November 28 - All the Light We Cannot See
At our October 31st bookgroup, we discussed the Wright Brothers by David McCullough. We liked that the book focused mostly on the Wright brothers' efforts leading up to their first flights and demonstrations. This made the book manageable. I used my two Elizabeth City, NC cookbooks to make NC Sweet Potato Pie and Pecan Squares for refreshments.
Summary: Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
October 31--Wright Brothers
At our September 26th meeting, we discussed The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani. We all really liked the characters in the novel and the hardwork ethic they displayed. We also liked getting a glimpse of this prominent immigration era in U.S. history. Even though the author has a cookbook, Cooking with My Sisters, we didn't use any of her family recipes. We had instead potica (Ciro's favorite and mentioned multiple times in the book) and borlenghi for refreshments.
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