Friday, December 29, 2017

Not Fiction Book Discussion Titles for 2018

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time” 
Homer, The Odyssey

As we near the border crossing into 2018, take a moment to consider the new list of recent nonfiction for us to discuss, posted on the right.

These titles share themes of trails and borders; journeys and the meaning of home; landscapes both exterior and interior; love and war; the complicated and tender relationship between parents and children; deception and detection; identity and resilience; memories of the past, appreciation of the now, and hopes for a better future.

Choose one or read them all and travel with us.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed December's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Time Travel: A History by James Gleick, then check out the "Sources and Further Reading" section in the book and skim through his index as well for hundreds of reading suggestions. Our book discussion members also suggested two not found on Gleick's list, the Outlander series of books by Diana Gabaldon and television show based on them and The Time Quintet by Madeleine L'Engle.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

December Not Fiction Book Discussions

The books we have read this year have a loose connecting theme of place and time--how we know where and when--and who--we are. They investigate our sometimes contradictory desires to belong and to leave, to prevent change and to find out what-if. They capture the large view--our planet as a vast web of connections--and the small--a single blade of grass or a precise moment of time and light rendered in paint. They take us home and to work, through history and deep into culture. They explore family ties and friendship, places beloved and haunted. Our last book, Time Travel: A History by James Gleick, even considers our fascination with time travel.

Gleick, who has written about scientific genius, chaos theory, information technology, and "the acceleration of just about everything," here gives us a whirlwind tour of the history of time travel, a revolutionary shift in our world view. He traces the idea from the moment in the early twentieth century when H.G. Wells' novel The Time Machine crystallized the cultural anxieties and anticipations created by the technological innovations of the industrial age, through the evolution of the concept of time travel in science, philosophy, art, literature, and popular culture, to the instantaneity and simultaneity of our current age, where the present is everything and the past and the future have faded in relative importance. He examines the basic physics of time travel as well as the philosophical implications for our very existence and our happiness.

What do you think? As Gleick asks, "If you could take one ride in a time machine, which way would you go? The future or the past?" Or would you stay right here--or rather, now? Is this the only world possible? Is it, as Voltaire's Pangloss believed, "the best of all possible worlds"? Why do you think we as a culture are so fascinated by the idea of time travel? Gleick is an excellent synthesizer of science, history, and culture--which aspects of his narrative did you find most interesting? Did he create a good blend? As Emily Dickinson wrote, "There is no Frigate like a Book . . . " Are stories ultimately time machines? What is your favorite story about time travel? For that matter, what is time?

If Gleick somehow missed your favorite story of time travel, you can add it to his list and see other readers' favorites as well here on his blog: https://around.com/oop-time-travelers-missing-from-my-book-time-travel/.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, December 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, December 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here (or now?) on the blog.

Friday, November 17, 2017

If you enjoyed H is for Hawk . . .

If you enjoyed H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which we read in 2016, then you might like to watch a recent episode of the PBS program Nature, "H is for Hawk: A New Chapter" in which Macdonald explores the world of goshawks by following a family of these raptors in the wild and raising another goshawk of her own.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed November's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King, then you might like these books and films recommended by our discussion group members:

Books

  • The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King
  • The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe
  • Linnea in Monet's Garden by Cristine Bjork and Lena Anderson
  • Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
  • In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
  • Francois le Champi by Georges Sand
  • The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau
  • "The White Waterlily" by Stephane Mallarme
  • The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough
  • Lust for Life: The Novel of Vincent Van Gogh by Irving Stone
  • Depths of Glory: The Novel of Camille Pisarro by Irving Stone
  • The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
  • Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell

Films

  • Midnight in Paris written and directed by Woody Allen
  • Loving Vincent directed by Doreta Kobiela and Hugh Welchman

Monday, November 6, 2017

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

In conversation with his publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, author and art historian Ross King said, "Most of my books have been studies of crucial and difficult moments in the lives of artists. I'm interested in drilling down deeply into the years when they struggle with the works that ultimately become their greatest achievements. I'm fascinated by how historical events and personal relationships have an impact on these masterpieces." In Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, King explores in expansive biographical, historical, and cultural detail the twelve years during which Claude Monet painted the enormous canvasses of his Water Lilies series.

Monet intended for his Water Lilies paintings, ultimately gifted to the French public and housed in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, to be "an asylum of peaceful meditation." However, in these last twelve years of his life, he was troubled by the dangers and privations of World War I, the loss of friends and family to age and illness, his own failing eyesight, and challenges to his artistic prominence by a new generation of artists. Most of all, Monet was challenged by his attempt to create for his viewers a fully immersive experience of the moment-to-moment shifting of light, color, and form that he perceived at his beloved lily ponds at Giverny. Like author Marcel Proust in his massive novel In Search of Lost Time, Monet was attempting to capture time itself. 

