February 2015

Ok it's time to pick the next book!!! (assuming everyone is still interested in this little shindig of mine, lol)  I'm going to be including the book that got second place last month, Honolulu, as well as a book by the same authors that wrote Freud's Mistress, A Version of the Truth.

Let's start the voting!!!! Oh you have until the day before our meeting, January 13th, 11pm :)


Honolulu

by: Alan Brennert

From the bestselling author of Moloka’i, comes a rich, unforgettable story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai'i in 1914 in search of a better life. After escaping her oppressive family and in Korea, Jin makes her way to a strange and beautiful small capital just as it’s beginning its maturity into the great multicultural city it is today. But paradise has its dark side, whether it’s the daily struggle for survival in Honolulu’s tenements, or a crime that will become the most infamous in the islands’ history...

With passionate knowledge of people and places far off the tourist track, Honolulu is a spellbinding tale of four women in a new world, united by dreams, disappointment, sacrifices, and friendship.

A Version of the Truth

by: Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

In Literacy and Longing in L.A., hailed as "the most delightful read of the year" by Liz Smith in the New York Post, authors Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack captivated readers with a brilliantly imagined first novel. Now Kaufman and Mack return, introducing a character with a unique voice you'll never forget: Cassie Shaw, an irrepressible young woman who reinvents herself --- with unexpected consequences --- in a funny, wise, and utterly original novel about friendship, love, wildlife, and other forces of nature.

In the wilds of Topanga Canyon, Cassie is right at home --- with the call of birds, the sound of wind in the trees, the harmony of a world without people. But everywhere else, life is a little harder for Cassie. Her mother believes in Big Foot. Her wisecracking pet parrot is a drama queen. And at the age of thirty, newly single and without a college degree, Cassie desperately needs a decent paycheck. Which is why, against all her principles, she lies on her resumé for an office job at an elite university --- and then finds herself employed in academia by two professors who are as rare as the birds she covets.

One of her new bosses is Professor William Conner, a sexy, handsome, cheerfully aristocratic expert in animal behavior. Soon, under Conner's charismatic tutelage, Cassie carefully begins her personal transformation while meeting the kind of people who don't flock to wildlife preserves --- from impossibly brilliant academics to adorably spoiled college boys. But her future --- and unlikely new career --- is teetering on one unbearable untruth. And Cassie's masquerade is about to come undone... in a chain of events that will transform her life --- and the lives of those around her --- forever.

Still Alice

by: Lisa Genova

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, STILL ALICE captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...

Reminiscent of A BEAUTIFUL MIND, ORDINARY PEOPLE and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, STILL ALICE packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by: Cheryl Strayed

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State --- and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, WILD powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened and ultimately healed her.

Freud's Mistress

And the winning book is……………Freud's Mistress!!!!

So on amazon it is $12.95 or cheaper for a paperback, or if anyone has a Kindle it is $7.99, here is the link.

http://www.amazon.com/Freuds-Mistress-Karen-Mack/dp/0425270025   

Or on Barnes N Noble it is $13 and change for a paperback and $9.99 on Nook, if anyone has that. :)

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/freuds-mistress-karen-mack/1113833153?ean=9780399163074

Enjoy the book ladies and see you in January!!!

Author Bios
Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaurman reside in Los Angeles. Freud's Mistress is their third novel. Their first, Literacy and Longing in L.A. (2006), was on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for 15 weeks reaching #1 and won the Best Fiction Award from the Southern California Bookseller’s Association. Their second novel, A Version of the Truth (2007), was also on the L.A. Times bestseller list.

Karen Mack, a former attorney, is a Golden Globe award-winning film and television producer. Karen has produced many film and television productions including the Golden Globe, Christopher, and Emmy Award winning “One Against the Wind”, a Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation. For the past fourteen years, she has been Executive Producer of “A Home for the Holidays,” an annual CBS Network Special which promotes foster care adoption. “A Home for the Holidays” won the 2008 Television Academy Honors, an award given out by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Karen is a cum laude graduate of UCLA with a B.A. in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate from the UCLA School of Law.

Jennifer Kaufman is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and a two-time winner of the national Penney-Missouri Journalism Award. Jennifer spent three years as Bureau Chief for Fairchild Publications, Woman’s Wear Daily and W magazine in Milan and Rome. Prior to that, she worked for Fairchild Publications in New York covering business, film and features. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Baltimore News American and The Prince George’s County Sentinelin Bethesda, Maryland.

Discussion Questions
1. Minna Bernays was unmarried, educated and independent-minded. Was she a typical nineteenth-century woman? Were you surprised by the limited options available to women like her? In what ways did she break the mold? What about her might have made her irresistible to Sigmund Freud?

2. As readers, we see Freud through Minna’s eyes. How do her impressions of his character, appearance, and research compare with your knowledge of him as a historical figure?

3. If, as Freud stated, he and Martha were no longer physically intimate, do you feel that Minna betrayed Martha?

4. In many ways this is a story about two sisters. How would you describe the changing dynamic between Minna and Martha over the course of the novel? Where did your sympathies lie? Did their relationship resolve itself in the way you expected?

5. Minna and Martha were raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, but Freud did not allow them to practice traditional Jewish customs in his household. Did his anti-religious views surprise you? Why do you think he held the opinions he had on God, sin, and guilt?

6. Among the most famous quotations attributed to Sigmund Freud is this: “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’” How did his lack of understanding carry over to his treatment of the women closest to him? In what way was this evident in his relationship with Martha? With Minna?

7. How did Minna rationalize returning to her sister’s household after being in Switzerland? Did she make the right choice? If she had not miscarried, what might she have ended up doing?

8. Do you think Martha suspected her husband of adultery? If so, when did she begin to suspect him? Why did she maintain such a nonchalant reaction to his infatuations? How did his betrayals affect her mental health?

9. Minna was described by Freud as his “closest confidante” and has been called his muse. Do you think she influenced the theories he developed in his psychoanalytic work?

10. Throughout the novel, there are instances in which Minna showed signs of jealousy over Freud’s relationship with her sister. Did she have a right to be jealous? Which sister do you feel Freud was truly devoted to?

11. Freud is revealed as a flawed, egotistical man with eccentric tastes and addictive habits, surprisingly lacking in empathy when it came to the women in his life. With this in mind, just what was it about Freud that attracted Mina to him? Why was she so much more interested in him than in other men? In light of what you know about his theories, does his behavior surprise you?

12. At the end of the novel, did you think Martha knew about Minna and Freud?

Getting the books

I thought today of how obtaining the books might be an issue.  I have two options for you:

First one,  we could all just buy the books on our own from whatever sources.  I'll post links to the books on Amazon and Barnes n Noble online.

Or, starting for our next book, I can buy enough books prior to our meeting and everyone can just pay me back and take home the next book at the meeting.

Also,  I would like to set up a box at meetings where you can leave your books if you don't want to keep them, (I know not everyone has 3 going on 4 bookcases like I do) and then next holiday season I will donate all of the extra books :)

Please vote on which method of obtaining the books you like better.:)

January

Alright so these are the book options for our January meeting, so vote away!!! Poll ends Wednesday night at 11pm.

US
by: David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date…and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody 17-year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie.

Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty and at times achingly optimistic point of view, US is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger. US is a moving meditation on the demands of marriage and parenthood, the regrets of abandoning youth for middle age and the intricate relationship between the heart and the head. And in David Nicholls’s gifted hands, Douglas’s odyssey brings Europe --- from the streets of Amsterdam to the famed museums of Paris, from the cafés of Venice to the beaches of Barcelona --- to vivid life just as he experiences a powerful awakening of his own. Will this summer be his last as a husband, or the moment when he turns his marriage, and maybe even his whole life, around?

One Thousand White Women
by: Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd's journey west into the unknown. A government program, in which women are brought west as brides for the Cheyenne, is her vehicle. What follows is the story of May's adventures: her marriage to Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, and her conflict of being caught between two worlds, loving two men, living two lives. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

Honolulu
by: Alan Brennert

From the bestselling author of Moloka’i, comes a rich, unforgettable story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai'i in 1914 in search of a better life. After escaping her oppressive family and in Korea, Jin makes her way to a strange and beautiful small capital just as it’s beginning its maturity into the great multicultural city it is today. But paradise has its dark side, whether it’s the daily struggle for survival in Honolulu’s tenements, or a crime that will become the most infamous in the islands’ history...

With passionate knowledge of people and places far off the tourist track, Honolulu is a spellbinding tale of four women in a new world, united by dreams, disappointment, sacrifices, and friendship.

Freud's Mistress
by: Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

His theories would change the world—and tear hers apart... A page-turning novel inspired by the true-life love affair between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law.

It is fin-de-siecle Vienna and Minna Bernays, an overeducated lady’s companion with a sharp, wry wit, is abruptly fired, yet again, from her position. She finds herself out on the street and out of options. In 1895, the city may be aswirl with avant-garde artists and revolutionary ideas, yet a woman’s only hope for security is still marriage. But Minna is unwilling to settle. Out of desperation, she turns to her sister, Martha, for help.
 
Martha has her own problems—six young children and an absent, disinterested husband who happens to be Sigmund Freud. At this time, Freud is a struggling professor, all but shunned by his peers and under attack for his theories, most of which center around sexual impulses. And while Martha is shocked and repulsed by her husband’s “pornographic” work, Minna is fascinated.
 
Minna is everything Martha is not—intellectually curious, engaging, and passionate. She and Freud embark on what is at first simply an intellectual courtship, yet something deeper is brewing beneath the surface, something Minna cannot escape.
 
In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal—between a husband and a wife, between sisters—fact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister’s husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis. (From the publisher.)

For Starters…..

Hello everyone!!!!

I've decided that meetings will take place the second week of the month, on Wednesday, from 6-9pm at my apartment.  Our first meeting will take place January 14, 2015 to give everyone some time to get through the holidays, lol.  I will text everyone my address closer to the date so that it is not up on such a public site.  The first meeting will be at my current apartment and the second one at my new one!!! If anyone has any major issues with the date or time please let me know and I will try to pick a different day :).

To choose what book we will read for the month, I will post a poll as you can see to the right.  I will also put up little blurbs, summaries, or excerpts for you to help decide.  So it will kind of be a majority rules situation.  I don't know how everyone will go about buying the book but you could try Barnes--n-noble online or in-store, or Amazon.  Amazon, as most know, has very good prices on quick delivery in case anyone wants those extra couple of days.

I have put a couple of links up to the websites I have used in helping me with all of this, so if anyone is interested there is some really good information there.  Lit Lovers has two very helpful articles for members of book clubs.  One called Read-Think-Talk to help guide reading towards a discussion and also one about how to discuss books.  These are both awesome resources since many of us have never done this before.  Also I will pull the discussion questions from these sites so if you would like to take a look before the meeting you are more then welcome too.

Ground rules for discussions are mainly to not talk over one another, to explain your opinion, and also to be respectful of differing opinions.

Any questions, please comment them below so I can answer them for everyone!!!