January meeting date changed

Our January meeting date has changed to accomodate the holiday schedule.

We'll be meeting on Wednesday, January 9th at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our January selection, This is Not Civilization by Robert Rosenberg.

Hope to see you there!

Book Choices for Jan., Feb. and March 2008

We’ve chosen our next three books – the first for 2008!

JANUARY: At our January meeting, we’ll be discussing This Is Not Civilization by Robert Rosenberg.

From the book jacket: This Is Not Civilization is an inspired, sweeping debut novel that hopscotches from Arizona to Central Asia to Istanbul with a well-meaning, if misguided, young Peace Corps volunteer. Jeff Hartig lies at the center of this modern take on the American-abroad tale, which brings together four people from vastly different backgrounds, each struggling with the push and pull of home. A young Apache, Adam Dale, forsakes the reservation for the promise of a world he knows little about. Anarbek Tashtanaliev, of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, operates a cheese factory that no longer produces cheese. Nazira, his daughter, strains against the confines of their village’s age-old traditions. With captivating insight, realism, and humor, Robert Rosenberg delivers a sensitive story about the cost of trying to do good in the world.

You can find discussion questions for This Is Not Civilization here.


FEBRUARY: At our February 7th meeting, we will discuss The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh.

“Set primarily in Burma, Malaya, and India, this work spans from 1885, when the British sent the King of Burma into exile, to the present. While it does offer brief glimpses into the history of the region, it is more the tale of a family and how historical events influenced real lives. As a young boy, Rajkumar, an Indian temporarily stranded in Mandalay, finds himself caught up in the British invasion that led to the exile of Burma's last king. In the chaos, he spies Dolly, a household maid in the royal palace, for whom he develops a consuming passion and whom years later he tracks down in India and marries. As their family grows and their lives intersect with others, the tangled web of local and international politics is brought to bear, changing lives as well as nations.” – Library Journal

You can find discussion questions for The Glass Palace here.


MARCH: At our March 6th meeting, we’ll discuss Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan. This will coincide with another One Book/One Marin reading program to held in early 2008.

“Tan's hilarious new novel arrives at a time when we aren't laughing much at the news of the day. How much you enjoy "Saving Fish From Drowning" may have to do with how willing you are to be bewitched by a superbly executed, goodhearted farce that is part romance and part mystery with a political bent. With Tan's many talents on display, it's her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations about the nature of illusion that make this book pure pleasure. And by the end, all the travelers, including one charming tiny dog, seem like old friends.” The San Francisco Chronicle - Sara Peyton

You can find discussion questions for Saving Fish From Drowning here.

The Places in Between - Discussion Questions

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, December 6th at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our December book, The Places in Between by Rory Stewart.

Here is a link to the discussion questions provided by the publisher of The Places in Between ...

http://www.harcourtbooks.com/bookcatalogs/bookpage.asp?isbn=0156031566&option=reading

If I have your e-mail address, I will also e-mail you the discussion questions. I'll have some additional background information about the author and the book at the meeting on Thursday, as well as some special goodies to help us celebrate our five-year anniversary.

How Are We Doing? - a questionnaire

The five-year anniversary of the Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group ("FLBDG") seems like a good time to step back and review our mission. What is our mission?

I like to think of the FLBDG as the no-guilt book club. People come when they are able and interested and shouldn't feel guilty when they can't make it. The book club is sponsored by the Friends of the Fairfax Library, is held in the library's meeting room and is open to any interested readers.

Sometime during the 5 years, I started e-mailing the discussion questions to our e-mail list (which has over 80 names) which also acted as a gentle reminder of the upcoming meeting.

Are there any other changes or minor adjustments we could make to reach out to more readers? This blog is a start. I intend to post a link to discussion questions each month and then, after our discussion, post a brief synopsis of our thoughts on the book.

Below is a questionnaire I put together and I would love to get your thoughts on what we can do to make the FLBDG even better!

Questionnaire for Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group

1. Should we read…?

more current fiction
more themes in our selections (i.e. other cultures, gardens as metaphor, the sea)
more classics
historical fiction
more non-fiction (what kind of non-fiction? Memoirs, adventure, history, current events?)
keep the mix of novels/non-fiction we currently have

2. Would you like to see a brief synopsis of our discussions in an e-mail after our meetings?

3. Would you be interested in rating the books we read?
The library could post the ratings of our group for other interested readers. It could be a simple “thumbs up/thumbs down” or a rating from 1 to 10.

4. The book discussion group currently meets on the first Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. Would you be interested in meeting at another time or on another day? When?

5. Would you be interested in reading more than one book per month - for instance, if the subjects of the books are related?

