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HAF Book Club: February Poll

Started by Sandra Craft, January 13, 2018, 12:31:18 PM

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Sandra Craft

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. 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.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami
From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle comes this superb collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami's mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining.
Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami's characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

Dark Intelligence, by Neal Asher
Thorvald Spear has been brought back from the dead. Killed a century earlier by Penny Royal, an unstable AI who turned rogue in the middle of a human versus alien war, the resurrected Spear has one thing on his mind: revenge.  Crime lord Isobel Satomi got more than she bargained for when she struck a deal with Penny Royal. Turning part-AI herself gave her frightening power, but the upgrade came with horrifying repercussions—and it's turning Isobel into something far from human.  Spear hires Isobel to track down Penny Royal, but as she continues her metamorphosis, it's clear that Isobel's monstrous transformations will eventually become uncontrollable. Will Spear finish his hunt before becoming the hunted?

The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse
Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to explore. As the creator of "Trace Italian"-a text-based role-playing game that's played through the mail-Sean guides subscribers through his intricately imagined terrain, turn by turn, as they search out sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. But when Lance and Carrie, two teenaged seekers of the Trace, take their play outside the game, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, toward the beginning and the climax: the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.

Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters
It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred.  Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Biggus Dickus

Thanks again as always for putting this together Sandy!
;D
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Dragonia

I'm really going to try to read this month's selection. I have not participated like I really wanted to at the beginning. I'm almost finished with The Prince of Tides and then will be free to start something new! I can't wait!
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato (?)

Sandra Craft

I haven't started this month's book either -- I should have a copy tonight.  In the meantime, I've been hip deep in Bitch in a Bonnet, Vol 1, a hilarious critique of Austen's first three published novels.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Sandra Craft

OK, for the first time in months we do not have a tie.  February's book is Haruki Murakami's short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany