugenides realizes the novel whose dismantling his characters examine." --Annie Bostrom, Booklist
POSSIBLE:
Backup book is by same author:  Middlesex
If The Marriage Plot is too high in demand and none of us can get it at the library, we'll go ahead witht he backup

October Book Pick

 

Published 2010

Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale. Lacey Yeager is an ambitious young art dealer who uses everything at her disposal to advance in the world of the high-end art trade in New York City. After cutting her teeth at Sotheby's, she manipulates her way up through Barton Talley's gallery of "Very Expensive Paintings," sleeping with patrons, and dodging and indulging in questionable deals, possible felonies, and general skeeviness until she opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Narrated by Lacey's journalist friend, Daniel Franks, whose droll voice is a remarkable stand-in for Martin's own, the world is ordered and knowable, blindly barreling onward until 9/11. And while Lacey and the art she peddles survive, the wealth and prestige garnered by greed do not. Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world. If Shopgirl was about the absence of purpose, this book is about the absence of a moral compass, not just in the life of an adventuress but for an entire era. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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.