What do you think? Were you familiar with Monet's Water Lilies before reading Mad Enchantment? Have you seen them in person? What were your thoughts and feelings about these paintings before reading King's book? How has your understanding of this work changed after reading the book? What kind of person was Claude Monet? Did anything about his life or personality surprise you? What was the importance of family and friendship, especially his friendship with journalist and politician Georges Clemenceau, to his late work and reputation? How do the Water Lilies reflect their historical and cultural moment? What did Monet's contemporary, the writer Henri Ghéon, mean when he said that Monet "paints in time"? To what degree do you think Monet's loss of vision affected the style of his late paintings, and to what degree "his determination to push the boundaries of painting," his "mad enchantment" with the "luminous abyss" of his water lily ponds, or his suppression of the female image? How do you explain the rise and fall and rise again of Monet's popularity and artistic reputation as well as that of Impressionism in general? What is Monet's legacy to the history of art? Do you think he would be pleased with this legacy?

Enjoy a virtual visit with the Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, November 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, November 16, at 11:00 a.m. at the Earth Fare Café (the West Ashley Branch Library is closed until further notice due to Tropical Storm Irma).

Monday, October 30, 2017

Juliet Nicolson, author of A House Full of Daughters, to speak in Charleston Friday, November 3

Juliet Nicolson, the author of our selection for August, A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations, will be speaking this Friday, November 3, at the Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival:

SMALL WORLD: CHARLESTON CONNECTIONS WITH CHARLES ANSON AND JULIET NICOLSON

  •   
  • St. Stephen's Episcopal Church 
Charleston UK and Charleston SC epitomize the theory of six degrees of separation. Charles Anson and Juliet Nicolson, who live close to Charleston, Sussex, have unexpected local connections and will share their tales at a historic church in downtown Charleston's historic Ansonborough district. Stay for the reception to meet author Edward Ball.
Tickets: $25
Lecture & Reception: $50

Visit www.charlestontocharleston.com for more information.

Thanks to our discussion group member Isabel for sharing this information with the group!

Monday, October 23, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed October's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey, then you might also enjoy these books and films recommended by our discussion group members, some of which are based on real places and events profiled in Ghostland:

  • Anything by Edgar Allan Poe. Of course!
  • The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  • The Turn of the Screw and other ghost stories by Henry James
  • The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
  • Cult classic Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, photographs by Charles Van Schaik
  • House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
  • The Shining by Stephen King and the film. Of course!
  • Stranger Things television show. Second season airs Friday, October 27, 2017!
  • Twin Peaks television show. And really any film by David Lynch.
  • The Serafina series of books by Robert Beatty
  • Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series of books by Ransom Riggs
  • Home by Bill Bryson
  • This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
  • Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

Happy Halloween!




Thursday, October 5, 2017

Thursday, October 19 discussion moved to Earth Fare Café

Due to Tropical Storm Irma, the West Ashley Branch Library will remain closed until further notice. The Not Fiction Book Discussion scheduled at that branch for Thursday, October 19, 2017, will be held at the Earth Fare Café in the South Windermere Shopping Center at the regular meeting time of 11:00 a.m. We will be discussing Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey.

We hope you will join the discussion!

Monday, October 2, 2017

October Not Fiction Book Discussions


Autumn has arrived, and with it, thoughts of Halloween and haunted houses. In Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, Colin Dickey asks, "how do we deal with stories about the dead and their ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed haunted?"

Dickey visited supposedly haunted places across America, including both private and public spaces. He delves into the factual history of these spaces, and he also explores the common tropes found in their ghost stories, using both popular culture and literary classics as examples, noting that "Ultimately, this book is about the relationship between place and story: how the two depend on each other and how they bring each other alive." He is not concerned with whether ghosts exist or not, but rather with human beings' persistent need to tell these stories and how the stories evolve as time passes. He cites Sigmund Freud's concept of the "uncanny," in which a place that is unsettling in any way becomes a container for the unsettled feelings we might have about events that have occurred there. Charleston, of course, has many old and, to some, uncanny places. Dickey visits the churchyard of the Unitarian Church and Magnolia Cemetery, helping us understand how ghost stories grew up around the transition from burial in centrally located churchyards to suburban garden cemeteries. Dickey also explores the real identity of Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee and the protagonist of his story The Gold Bug, set on Sullivan's Island.

