DMC Book Club
Coordinator: Victoria Zula
Phone: 806-8450
Email: bookclub (at) durham-mothers-club.org
The Book Club meets on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm. We rotate hosting among our members. See our Calendar for dates; contact Victoria for location and directions.
We're a very informal book club and we love new members. Feel free to come whether you've read the book or not. Nursing babies are always welcome. If you are new to the Book Club, please feel free to contact Victoria with any questions. Nonmembers are welcome to attend twice before joining DMC.
2008 Reading List
January
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber
Get your kids' cooperation...without arguing. Morning hassles and bedtime battles disappear when you apply the communication techniques these experts have been teaching parents nationwide. Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish -- once frustrated mothers themselves -- use real-life situations to show how you can respect and respond to your child's feelings and satisfy your own needs.
February
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever.
March
Eat, Love, Pray: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures.
April
The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel by Diane Setterfield
Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.
May
The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain’s Journey by Linda Greenlaw
"I am a woman. I am a fisherman... I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown."The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right--proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster.
June
The Secrets of a Fire King: Stories by Kim Edwards
Showcasing the intensity and perception of a truly gifted writer, this collection of stories by the author of the number-one New York Times best-seller The Memory Keeper's Daughter transports us to exotic locations as it follows the lives of those on the fringes of society. Each must confront, in dramatically differing ways, the barriers of time, place, and circumstance in that most universal of human experiences: the quest to discover, and understand, the elusive mysteries of love.
July
Absurdistan: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart
“Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great-great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive.”– Aleksandar Hemon
August
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
A New York Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us—whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating.
September
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August and he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
October
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Emperor’s Children is a richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune—about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way--and not-- in New York City. In this tour de force, the celebrated author Claire Messud brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment.
November
Beloved: A Novel by Toni Morrison
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
December
Our December meeting is held at a local restaurant for dinner and conversation.