July 2015 book: One Plus One

Becky has picked "One Plus One" by Jojo Moyes as a summer beach book for us to read. Her mom recommended it!

ABOUT THE BOOK
One single mom. One chaotic family. One quirky stranger. One irresistible love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

American audiences have fallen in love with Jojo Moyes. Ever since she debuted Stateside she has captivated readers and reviewers alike, and hit the New York Times bestseller list with the word-of-mouth sensation Me Before You. Now, with One Plus One, she’s written another contemporary opposites-attract love story.

Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight in shining armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages . . . maybe ever.

One Plus One is Jojo Moyes at her astounding best. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, and when you flip the last page, you’ll want to start all over again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jojo Moyes was born in 1969 and grew up in London. After a varied career including stints as a minicab controller, typer of braille statements for blind people for NatWest, and brochure writer for Club 18-30, she did a degree at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, London University. In 1992, she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University.

Jojo worked as a journalist for ten years, including a year at South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and nine at The Independent where she worked variously as News Reporter, Assistant News Editor and Arts and Media Correspondent.

Jojo has been a full time novelist since 2002, when her first book, Sheltering Rain was published. Since then she has written a further eleven novels, all of which have been widely critically acclaimed.
Jojo has won the Romantic Novelist’s Award twice, and Me Before You has been nominated for Book of the Year at the UK Galaxy Book Awards. Me Before You has since gone on to sell over 3 million copies worldwide.

For more information about all of Jojo’s novels, please visit the books page here.
Jojo lives (and writes!) on a farm in Essex, England with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children.

June 2015 book: Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying) by Bill Gifford

Amy has selected our June 2015 book. We'll be reading: Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying) by Bill Gifford. She hopes it will make for an interesting discussion.

ABOUT THE BOOK

SPRING CHICKEN is a full-throttle, high-energy ride through the latest research, popular mythology, and ancient wisdom on mankind's oldest obsession: How can we live longer? And better? In his funny, self-deprecating voice, veteran reporter Bill Gifford takes readers on a fascinating journey through the science of aging, from the obvious signs like wrinkles and baldness right down into the innermost workings of cells. We visit cutting-edge labs where scientists are working to "hack" the aging process, like purging "senescent" cells from mice to reverse the effects of aging. He'll reveal why some people live past 100 without even trying, what has happened with resveratrol, the "red wine pill" that made headlines a few years ago, how your fat tissue is trying to kill you, and how it's possible to unlock longevity-promoting pathways that are programmed into our very genes. Gifford separates the wheat from the chaff as he exposes hoaxes and scams foisted upon an aging society, and arms readers with the best possible advice on what to do, what not to do, and what life-changing treatments may be right around the corner.

An intoxicating mixture of deep reporting, fascinating science, and prescriptive takeaway, SPRING CHICKEN will reveal the extraordinary breakthroughs that may yet bring us eternal youth, while exposing dangerous deceptions that prey on the innocent and ignorant.

About the Author

Bill Gifford

 is a contributing editor for Outside Magazine and has written extensively on science, sports, health and fitness for Wired, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Slate, The New Republic, and Bicycling, among many other publications.

He has been features editor of Men’s Journal and executive editor of Philadelphia Magazine, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Sportswriting.

He is the author of “Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (Or Die Trying),” a personal investigation of the science of aging.

He is also the author of “Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer,” a biography of John Ledyard, the 18th-century explorer, traveler, and bon vivant.

An avid cyclist, skier, runner and eater, he lives in New York City and central Pennsylvania.

His grandmother, Doris, is nearly 100 years old, and he intends to get there, too. Or die trying.

Video interview with Ann Cleaves

Vitual visit to Shetland through the eyes of Ann Cleaves

From http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329520153/for-one-crime-writer-peaceful-shetland-is-a-perfect-place-for-murder

Crime writer Ann Cleeves puts it best in her novel Dead Water: "Shetland didn't do pretty. It did wild and bleak and dramatic."

The Shetland Islands are a damp and rocky place, with endless miles of green and gray. Humanity seems to cling to the land here like a few tenacious barnacles. "I love the idea of long, low horizons with secrets hidden underneath," Cleeves says.

These Scottish islands lie hundreds of miles from any mainland, as far north as the tip of Greenland. And thanks to Cleeves, they've been the setting for five popular crime novels.

 

Old stone houses abut the harbor in Lerwick, Shetland's largest town. Outsiders are known here as "soothmoothers," because they arrive on the ferry through the south mouth of the Bressay Sound.

Ari Shapiro/NPR 

 

"There are no trees in Shetland, and you can't do overgrown language here," she says. "The language has to be simple, because that's how the landscape is."

This is a land of extremes. In the winter, you barely see the sun, and during midsummer, the daylight never leaves. If that sounds bucolic, it also has a fearsome side. In the middle of the night, the sun comes streaming through the window, upending any sense of time and place. "[People] came looking for paradise or peace and found the white nights made them even more disturbed," Cleeves writes in White Nights, the series' second book.
....

Discovering Shetland's Crime Fiction Potential
While these islands have made Ann Cleeves's career, it took her a long time to write about them. She first came to Shetland in the early 1970s as an aimless 20-something college dropout who was hired to be an assistant cook in a bird observatory. "I didn't know anything about birds, and I couldn't cook," she says.

