Christie requested a Tuesday group, which put us at either the day before Xmas eve or the day before New Year's eve... which may be fine for most of us, or may not. So I added 2 Tuesdays in January (which may be helpful if we pick a long book) - if the holidays are crazy, we should certainly not feel stress about finishing our book!
In other news, the NY Times published their 2008 Best books of the year list:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/100Notable-t.html?_r=1&em
Can't wait!
So here are the options:
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory—known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")—holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
- Just as Michael Sims does in his planetary guide, Apollo's Fire (Reviews, June 11), science journalist Ackerman (Notes from the Shore) uses a single day as a narrative framework for examining a wide array of scientific information, but she has chosen a much more intimate subject: the human body. Starting with a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call and working through to the wee hours (with a pause for a restorative midday nap), she explains the complex details behind some of the body's most basic functions. The day is a somewhat arbitrary structure for topics that could be discussed at any time (she holds off on exercise until the late afternoon, for example), but the arrangement is never obtrusive, and Ackerman's prose is inviting. While she doesn't offer a radical new perspective on the human body, she does provide a steady stream of interesting information on things like the tiny hair cells inside the cochlea that enable us to hear even the briefest of noises, and the aphrodisiac allure for women of the odor of men's underarm sweat. All in all, Ackerman offers an pleasant day's diversion.
- Award-winning poet David Mura's critically acclaimed memoir Turning Japanese chronicles how a year in Japan transformed his sense of self and pulled into sharp focus his complicated inheritance. Mura is a sansei, a third-generation Japanese-American who grew up on baseball and hot dogs in a Chicago suburb, where he heard more Yiddish than Japanese. Turning Japanese chronicles his quest for identity with honesty, intelligence, and poetic vision and it stands as a classic meditation on difference and assimilation and is a valuable window onto a country that has long fascinated our own. Turning Japanese was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of an Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award.
- Novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, published in 1866 as Prestupleniye i nakazaniye. Dostoyevsky's first masterpiece, the novel is a psychological analysis of the poor student Raskolnikov, whose theory that humanitarian ends justify evil means leads him to murder a St. Petersburg pawnbroker. The act produces nightmarish guilt in Raskolnikov. The narrative's feverish, compelling tone follows the twists and turns of Raskolnikov's emotions and elaborates his struggle with his conscience and his mounting sense of horror as he wanders the city's hot, crowded streets. In prison, Raskolnikov comes to the realization that happiness cannot be achieved by a reasoned plan of existence but must be earned by suffering. The novel's status as a masterpiece is chiefly a result of its narrative intensity and its moving depiction of the recovery of a man's diseased spirit
