This final quarter of 2009 we have some great books to explore!

September 28, 2009

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
Recovering after a string of unsuccessful relationships, Liz Gilbert takes a yearlong journey immersing herself in fabulous cuisine, divine transcendence, and then equanimity between body and soul. During her first four months, Liz learns Italian and masters the art of finding the best food in town. Next, she calms her “monkey mind” and reclaims her inner peace through a prolonged stay at her Guru’s ashram near Bombay, without traveling at all throughout the Indian subcontinent. Finally, Liz seeks balance between her inner and outer selves in Indonesia. Bali’s cultural peculiarities are an odd backdrop to her process of a reintegrating romantic intimacy into her life, but her wry and intelligent story-telling, spiced with a dash of self deprecation, propels her travelogue.
October 26, 2009Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

“I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.” So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. In this groundbreaking historical novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America's greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Mamah's profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan's Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world, and her unforgettable journey, marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leads inexorably to this novel's stunning conclusion.

November 30, 2009

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Although much has been written about the Great Depression and how hard life was during that time, Mildred Kalish’s memoir of growing up on a rural Iowa farm during the 1930's is anything but depressing. Mildred was the third of four children and grew up on her grandparent's farm with extended family living close by. While Mildred's childhood was full of hard work and strict discipline, it was also full of fun, family and lots of great food. Little Heathens is a wonderfully written memoir full of fond memories (and a few recipes) from a childhood spent on a farm.
December 2009

No Book Club, Happy Holidays!