The Handmaid's Tale is a feminist dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. Set in the near future, in a totalitarian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government, The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency.

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, and it was nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted for the cinema, radio, opera, and stage.

Not quite the feelgood book everyone has been clamoring for, but then its what we voted for.

See you there.

Hey All,

I wanted to just let everyone know the 19th is now a firm date and will not be changed. see you there.

As requested a book with some less sad themes, in fact its sort of feel good when you get down to it. Greg assures me his next book will be fun as well. And send any suggestions my way......

As some of you have noticed the bookclub meetups have gotten a little farther apart, rather then the every other week we had been doing for about 6 months. With summer I think most of us are not as driven to read a couple books a month for our book club as we were in say March. When the weather turns cold Im sure well go back to two a month though.

Few stories offer more warmth, wisdom, or generosity than this tale of two boys, their fathers, their friendship, and the chaotic times in which they live. Though on the surface it explores religious faith--the intellectually committed as well as the passionately observant--the struggles addressed in The Chosen are familiar to families of all faiths and in all nations.

"Anyone who finds it is finding a jewel. Its themes are profound and universal."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again....

Its a good one

After talking with a few people we are going ahead with Hood, which won the last poll, but putting it a little later in the month. There aren't a lot of copies at local libraries so you might want to Ohiolink it ASAP, or at least order it from amazon/half.com where it is sold for around $1.50-$2.00.

So we can all get our copies of it I'm placing it a little later in the month so we can all have time to obtain and read it. It means we'll probably only have 1 book club this month but it is July and we are all pretty busy with fun summer time stuff anyway.

So.............

Hood is a tale of love between two Catholic women in Dublin, Ireland--a country in which homosexuality still largely dares not speak its name openly. Cara's sudden death at 30 leaves bereaved Penelope shocked, grieving, reliving their 14-year relationship, which Donoghue covers in a series of overlapping flashbacks, from the time the two met in convent school in the late seventies to the early nineties, when they lived together in Cara's father's home. Funeral preparations and postburial returns to "normalcy" alternate with Pen's recollections of the moody, tempestuous Cara. These memories include screamingly good sex muffled from Cara's father's ears; Cara's repeated forays into other women's and men's beds; day-to-day routines the two shared, including Cara's maddening habit of asking life's larger questions as they drift to sleep at night; and, most important, Pen's development into a coping but vulnerable adult. Although some may find it slow, others will consider this love story that well conveys the complexities and nuances of intimate relationships stately and elegiac.

In an effort to migrate away from our recent spate of young adult novels, I submit for your perusal and intellectual enjoyment Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. Everett, currently serving as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University, went to the Amazon Basin as a Christian missionary and left with enough information to challenge the currently accepted orthodoxy of language.

If you've got 90 minutes whilst you're procrastinating on any given task, I recommend viewing a talk by Everett that covers endangered languages (and some of the content of the book). It's fascinating stuff.
Daniel Everett - Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge

Here's the skinny pinched from Amazon:
Amazon Listing
Dan Everett's life as a field linguist began when he entered a Pirahã village in the Amazonian jungle in December 1977. After being greeted by a happy, chattering crowd, he walked over to a man cooking on a small fire. First, he tapped his own chest and said, Daniel, then he pointed at the animal being cooked on the fire. Káixihí, said the man. Everett pointed at a stick. Xií said the man. Everett dropped the stick and said, I drop the xii. Xií xi bigí kíobíi, his new friend replied, meaning stick it ground falls. Thus began 30 years of dedication to the Pirahã and their native tongue, a mystifying system of sound and rules unrelated to any other language in the world. In this fascinating and candid account of life with the Pirahã, Everett describes how he learned to speak fluent Pirahã (pausing occasionally to club the snakes that harassed him in his Amazonian office). He also explains his discoveries about the language—findings that have kicked off more than one academic brouhaha. Everett learned that Pirahã does not use what are supposed to be universal aspects of grammar, an observation that runs counter to linguistic dogma about how culture, the brain and language connect. For Everett, Pirahã is evidence that culture plays a crucial and previously unacknowledged role in the creation of language.Everett's life with the Pirahã cost him dearly. He almost lost two family members to malaria, and his first marriage broke down after years of highly productive shared field work. But life in the Amazon taught him a great deal about human nature, too, perhaps more about his own than that of the Pirahã. Everett began his linguistic work as a Christian missionary, but the Pirahã were marvelously impervious to his promise of a life with Jesus. They pointed out that Everett simply had no proof for the supernatural world he described, and in the end he found himself agreeing with them. He left the church, choosing a world that more honestly integrated his goals as a scholar with the world view of his Pirahã friends—one where evidence matters.

From language to religion to culture to perception, this book appears to cover a multitude of welcome and challenging conversation topics. It's currently available only in hardcover, so spring for it or hit up your libraries. But this looks too interesting to wait on.

Date subject to change.

I have to admit, Gaiman's claim the idea for the book came after watching his son pedal his tricycle around a graveyard made me laugh. The idea that moment led him to ponder writing the Jungle Book in a graveyard an interesting evolution of a story idea. It fits into a theme running through our books of late. That of current novels heavily shadowing well know works of the past.

Anyway.............

The Graveyard Book is a young adult fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman. The story is about a boy named Nobody Owens, whose family is killed by a mysterious man named Jack, and who is subsequently adopted and raised by the occupants of an old graveyard. Gaiman's first full-length children's novel since the bestselling and widely acclaimed Coraline, The Graveyard Book won the 2009 Newbery.

See you there.