Smith Club of San Francisco
and Marin
Booksmiths
Join Us!
Now is the perfect time to get involved in the Booksmiths Book Club. Read great books! Participate in lively discussions! Meet Smithies from all classes! Whet your appetite by using the links above to see what the Book Club has read in the past. Then see what's coming up next below. Tempted yet? If you want to join the Booksmiths, please email Liz Farrington '00 at lizfarrington@sbcglobal.net.
Next Event
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Book Description:
At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.'"
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Pray-Love-Everything-
Indonesia/dp/0143038419/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid
=1211651725&sr=8-1
2008 Booksmith Events
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Book Description:
The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Wondrous-Life-Oscar-
Wao/dp/1594489580/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207526850&sr=8-
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Book Description:
Everyone in town thinks Meg Murry is volatile and dull-witted, and that her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is dumb. People are also saying that their physicist father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother. Spurred on by these rumors and an unearthly stranger, the tesseract-touting Mrs Whatsit, Meg and Charles Wallace and their new friend Calvin O'Keefe embark on a perilous quest through space to find their father. In doing so, they must travel behind the shadow of an evil power that is darkening the cosmos, one planet at a time. This is no superhero tale, nor is it science fiction, although it shares elements of both. The travelers must rely on their individual and collective strengths, delving deep within themselves to find answers.
A well-loved classic and 1963 Newbery Medal winner, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is sophisticated in concept yet warm in tone, with mystery and love coursing through its pages. Meg's shattering, yet ultimately freeing, discovery that her father is not omnipotent provides a satisfying coming-of-age element. Readers will feel a sense of power as they travel with these three children, challenging concepts of time, space, and the triumph of good over evil. The companion books in the Time quartet, continuing the adventures of the Murry family, are A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which won the American Book Award; and Many Waters. Every young reader should experience L'Engle's captivating, occasionally life-changing contributions to children's literature. (Ages 9 and older) --Emilie Coulter
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Wrinkle-Time-Madeleine-LEngle/dp/0440498058
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Book Description:
(From Publisher's Weekly) Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota.
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The Terror Dream: When: Where: |
Book Description:
(From Booklist) Panicked and anxious in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, the nation has returned to the earlier mythology of the protective male and the dependent female, according to Faludi, author of Backlash (1991) and Stiffed (1999). She points to the sudden and stunning disappearance of women in the media as editorialists, commentators and scholars immediately following 9/11. In addition, police and fire departments across the nation have reduced their hiring of women, using 9/11 as justification for the need for brawny rescuers, while President Bush took on the persona of a cowboy, issuing threats to the terrorists. Faludi also examines how the media-fabricated rescue of Jessica Lynch morphed from a story of a heroic GI Jane to the more appetizing one of a fragile female rescued by heroic American male troops. She also examines the scrutiny and harsh criticism of four 9/11 widows who became politically active and asked embarrassing questions of the Bush administration. Faludi debunks the media-created myths of post-9/11 trends of baby fever, nesting, and security moms, all involving women returning body, mind, and vote to the hearth. Faludi traces the roots of the fascination with the tableau of the brawny male and the fragile female all the way back to Puritan America. In the conclusion of this insightful book, Faludi laments how all the myth-making has squandered opportunities to critically examine the flaws in American foreign and domestic policy.
An Afternoon Dialogue with Professor Patricia Skarda - A Review
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In October 2007, the Smith Book Clubs of the Peninsula and Marin/SF welcomed our favorite Smith Professor Patricia Skarda for a talk and discussion of three selections: Little Women by Louise May Alcott, and two other selections, The Little Women by Katharine Weber and March by Geraldine Brooks, both "re-tellings" of the original Little Women . Smith Alumnae from all years came out for the event held at Marsha Cohen's '68 home. Some were long time Book Club members, others first time Book Club members but regulars at Smith Club events, while yet others confessed that this was the first Smith event they had ever gone to in the fifteen to twenty years since they had graduated.
Lesley Holmes Reidy '94 introduced Professor Skarda so that those of us who missed the opportunity as undergrads to have such a brilliant and fiery professor could understand why Professor Skarda has the passionate following she does. We were in for a treat. Professor Skarda engaged us, challenged us to think more deeply, and facilitated the group by drawing out and deftly focusing the topics. The group was engaged, expressive, and even unwieldy at times. How fun! Just like when we had been undergrads.
The selections were well-chosen, thought-provoking contrasts. Little Women was the guide book of manners for many generations of girls. Many in the group cherished it as youngsters, and the re-reading of a childhood favorite enhanced our appreciation. After all these years, we still loved it and now understood why. Children want clarity about right and wrong, and want to be told what they should and should not do. Others who had cherished the novel years ago, now wonder why or even how they could have possibly adored it as much as they had. "Insufferable," they seemed to say. "I can't believe that I loved it so much."
Smithies expressed their dissatisfaction, indeed their distaste for The Little Women , by Weber. Gratuitous, an unconvincing premise, little empathy for the characters; the list could go on had we given the novel more airtime other than to admonish the writer. As for March, this novel was not discounted. Even though we weren't drawn to the protagonist, there was meaningfulness in the narrative's events, and the narrative on its own and vis-a-vis Alcott's Little Women carried a lasting impression. There was conflict, development, and integrity. In contrast to Weber's The Little Women, we were attracted and intrigued by Brooks' March.
But Professor Skarda, kept pushing us. "What else did you learn?" she asked us again and again. And we searched for more answers. Professor Skarda brought out a different understanding. She raised our expectations of "historical fiction" and increased our sensitivity to the blurriness of fact and fiction. Professor Skarda drew out the "little incredulities" in March. In March, we discovered how haphazardly our flawed hero had been fashioned after Alcott's real father, Bronson Alcott. We questioned how it could be that Grace appears again and again at just the right moments. But the blurriness and incredulities ran deeper than that. Something we had entirely missed and intrigues us still, Professor Skarda explained how March relied on the modern reader's sense of morality and political correctness. Suddenly, we had a different interpretation of the novel.
Professor Skarda, our favorite intense, sharp and insightful professor, challenged us to read more critically. The event left us wanting to read more and wanting us to get together with other fellow Smithies again to learn more than we can from reading a selection on our own. We are really looking forward to the Smith Club's next Book Group meeting.
Thanks so much to Professor Skarda and for the Smith Alumnae Association for giving us this special event.
-By Linda Woo '91