6. Should discussions be more strictly centered on the discussion questions provided or should discussions be allowed to meander somewhat?

7. What is the ideal number of participants in a book discussion?
Has the number of participants in the library book discussions been too high? too low? just right?

8. Do you have any difficulty in obtaining the books chosen for discussion through the library?
Would that difficulty in obtaining a copy of the book prevent you from attending the monthly meeting?

9. Currently, discussion questions are e-mailed a few days before our meetings but other background information, such as author interviews, book reviews etc. are handed out at the meeting. Would you be interested in having that information sent as an attachment to an e-mail in MS Word format?

10. Are there any other improvements you would like to see made to make the Fairfax Library book discussion group more interesting or relevant for you?


Thanks for any and all suggestions/criticisms/advice you care to share with me!

Five Years of Reading

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will mark five years of reading with our December, 2007 meeting. I'll have some additional posts soon about that.

I thought it might be fun to share the list of books our group has read over the past five years. Our group chooses books 3 months at a time so we do the choosing 4 times a year - I think of it as a quarterly job. At times, we have tried to read 3 books around a theme such as, "gardening as metaphor", "Native American authors", "exploring India", "war is hell" etc.

I find it difficult to choose books by theme because there aren't too many on-line resources and sometimes I find books that fit the theme but won't work for us because there aren't enough copies in the library system. But ultimately themes are rewarding as we can really dig into a subject. We'll try to do more of that in our future reading. Suggestions, anyone??


Date Book Title Author
December, 2007 The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
November, 2007 The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
October, 2007 The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr
September, 2007 Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
August, 2007 Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
July, 2007 Drop City by T.C. Boyle
June, 2007 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
May, 2007 Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
April, 2007 Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
March, 2007 The March by E. L. Doctorow
February, 2007 Beloved by Toni Morrison
January, 2007 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
December, 2006 Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
November, 2006 The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
October, 2006 Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
September, 2006 Any Human Heart by William Boyd
August, 2006 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
July, 2006 The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
June, 2006 The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
May, 2006 The Grace That Keeps This World by Tom Bailey
April, 2006 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
March, 2006 The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
February, 2006 Devil in the White City by Eric Larson
January, 2006 Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel
December, 2005 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
November, 2005 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
October, 2005 The Known World by Edward P. Jones
September, 2005 Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
August, 2005 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
July, 2005 Three Junes by Julia Glass
June, 2005 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
May, 2005 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
April, 2005 Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
March, 2005 Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
February, 2005 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
January, 2005 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
December, 2004 The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
November, 2004 Watermelon Nights by Greg Sarris
October, 2004 Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
September, 2004 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
August, 2004 The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
July, 2004 The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
June, 2004 Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
May, 2004 Your Mouth is Lovely by Nancy Richler
April, 2004 The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salmon Rushdie
March, 2004 Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
February, 2004 Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
January, 2004 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
December, 2003 Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
November, 2003 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
October, 2003 Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
September, 2003 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Ann Tyler
August, 2003 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
July, 2003 The Republic of Love by Carol Shields
June, 2003 Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko
May, 2003 The Lost Garden by Helen Humphries
April, 2003 The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
March, 2003 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
February, 2003 Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
January, 2003 Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

The Brief History of the Dead

It's a blog! Here's a chance for interested readers to join our discussion of books at the Fairfax Library. The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group meets on the first Thursday of each month at the Fairfax library to discuss books and have fun.

Last Thursday we met to discuss The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. The overall consensus of the group was "so-so".

The first part of the book was the best with a wonderful description of wandering souls (with their old bodies) in a new world of the dead. The stories of the individual crossings into the netherworld are beautiful. This city looks, sounds and smells a lot like NYC but with borders that suddenly appear to accomodate the newly dead and shrink when they mysteriously disappear. The recently departed believe that they're in this limbo-like city because someone still alive on Earth holds them in their memory.

Brockmeier throws out lots of big ideas and deep thoughts in his description of the city but doesn't follow through on most of them.

Then he introduces Laura Byrd, a researcher hired by the Coca-Cola company to investigate Antartica for the possibility of using the rapidly melting ice there for their beverages. Laura begins some interesting adventures in the snow-strewn tundra when she is left alone in her station and supplies begin to run low and things begin to break. Laura's struggle to stay alive should be more gripping but her chapters begin to wear thin.

While Laura is struggling for survival, the remaining citizens of the city realize that they all have a connection with her. Laura is the last remaining human on earth and it is only her memories of them that sustain the city.

But the recently departed are curiously incurious about what comes next for them. Where is the faith of these people? Why do they continue to eat? Why do they continue to work? What happens when Laura finally succumbs to her hostile environment? What is the purpose of memory? Of human connections? Why does the car accident victim appear whole and the cancer victim appear healthy in the city, but the blind man remains blind?