What do you think? Whether or not you believe in ghosts, is there a place you have visited that felt uncanny to you? Can you explain its effect on you? Is there a place from your hometown that was rumored to be haunted? What are the historical facts and what are the ghost story tropes related to this place? Has the story shifted over time? As the American landscape changes with time, what spaces do you think will come to seem haunted? What ghost stories will we tell in the future? Why? Does Dickey's explanation of the relationship between place and story as the source of our ghost tales ring true to you? Why do you think we continue to tell these tales even as our ability to use technology to determine the facts of a situation evolve? We tell these stories at least in part as entertainment . . . why do we enjoy being scared?!

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 19, at 11:00 a.m. at Earth Fare Café in the South Windermere Shopping Center (the West Ashley Branch Library is closed until further notice due to damage from Tropical Storm Irma); and here on the blog.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed September's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

Books
  • The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal
  • House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
  • Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz
  • The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
  • Night by Elie Wiesel
  • In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  • Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Films
  • Woman in Gold with Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren
  • The Lives of Others with Martina Gedeck and Ulrich Muhe
  • A Gentleman's Agreement with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire
  • Night Crossing with John Hurt and Jane Alexander
  • Triumph of the Will directed by Leni Reifenstahl

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Thursday, September 21 discussion moved to Earth Fare cafe

Due to Hurricane Irma, the West Ashley Branch Library will remain closed until further notice. The Not Fiction Book Discussion scheduled at that branch for Thursday, September 21, 2017, will be held at the Earth Fare cafe at the regular meeting time of 11:00 a.m. We will be discussing The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding.

We hope you will join the discussion!

Monday, September 4, 2017

September Not Fiction Book Discussions

The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding is the story of Harding's attempt to reclaim a family home in Germany lost during the Holocaust. Along with the house itself, Harding also recovers a century of history in the lives of five families who lived in the house through the First World War, the collapse of Imperial Germany, The Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, communism, the physical and political division of the Berlin Wall, and reunification.

Harding first visited his family's house by Gross Glienicke Lake in the suburbs of Berlin in 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He traveled there with his grandmother Elsie, who had loved the home built by her father, Alfred Alexander, Harding's great-grandfather, as "a soul place." The family lost the house when they fled Germany and Nazi persecution of Jewish people in the 1930s. Harding resolved to return to learn more about the house and its history, and in 2013 arrived to discover that the house was soon to be demolished. His efforts to preserve this modest house by the lake result in "the story of a building that was loved and lost by five families. A story of the everyday moments that make a house a home . . . It is also the story of Germany over a turbulent century. . . . Above all, it is a story of survival, one that has been pieced together from archival material and building plans, recently declassified documents, letters, diaries, photographs, and conversations with historians, architects, botanists, police chiefs and politicians, villagers, neighbours and, most importantly, its occupants." Ultimately, due to Harding's efforts, the house has been saved, and readers can follow its future at www.AlexanderHaus.org, the website for the nonprofit that will transform the property into a Centre for Education and Reconciliation.

What do you think? Do you live in an old house? Do you know about--or perhaps wonder about--its history? Does your family have a home, "a soul place," that is central to its history and identity? Harding uses a place, his family's house at Gross Glienicke Lake, to anchor a larger story about Germany over the last century of its history. What unique perspective on this complicated history does this focus on a single house provide? Of the many people who lived on the property and in the lake house, whose story was most interesting to you? Why? After returning to visit the house in 2013 and learning that the house is slated for demolition, Harding wonders not only if the house can be saved, but whether or not it should be saved. Is there value in preserving a modest structure like the Alexanders' house by the lake? How do you explain Harding's family's resistance to his desire to reclaim and restore the house? How do you think acknowledgement and reparation should be made to Jewish families who lost property and loved ones during the Holocaust? In his Epilogue, Harding says that "Whatever the outcome, The House by the Lake is a story of hope. It demonstrates that while we humans can experience terrible suffering, in time we are indeed able to exercise our capacity for healing. And if we manage that, a century of pain, joy, and dramatic change will have had a positive outcome. One thing is clear: a new chapter in the story has just begun. It will be fascinating to see what the next hundred years will bring." Are you as hopeful as Harding about the future?

We hope you will join the conversation: Tuesday, September 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed August's selection . . .

If you enjoyed A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations by Juliet Nicolson, then you might also enjoy these other books and television shows recommended by our discussion group members:

Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson
Portrait of a Marriage Masterpiece drama with Janet McTeer, David Haig, and Cathryn Harrison
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
The Land, The Garden, and the Your Garden books by Vita Sackville-West
Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden by Virginia Nicolson and Quentin Bell
Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine Du Plessix Gray
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Downtown Abbey Masterpiece television series
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates PBS television series

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

August Not Fiction Book Discussions


A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations by Juliet Nicolson explores the nature of time and memory in the life of a family. It is a reflection on the experience of being a woman and a daughter. And it is an ode to place and the importance of a family home.

Juliet Nicolson presents what at first appears to be a straightforward chronological history of the women in her family, looking back to her great-great grandmother Pepita and forward to her own granddaughter Imogen. Nicolson, a descendant of an upper-class British family of writers and publishers that included Bloomsbury novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West, notes that "The habit of writing down the story of our lives has long been a tradition in our family. . . . Having reached a middle point in my life when I began to find it as tempting to look backwards as forwards, I, too, wanted to explore those generations that preceded me." What she discovers is that the collective stories in a family may reveal complicated patterns and truths that can offer past generations forgiveness and future generations hope as they learn from the mistakes of their predecessors and find the courage to change.

Nicolson discovers patterns of dependence imposed by history on the lives of women, but also patterns more personal and familial. She documents a history of secrets, jealousy, fear of intimacy, lack of self-worth, addiction, and infidelity and how these behaviors are learned and repeated within the family. She also explores the nature of privilege and is curious "to see how they would respond to the charge of privilege. . . . I wondered if wealth and class always amounted to privilege in a broader sense." Throughout the generations, the solace of home, in the form of two great British houses, Knole and Sissinghurst, remains constant. Nicolson acknowledges the impossible task of the writer of memoir and history, that "In part, this book is an attempt to overcome the fugitive nature of time and, in many cases, the transitory nature of love."

What do you think? Considering how much has already been written about Nicolson's family, why did she want to write her own memoir? What does it add to the history of this family, class, and culture? Which of the women, and especially their mother-daughter relationships, did you find most interesting? And what about the men in these women's lives? What role did they play? To what extent were the unfortunate patterns in these women's lives the result of their time and place in history, and to what extent were they the result of their own personalities and choices? How did their wealth and class affect their lives? What is it like to be a daughter? Is it unique and different from being a son? What do Knole and Sissinghurst represent to the women who loved these great houses? Have you done any genealogical research about your family? If you were going to write a history and memoir about your family, what would you choose for your focus and organization?

We hope you will join the conversation: Tuesday, August 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed July's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar, then you might also enjoy these books about "exile and estrangement" recommended by Hisham Matar in an interview with John Williams for the New York Times:


  • The Day of Judgement by Salvatore Satta
  • Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
  • Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys


You might also like these books recommended by our discussion group members:


  • The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
  • Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
  • Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt
  • One Generation After by Eli Wiesel
  • House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
  • The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz


Friday, July 7, 2017

July Not Fiction Book Discussions

In his memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, Hisham Matar tells readers the intertwined stories of his father Jaballa Matar, a leading dissident in Libya under Muammar el-Qaddafi, and his fierce love of country and culture; his father's kidnapping and imprisonment in 1990 for his political activities; and his own return to Libya in 2012 after the fall of the Qaddafi regime to try to discover his father's fate. Jaballa was kidnapped when Hisham was only nineteen years old, and Hisham would never see his father again. The narrative takes readers simultaneously both back in time to Libya's past and Hisham's childhood memories of his father, and forward in time as he makes the journey to Libya, reunites with family, and pursues the answers to his questions about his father's fate.

His memoir attempts to answer the question, "What do you do when you cannot leave and cannot return?" It is both a narrative history of Libya and a personal statement of loss, love, grief, and the possibility of consolation. In an interview for the New York Times, John Williams asked Matar, "You spoke to former prisoners, including your own uncle, as part of your research. What was the most surprising thing you learned from them?" He replied, "I learnt something about the power of stories, and how through them we can travel through time and share, at least in our imaginations, former aspects of ourselves. Most of all, I learnt that we can endure great suffering and survive, mostly intact yet altered."

What do you think? Why did Hisham Matar write The Return as a memoir even though he had already written two semiautobiographical novels, In The Country of Men, from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy, and Anatomy of a Disappearance, from the point of view of a teenaged boy, about these same events? Describe his organizational structure in The Return, his use of time and place. What is the effect on you as a reader? And what about his tone, his attitude toward his subject and toward us as his readers? Matar alludes to many other writers who address the experience of exile and to classic literary examples of father and son relationships. What do these references add to Matar's story? In a review of The Return for The Washington Post, Tara Bahrampour notes, "In a book that does not shy away from painful details, the event it hinges on--his father's arrest--is strikingly absent." Why do you think that Matar made this narrative decision? Why did he delay his return to Libya after the fall of the Qaddafi regime, even contemplating the "immaculate idea" of never returning? Why does he ultimately decide to go?  In an article for the New Yorker June 6 and 13, 2016 Issue about childhood reading titled The Book, Matar tells of the book that most influenced him, one that he has never read and of which he does not even know the author or the title: 
I don’t remember what the passages read aloud were about, exactly. What I do remember is that they relayed the intimate thoughts of a man, one suffering from an unkind or shameful emotion, such as fear or jealousy or cowardice, feelings that are complicated to admit to, particularly for a man. But the honesty of the writing, its ability to capture such fluid and vague adjustments, was in itself brave and generous, the opposite of the emotion being described. I also remember being filled with wonder at the way words could be so precise and patient, illustrating, as they progressed, what even the boy I was then somehow knew: that there exists at once a tragic and marvellous distance between consciousness and reality. Given the books that had been read to me, this couldn’t have been the first time that I encountered such writing, but, for some reason, on this occasion I registered its full impact on me. What struck me, too, was the new silence that the passages left in their wake. They created, at least temporarily, among these political men, who seemed to me to function under the solid weight of certainty, a resonant moment of doubt.
Do you see any correspondences between Matar’s description of this influential book and its effect on him and his own writing choices in The ReturnCan his title, The Return, be read in several different ways? What did you learn about the Arab world, its history, culture, and current political situation, from reading The Return?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, July 11, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Reminder: Main Library July Not Fiction Book Discussion date

Just a friendly reminder that the July Main Library Not Fiction Book Discussion of The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar will be Tuesday, July 11, at 6:30 p.m.. All Charleston County Public Library branches will be closed for the July 4 holiday.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed June's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance, then you might also like these books suggested our discussion group members:

  • The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs
  • Dreams from My Father: A Memoir of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
  • Coal Miner's Daughter by Loretta Lynn
  • The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
  • Son of a Gun: A Memoir by Justin St. Germain
  • Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III


And by The Booklist Reader reviewer Karen Kleckner Keefe in her article Pride and Poverty: Beyond Hillbilly Elegy:

  • All Over But the Shoutin‘ by Rick Bragg
  • Belonging: A Culture of Place by bel hooks
  • Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big Business by Gary Rivlin
  • Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray
  • Creeker: A Woman’s Journey by Linda Scott DeRosier
  • Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War by Joe Bageant
  • The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
  • The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
  • Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado
  • Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City by Javier Auyero
  • Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee
  • The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
  • Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in Boom-Time America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home by Chris Offutt
  • Poor People by William T. Vollmann
  • Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
  • Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington
  • $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer
  • White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
  • The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler



Tuesday, June 6, 2017

June's Not Fiction Book Discussions

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance explores the culture of white, working class, Scots-Irish Greater Appalachia--"hillbilly" culture--as both a physical and a psychosocial place. Vance, who grew up in Kentucky and Ohio in the 1980s and 90s, overcame a childhood of poverty and familial instability, becoming a Marine and eventually graduating from Yale Law School. He found himself wondering why there weren't more people like him at places like Yale, people from working-class backgrounds living the American Dream of an upwardly mobile life. What he discovered is a region and a culture in crisis as manufacturing jobs that provided a living wage become harder and harder to find. Vance told Isaac Chotiner of Slate, "This macroeconomic thing was happening but there was also this cultural and communal disconnect that was happening. To understand the problem you had to understand both sides of it." And so he wrote Hillbilly Elegy as a memoir to show "what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it." What he found is a socially and culturally isolated group that demonstrates a "learned helplessness," an "emotional poverty" that increasingly looks like despair. Vance asks an essential question of "hillbillies like me," and, by implication, of American culture at large: "How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? . . . Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?"

What do you think? To what combination of causes does Vance attribute the crisis he sees in his community? How do the people in Vance's life demonstrate both learned helplessness and personal responsibility? What are the positive values of hillbilly culture? To what does Vance attribute his escape from the cycle of poverty, addiction, and violence in which many people in his family and community are trapped? Why is he uneasy with his own rapid upward mobility? Does he seem to make an emotional journey out of his own anger and confusion along with his physical journey out of Appalachia? What does Hillbilly Elegy add to the national conversation about poverty and its related socio-cultural problems? To the current political conversation? Does it suggest any solutions? Does Vance seem to be more liberal, conservative, libertarian, or some other slant entirely in his social and political views? If your life experiences, cultural background, and social and political views differ from Vance's, did you find Hillbilly Elegy difficult and/or enlightening to read?

For more insight into Hillbilly Elegy, read Compassion, and Criticism, for the White Working Class: A conversation with Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, an interview at Slate with Isaac Chotiner.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, June 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride, then you might also like these suggestions from our discussion group members:

Films
  • Muscle Shoals directed by Greg "Freddy" Camalier
  • American Epic 3-part PBS television series about how ordinary American people were given the opportunity in the 1920s to make records, resulting in the preservation of American music folkways.
  • Ray directed by Taylor Hackford, with Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles
Books
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  • Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  • The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy and the film version Conrack

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

May's Not Fiction Book Discussions

Kill 'Em And Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride explores how the American South and the music industry shaped James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and how Brown, a one-of-a-kind musician, performer, and self-made man, shaped American culture.

McBride, author of the modern classic memoir The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, and an accomplished musician, hit the road to follow up on a lead that promised to reveal James Brown the man who had been hidden for all these years behind James Brown the myth. With a writing style and attitude reminiscent of tall tales and the funk music Brown helped to create, McBride follows this lead to disparate corners of American history and culture, exploring tensions between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. He says "Brown was a child of a country in hiding: America's South. . . . You cannot understand Brown without understanding that the land that produced him is a land of masks."

What do you think? Who was James Brown? How did his childhood in rural South Carolina help to shape the person he became--his music, his work ethic, his relationships? How did his experiences out in the larger cultural landscape of midcentury America continue his evolution--or, arguably, devolution? And how did Brown shape American culture, musically, politically, and otherwise? In the spirit of the tall tale, McBride incorporates his own experiences with Brown and his myth, from his own childhood in Queens to his career as a writer, musician, and mentor to inner city youth. How did McBride's experiences also help you to understand Brown and American culture?

Remind yourself of James Brown's magnetic charisma, knock-out musical and dancing talent, and tremendous work ethic at the YouTube Official James Brown Channel!

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, May 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, then you might also like these books suggested by our discussion group members:


Fiction
  • Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
  • Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  • Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Nonfiction
  • How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
  • Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs
  • Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell

Monday, April 3, 2017

April's Not Fiction Book Discussions

The phrase "there's no place like home" can be read in two ways. The most common reading is positive, with the suggestion that home is the most satisfying place to be. However, one could also understand the phrase to suggest that there is no place to be found that feels like home.  Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond  follows eight families in Milwaukee, WI, as they look for a place to call home and the obstacles they encounter along the way.

Desmond, a Harvard sociologist and MacArthur Genius grant recipient, spent time living in a trailer park where tenants were threatened with a mass eviction due to livability issues and in a rooming house in an urban neighborhood. He interviewed and observed the tenants and their landlords, as well as city and court officials, interweaving his own ethnographic research with statistics and studies of poverty in America. Desmond told Gillian B. White at The Atlantic,
I wanted to try to write a different poverty book, to focus on not just a place or a group of people, but a set of relationships. I thought eviction was the best way to do that. It brings landlords and judges and tenants together in this process that you can follow over time. I realized not only that we had overlooked this very central aspect of poverty, but eviction was coursing through the American city and acting as a cause, not just a condition of poverty.
Although eviction is the main topic Desmond explores, he shows us through the stories he tells that the lack of affordable housing intersects with many other social issues, such as parenting, education, employment, and addiction, as well as with race and gender. Desmond shows us with remarkable concision and empathy that these relationships are complicated.

What do you think? It is easy to judge people who get evicted as the victims of nothing but their own poor decisions. Did you feel this way before reading Evicted? Has your opinion changed after reading the book? How? Desmond uses storytelling to help us understand the larger issue of poverty and eviction. Whose story were you most drawn to and why? How do you see other social issues interacting with the lack of affordable housing in these people's lives? What responsibilities do you think landlords should have when renting their property? What risks do they take? Are profits justified in the private rental market when there is a significant lack of affordable housing? In his Epilogue, Desmond proposes solutions to the suffering caused by eviction. Do you believe that his solutions would work? Why or why not? Do you believe, as Desmond does, that access to a decent home is a basic human right? Did reading Evicted inspire you to want to help others in positions similar to those of the people in the book? If so, what do you think would help and how do you plan to get involved?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri, then you might like these other books suggested by our discussion group members:


  • The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
  • Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson
  • When in French: Love in a Second Language by Lauren Collins
  • The essay To Speak is to Blunder by YiYun Li published in the January 2, 2017 issue
  • Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
  • A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
  • The writings of Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad, both of whom wrote their masterworks in English, which was not their first language.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

March Not Fiction Book Discussion

If Lab Girl is about science as a place, In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri is about language as a place. For her epigraph, Lahiri chose this quotation from Antonio Tabucchi: " . . . I needed a different language: a language that was a place of affection and reflection." A native speaker of Bengali and a well-awarded writer in English, Lahiri decided to immerse herself in Italian, moving her family to Rome and reading and writing exclusively in Italian for several years. This book is the result of her affection for that language and her reflections on her life as a writer.

Lahiri wrote it in Italian, and it is published with the English translation by Ann Goldstein on the facing page, so that readers can compare. While readers might expect a conventional travel memoir complete with rapturous descriptions of food and local color, Lahiri told Isaac Chotiner at Slate,
Everyone calls it a memoir. It's not. I've never thought of it as a memoir. It's a very different piece of writing. It came from a very different place. I was never, ever thinking of the book in those terms. I never even thought that it would be a book. When it was published in Italy last year, when it was published in Holland, in Sweden and France and other places, nobody has referred to it as a memoir. . . . When the book was published last year, I found myself talking in depth and at length about the language question. . . . The [question of whether] this is a transgressive act or not, and what it means, and the repercussions of this. There is, I think, a sort of philosophical aspect to the book, if you will. I feel that in all of the interviews I've done so far for the English edition, that has been skimmed if not totally ignored, and rather, it's more about, "What did your kids feel about going to Italy? What did your parents feel about your going to Italy? What was it like?" These more personal elements. I repeat, I don't feel that it is a memoir. It is an autobiographical work with two short stories in it as well, so it's a kind of weird mixed genre or out-of-genre kind of work.
Her language is spare and makes good use of metaphor, giving it the feel of a prose poem. She reflects on the relationship between language and a sense of belonging or exile. She considers the paradox of how her writing in Italian is both more autobiographical than her fiction about the Indian immigrant experience and yet more abstract. She asks the big question that all writers must consider at some point in their careers: "Why do I write?"

What do you think? Have you ever learned a new language and maybe even moved to a new country to live? Reflect on your experience. Did you feel a sense of exile, of being outside not just the language but also the culture? How did you cope? Explore some of the many metaphors Lahiri uses to convey her relationship to language and writing. Which did you find effective and enlightening? How would you define In Other Words? If it isn't a memoir, then what genre is it? Where would you look for it at a bookstore or library? Lahiri suggests that her book is more autobiographical because it is more abstract. How can this be true? What portrait of Lahiri emerges from her book? What is it about?

We hope you'll join the discussion: Tuesday, March 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 16, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, then you might like these books, television shows, and podcasts suggested by Jahren's publisher, Knopf, and our discussion group members:

Books
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
Nathalia Holt, Rise of the Rocket Girls
Kay Redfield Jamison, Exuberance
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction
Helen MacDonald, H Is for Hawk
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal
Rachel Swaby, Headstrong
Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees
Louise Anderson Allen, A Bluestocking in Charleston: The Life and Career of Laura Bragg
Elizabeth A Watry, Women in Wonderland: Lives, Legends, and Legacies of Yellowstone National Park
Rachel Ignotofsky, Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World
Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Rachel Carson's life and works
Elizabeth Gilbert The Signature of All Things
Tracy Chevalier Remarkable Creatures


Television shows
PBS series The Botany of Desire based on the book by Michael Pollan
PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea written by Dayton Duncan and produced by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan

Podcasts
StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Monday, February 6, 2017

February Not Fiction Book Discussions

In Lab Girl by Hope Jahrenscience, as represented by her father's earth sciences lab at the community college where he taught for 42 years and where Jahren spent many happy hours as a child, is a place. Now a recognized and awarded geobiologist with a lab of her own who studies the world from a plant's perspective, Jahren says of her career, "People are like plants: They grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed--a home as defined in the most literal sense: a safe place to be." In a memoir that interweaves stories of Jahren's life in science with stories about the life cycle of plants, readers learn about the personal and professional challenges she has faced and celebrate the incremental, hard-won successes and meaningful relationships she has created along the way.

What do you think? What drew Jahren to a career in science? What circumstances and attributes helped her become successful in this career? Which of the obstacles Jahren faces along the way were attributable to her being a woman in a male-dominated field? Which were a result of her struggles with bipolar disorder? And which were simply part of a learning curve as she matured and grew into her profession? Were you surprised to learn halfway through the book, after getting to know Jahren as a successful scientist, that she has bipolar disorder? Why do you think she chose this point in the book to introduce it?

