Sept 4: Palestine by Joe Sacco
4-5:30 at The Blue Moon
(please note, changed date)
Palestine is a graphic novel written and drawn by Joe Sacco. It talks about his 1991 West Bank/Gaza Strip experiences in short story form.

All our book group meetings take place on Saturdays, at the Blue Moon Cafe in one of the upstairs rooms from 4-5:30. You do not:

• have to be a Quaker to come
• read the book in advance
• ask anyone or tell us you are coming
• come every month
• have lots of great or intelligent things to say/prepared in advance

Every month a different person from the group facilitates the session. We start off by sharing any thoughts we might have about the book or themes (we just speak for a minute or two and go in a round where nobody resposnds initially). Then we may read out “best bits” and have a discussion. We end with a round about what has struck us about the conversation we have just had or thoughts about the book now.

The books we have selected are specifically not “Quaker-ly”. They range from classics to books that were written last year by men, women, teenagers, and people older than that of all sorts of orientations and from cultures that seem familiar and ones that do not, on all sorts of topics both imagined and “true” and in-between. The threads that tie the books we choose together are the following:

• does this book tell us a story that will help us explore or have a conversation about the world, ourselves or others in a new or different way?
• does this book explore themes that are somehow spiritual or connected to the Quaker testimonies?

2010-2011 Book List

Oct 2: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Austerlitz last book W. G. Sebald wrote (2001). Called “one of the most significant German language works of fiction for the period since the Second World War” it is non-fiction. It takes you on a journey through fortresses, railway stations, concentration camps and libraries linking wartime trauma with present everyday experience.

Nov 6: When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
This is about a celebrated detective Christopher Banks who lives now in London who can’t solve the one mystery he really cares about: his parents disappearance in old Shanghai. This is a novel that questions issues of memory and truth and perception.

Dec 4: Away by Amy Bloom

Jan 8: Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantell

Feb 5: Poetry (T.S. Eliot audiobook cd reading Wasteland and Four Quartets etc:
suggested to buy this CD)

March 5: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

April 2: Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson

May 14: Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert

For further information on the books, please go here and then “click” on the
book titles (this will take you to the Amazon site where you can read customer
and critic reviews)

For some basic information on buying books, go here to read a post I wrote in
January (just ignore the references to the Book “Sepharad” as they are no
longer relevant)