The book throws enough big ideas at you that there is plenty to discuss for a book group, but in the end it lacked the depth that would have made it a great book.

In December, we'll be discussing The Places In Between by Rory Stewart. See you then!

Beloved February 2007

February 2007 book selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, February 1st at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our February book: Beloved by Toni Morrison.

This book has won both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and Nobel Prize in Literature. This is a book that takes you by the collar and shakes you with what it has to say. It isn’t always easy to read – both the material and writing style are challenging. But the challenge is worth the effort.

Below are the discussion questions for the book. Printed copies of the questions, author background and reviews of the book as well as refreshments will be available at the discussion group Thursday evening.

In our upcoming March 1st meeting, we will discuss The March by E.L. Doctorow, a look at Sherman’s Civil War march through Georgia and the Carolinas that led to the end of the war.

I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

Discussion Questions

Beloved by Toni Morrison

1. What is the reference in the epigraph, "Sixty Million and more"?
2. Why do you think the book is titled "Beloved" rather than "Sethe" or "The Ghost" or some such? What features of the book does the title emphasize?
3. What is your reaction to the first episode in Beloved?. What expectations does the opening scene raise for the work to follow? How does it function in relation to book as a whole?
4. Why does Morrison choose such a complex structure for this particular way of telling Sethe's story? What does the way the story is told suggest about Morrison's view of the human mind and its workings?
5. What judgments does Toni Morrison make on Sethe's killing of her daughter? How does Sethe's community judge her? How does Paul D. judge her? How does she judge herself? How do you judge her?
6. What does Beloved have to say about the community - its value, its demands, and the relationship of individuals to it?
7. Slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass's autobiography, are the starting point of the African-American literary tradition. One of the biggest themes in Frederick Douglass's story is the question of his name, or his identity. How does this issue relate to Beloved? If you are familiar with slave narratives, can you find ways that Morrison refers to, uses, or reworks the slave narrative tradition in Beloved?
8. Morrison makes a point of including traditional, folkloric, non-literary African-American culture in Beloved, some of which is derived from ancient African roots. What is the effect of this inclusion?
9. Among other things, Beloved is a ghost story with many of the elements often found in ghost stories - the haunted house, the vengeful spirit, the hostile community. What distinguishes Beloved from the generic ghost story?What are the special problems for writer and reader in having a ghost featured as a main character?
10. How much of a 'person' is Beloved? Given her mysterious arrival and unexplained departure, does she have any reality other than an embodiment of other people's emotions, e.g. Sethe's guilt? Is she Sethe’s daughter brought back to life?
11. How does Beloved help Denver gain an independent identity? How might the dynamic between Beloved and Denver represent the effect of history on subsequent generations?
12. What is Sethe’s relationship with her children?
13. In what ways does Paul D stand out from the other male characters? Does the novel offer a consistent view of the relations between men and women in this period of black American history?
14. Both Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs have given themselves their own names: what is the significance of this? What does the act of renaming signify? What is the significance of the name, Beloved?
15. Give some thought to the presence of (and commentary on) white people in the novel. Why does the author make the choices she does in her presentations of whites?
16. Reflect on the detailed attention that Morrison gives to experiences that will certainly claim your attention (and will probably shock and disturb you): Paul D. on the chain gang, locked in the box; Paul's experience of the bit; the milking of Sethe; School Teacher's recording of the slaves' animal characteristics; Sixo's death. What is the effect of those experiences, on those who live them and on us as readers?
17. The novel is narrated from the perspectives of former slaves and their families. At different points we get Sethe’s, Paul D’s, Stamp Paid’s, Baby Suggs’s, Beloved’s, Lady Jones’s, and Ella’s varying points of view. Yet the climax of the novel—Sethe’s act of infanticide—is depicted according to schoolteacher’s point of view. Why does Morrison choose to disclose the circumstances of Sethe’s tragedy as they appeared to schoolteacher? How does this influence the reader’s reaction to the story?
18. The narrative of Beloved is fragmented, with point-of-view switching between characters and moments in time - yet a sense of order is very much in evidence. What other devises does Toni Morrison use to shape the novel?
19. What is your reaction to the last passage in the book? How do you feel about the ending? Why do you suppose the book concludes (or doesn't conclude) in this way?
20. Many readers wish that the book had ended before the cryptic last chapter. Can you make sense of it? Maybe it helps to contrast "rememorying" with the "disremembered" on the last page, and to think about Morrison's interest in the late 1980s in working against the "national amnesia" on the subject of slavery. Is the white world condemned completely in Beloved, as some shocked (white) critics have maintained?