1997 September: Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro, 1994 October: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, 1988 November: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, 1985 December: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, 1942
1998 January: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Wells) February: Mama Day (Naylor) March: Angela's Ashes (McCourt) April: The Temple of My Familiar (Walker) May: Paradise (Morrison) July: You've Got to Dance With Them What Brung You (Ivins) August: Transformations (Sexton) September: Our America (Jones & Newman) October: She's Come Undone (Lamb) November: The Color of Water (McBride)
1999 Books January: Aphrodite (Allende) February: The Healing of America (Williamson) March: Beloved (Morrisson) April: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Lewis) May: The Bean Trees (Kingsolver) July: Cold Mountain (Frazier) August: Pigs in Heaven (Kingsolver) September: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Smith) October: Traveling Mercies (Lamott) November: Blindness (Saramago)
2000 Books January: I Know This Much is True (Lamb) February: Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom) March: The Reader (Schlenk) April: The Autobiography of My Mother (Kincaid) May: The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver) July: A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving) August: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling) September: The Sparrow (Russell) October: Frankenstein (Shelly) November: The Stories of Eva Luna (Allende)
2001 Books January: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (Zimler) February: Naked (Sedaris) March: Heaven's Coast (Doty) April: The Weight of Water (Shreve) May: Hanna's Daughters (Fredriksson) July: The Wild Swans (Chang) August: The Beekeeper's Apprentice (King) Rating = 8.5 September: Foreign Bodies (Hwee Hwee Tan) October: The Hobbit (Tolkein) November: For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
2002 Books January: All the Names (Saramago) February: Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) March: Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Herrera) April: Pudd'nhead Wilson (Twain) May: The Exact Location of the Soul (Selzer) June: A Cafecito Story (Alvarez) July: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll) August: The Alchemist (Coelho) September: Brave New World (Huxley) October: White Teeth (Smith) November:Soul Survivor (Yancey)
2003 Books January: The Last Samurai (DeWitt) February: The Corrections (Franzen) March: The Lovely Bones (Sebold) April: Man is Wolf to Man (Bardach & Gleeson) May: The Moor's Last Sign (Rushdie) July: Caramelo (Cisneros) August: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig) September: The Eyre Affair (Fford) October: Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy (Solomon) November: Me Talk Pretty One Day (Sedaris)
2004 Books January: Peace Like a River (Enger) February: Life of Pi (Martel) March: Pride and Prejudice (Austen) Rating = 8.2 April: Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia (Sasson) Rating = 8.0 May: Neither Here Nor There (Bryson) Rating = 6.0 July: The DaVinci Code (Brown) Rating = 8.0 August: Straight Man (Russo) Rating = 7.0 September: The Good Earth (Buck) Rating = 7.7 October: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Haddon) Rating = 8.2 November: The Empress of One (Sullivan) Rating = 7.4
2005 Books January: Farenheit 451 (Bradbury) Rating = 9.4 February: Our Mutual Friend (Dickens) Rating = 7.4 March: The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) Rating = 7.5 April: Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe) Rating = 8.8 May: Flowers for Algernon (Keyes) Rating = 8.5 July: The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood) Rating = 6.6 August: My Sister's Keeper (Picoult) Rating = 7.5
Beware the book where the author's name is larger than the title on the cover and spine! Ratings varied from 5 to 9, but the general consensus was that this book was poorly written, with formulaic characters, a sub-plot (the lawyer/GAL) geared to the sex scenes in the movie version, and a lousy ending. Nevertheless, it managed to raise important moral and ethical issues in a non-trivial and complex way, stimulating a thoughtful and inquiring discussion and leaving us with more questions than clear answers. (JT)
September: East of Eden (Steinbeck) Rating = 8.1 October: Becoming Madame Mao (Min) Rating = 6.5
Just what would it be like to live under a system where you could pay with your life for “choices” you may have made at the point of a gun in your youth? Is it a difference of kind or merely degree when compared to a political system in which candidates for administrative and judicial offices are grilled on opinions or actions that may be 20 or more years old (and, really, both major parties do this)? Anchee Min tells a story of China, but might she be asking her Western audience to consider the similarities as well as the differences between the two political cultures? As is often the case, the discussion for several of us was better than the book. Ratings ranged from 5 to 8. (JT)
November: The Kite Runner (Housseini) Rating = 9.3
2006 Books January: The Know-It-All (Jacobs) Rating = 5.6
Rather than "one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world," a more apt subtitle might be: uber angst-driven east coast urban intellectual wannabe's humble quest to kick dad's butt. The book is at times charming, at times quite funny, and full of interesting if arcane facts. Jacobs does finish the job his father gave up in the early volumes, and he does some interesting "intelligence-related" research like joining Mensa and attending meetings. He never quite ties the pieces together into a coherent whole, however. Perhaps he never meant to. Perhaps, having blown his chance to win a million bucks on TV, he is simply enjoying his trips to the bank to deposit his royalty checks. JT
February: The Time Traveler's Wife (Niffenegger) Rating = 7.6 March: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Chabon) Rating = 8.7
Books like Kavalier & Clay truly make being in a book group worthwhile. This reviewer would never have selected the book on her own and was actually dreading having to read it. Instead of being drudgery, it was an enjoyable and rewarding read as attested by the ratings (all 8’s or 9’s) given it by the group. Sure it is a book about a bunch of guys writing and illustrating comic books, but Blindness, after all, was just a book about a bunch of people who suddenly go blind. Though choppy in parts, the author weaves a number of themes and subplots (the ties of family, tyranny and oppression, the search for identity, the dark side of capitalism, the guilt of survival, and the lust for revenge among others) into a satisfying whole. JT
April: Plainsong (Haruff) May: The God of Small Things (Roy) Rating = 8.5 July: Sunne in Splendor (Penman) Rating = 7.5 August: Bel Canto (Patchett) Rating = 9.2 September: Manhunt (Swanson) Rating = 5.3 October: The Namesake (Lahiri) Rating = 8.4 November: The Hemingway Bookclub of Kosovo (Huntley) Rating = 8.0
To submit a book review or suggest other content, please email one of our web masters: Pat & Ellen