While working at the observatory, Cleeves met the man she would marry. Two years later, they moved away. Cleeves became a crime writer, without much success, writing a book a year for 20 years. Though she came back to Shetland all the time, she never set a novel here. Then one winter, she was in Shetland bird watching with her husband. Snow had fallen, frozen over with ice, and Cleeves saw ravens — black against the bright white snow.

"And then I thought, because I'm a crime writer: If there was blood as well, it would be really quite mythic," she says. "Like fairy stories with those colors — like 'Sleeping Beauty' or 'Snow White.' And just with that image I started writing Raven Black."

Her agent said it would have to be a standalone. It just wasn't believable to have lots of murders set in a small cluster of islands like Shetland. Then Raven Black became a huge hit. It won the biggest crime fiction award in the U.K. Now, the sixth Shetland novel is coming out in the spring.

May 2015 book: Raven Black

Cindy picked "Raven Black" by Ann Cleeves as our read for May 2015.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Winner of Britain's coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to U.S. mystery readers.

Raven Black begins on New Year's Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in the remote Scottish Shetland Islands, Cleeves's taut, atmospheric thriller, the first in a new series, will keep readers guessing until the last page. Det. Insp. Jimmy Perez investigates the murder of teenage Catherine Ross, found strangled on a snowy hillside shortly after New Year's. While the police and citizens alike are quick to lay the blame on local eccentric Magnus Tait, who was not only the last person to see Catherine alive but also the prime suspect in the disappearance eight years earlier of another girl, Perez has his doubts. He's soon drawn into an intricate web of lies as he unearths the long-buried secrets of everyone from a roguish playboy to Catherine's only school friend. Cleeves, winner of the CWA's Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (formerly the Gold Dagger), masterfully paints Perez as an empathetic hero and sprinkles the story with a lively cast of supporting characters who help bring the Shetlands alive. When the shocking identity of the murderer is revealed, readers will be as chilled as the harsh winds that batter the isolated islands.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

On the remote island of Shetland, teacher Fran Hunter is walking home when she spots a splash of red in the deep, white snowdrifts, with black ravens flying above. What a perfect picture it makes, she thinks. But on closer inspection, she finds that the "perfect picture" is the dead body of local teenager Catherine Ross, whose red scarf has been used to strangle her. Suspicion immediately falls on recluse Magnus Tait, who was accused--but never convicted--of kidnapping another girl eight years earlier. Policeman Jimmy Perez, assigned to the case, isn't convinced of Magnus' guilt. As he investigates, he uncovers a web of sinister secrets, strange superstitions, petty rivalries, thwarted love, and illicit affairs--the dark underbelly of Shetland's tight-knit community. Cleeves offers up a dark, brutal, suspenseful page-turner that will keep even seasoned mystery buffs guessing right up to the end. Emily Melton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ann Cleeves (born 1954) is a British crime-writer. In 2006 she won the inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger, the richest crime-writing prize in the world, for her novel Raven Black. Cleeves studied English at Sussex University but dropped out. She then took up various jobs including cook, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker and child care officer. She lives in Whitley Bay.
The Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatized as the TV detective series Vera, and the Jimmy Perez novels as the series Shetland.

In 2014 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland.
In 2015, Ann is the Programming Chair for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival & the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Shetland Island series

The novel Red Bones was dramatised by David Kane for BBC television starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, and broadcast in 2013 as Shetland. Episodes broadcast in 2014 were based on Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightning.

• Raven Black (2006); Gold Dagger Award
• White Nights (2008)
• Red Bones (2009)
• Blue Lightning (2010)
• Dead Water (2013)
• Thin Air (2014)

 

April 2015 book: Unbroken

I can't wait to read "Unbroken" with you all in April 2015. We read "Seabiscuit" by Laura Hillenbrand previously, and it may have been the first book that we all liked! So, hopefully this will be another winner.

ABOUT THE BOOK

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand.

Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award
“Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York

“Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People

ABOUT LAURA HILLENBRAND

Laura Hillenbrand is the author of the critically acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which spent 42 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, in hardcover and paperback.  Seabiscuit was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, won the Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year Award and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, landed on more than fifteen best-of-the-year lists, and inspired the film Seabiscuit, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. According to Newsweek, Seabiscuit is the best-selling sports book in history.

Hillenbrand’s New Yorker article, “A Sudden Illness,” won the 2004 National Magazine Award, and Laura is a two-time winner of the Eclipse Award, the highest journalistic honor in thoroughbred racing.  She and actor Gary Sinise were the co-founders of Operation International Children (www.operationinternationalchildren.org), a charity that provided school supplies to needy children through American troops.  Laura lives in Washington, D.C.

March 2015: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Julie has selected "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving for us to read in March 2015.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Amazon.com Review

Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras. The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business.
Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials.

A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Joe Barrett captures the humor and sorrow of Irving's classic novel about faith, friendship and fate. We follow the adventures of diminutive Owen Meany and his best friend Johnny Wheelwright as they grapple with life, death and devotion and come of age in the small town of Gravesend, N.H. Barrett deftly portrays a host of strange and wonderful characters as Owen commandeers the local Christmas pageant, battles with an autocratic headmaster and fulfills what he believes to be his destiny. Faced with the unenviable task of capturing the singular voice of the titular character (in the novel, Owen's dialogue is capitalized to represent his strident, squeaking speech), Barrett produces a workmanlike rendition of Owen that, while not perfect, grows on listeners as the story unfolds. True to the spirit of the text, Barrett's masterful rendition is a delight. A Morrow hardcover. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

For more information about the author, please visit www.john-irving.com