Jahren tells readers about several significant relationships in her life, those with her father, her mother, her lab partner Bill, her husband Clint, and her son. What do we learn about Jahren from these relationships, and how do they influence her life in science? What do you make of the fact that Jahren dedicates this book and everything that she writes to her mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship? And why do you think her lab partner and best friend Bill has decided that he will never read Lab Girl? Jahren feared that in choosing a career in science, she would give up other aspects of life associated with being a woman with a family. What sacrifices has she made, and has she succeeded in creating a balanced life?

While Jahren's stories about the life cycles of plants are one of the most original aspects of the book, narrative science writing for a general audience is sometimes criticized for over-simplifying and anthropomorphizing its subjects. Jahren points out that scientific writing is a highly formalized and condensed genre and that "there's still no journal where I can tell the story of how my science is done with both the heart and the hands. . . . Working in a lab for twenty years has left me with two stories: the one that I have to write, and the one that I want to." How do you feel about the way Jahren handles the two stories in the book? Does she find a good balance between the scientific and the personal? Did you equally enjoy the chapters about plants and about Jahren's life, or were you drawn to one more than the other?

Like Jahren with her blue spruce, do you have a particular tree that you remember from your childhood? Ask a question about your tree. As Jahren points out in her Prologue, "Guess what? You are now a scientist. People will tell you that you have to know math to be a scientist, or physics or chemistry. They're wrong. . . . Sure, it helps, but there will be time for that. What comes first is a question, and you're already there." Do you think you would enjoy being a student in one of Jahren's classes? Why? Does she seem similar to or different from other science teachers you have had in the past? How? In what ways is Jahren a direct descendent of Alexander von Humboldt, whom we read about in last month's book The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf? Is Jahren's story an inspiration for young women who want to pursue a career in science?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, February 7, at 6:30 p.m.; Thursday, February 16, at 11:00 a.m.; and here on the blog.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Readalikes: If you enjoyed January's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf, then you might also enjoy these books--and it's quite a long list this month!--suggested by our discussion group members:

Nonfiction
  • Fact and Fiction: Literary and Scientific Cultures in Germany and Britain by Christine Lehleiter
  • Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll
  • Darwin: Portrait of a Genius by Paul Johnson
  • Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey
  • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
  • The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold
  • Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal
  • The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
  • The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
  • The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History by Darrin Lunde
  • The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candace Millard
  • The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
  • The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
  • Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna by David King
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye-View of the World and Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan 
  • The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds, The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales, and The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us by Diane Ackerman
Fiction
  • Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
  • The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
And Wendell Berry's many novels, essay collections, and poetry collections


Tuesday, January 3, 2017

January Not Fiction Book Discussions

Our first book of 2017, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf, helps us understand how we came to see the universe as we do today, as an interconnected whole, a web of life, upon which humans can have a large and potentially devastating impact. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the last great polymaths, a holistic and synthetic thinker whose work as a scientist, explorer, writer, and public figure gave us insight into the connections between climate, geography, vegetation, agriculture, and industry that became the foundations of many of today's natural sciences and the modern environmental movement. The list of people he knew and influenced reads like a who's who list of the 19th century: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simon Bolivar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and others. Yet, as Wulf points out, today Humboldt himself is nearly forgotten, even as his insistence that knowledge and wonder should be paired may be more important than ever in facing the effect of the Anthropocene on our planet.

What do you think? What did you know about Humboldt before reading The Invention of Nature? How much of your worldview do you think Humboldt's ideas helped to shape? To what degree had you taken this worldview for granted? What characteristics made Humboldt not only successful in his own career but also influential on other scientists, artists, and writers? One of the most interesting things about Humboldt's life was how influential his ideas were and how beloved a figure he became, not just to other scientists, but also to the general public. Today we celebrate actors, musicians, and sports figures more so than scientists. Why do you think this is? In her Epilogue, Wulf notes that we should care about Humboldt and his ideas because of his insight "that we can only truly understand nature by using our imagination. . . . This connection between knowledge, art and poetry, between science and emotions--the 'deeply-seated bond', as Humboldt called it--is more important than ever before. Humboldt was driven by a sense of wonder for the natural world--a sense of wonder that might help us today realize that we will protect only what we love." How do you think we can create and maintain a sense of wonder for the natural world? What policies, educational strategies, and public programs could we implement?

We hope you will join the discussion of one of the bestselling and most awarded books in recent years: Tuesday, January 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, January 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.