Ghost Story by Peter Straub

In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

GHOST STORY

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.
Peter Straub's classic bestseller is a work of "superb horror" (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time -- and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.

Julie- 4

Stacy-

Kasie-

Cris-

Victoria-

The Darwin Conspiracy - John Darnton

Darwin's theories have been under attack since he first published The Origin of Species in 1859, but this grandly ambitious novel goes a few steps further to intimate that he was a fraud—and a murderer. Told by turns from three perspectives, the story opens in the present on a volcanic outcrop off the coast of Ecuador where Hugh Kellem, a British field researcher, while tracing Darwin's research path, meets Beth Dulcimer, a beautiful scientist rumored to be distantly related to Darwin. A quick shift shows an ambitious young Darwin about to embark on the Beagle. A little further on, Darwin's youngest daughter, Lizzie, enters via her journal entries, written in the 1870s, decades after Darwin's famous five-year voyage. As the three perspectives unfold, Hugh and Beth find themselves trying to solve the same mystery that intrigued Lizzie 130 years earlier: what happened on the "nuit de feu," the night that transformed the confident, robust Darwin into a haunted near-invalid for his remaining years? Stilted dialogue, perfunctory romance and expendable subplots make for a rough voyage, but Darnton (Neanderthal) puts real passion into his historical imaginings and recreations: the revelation of the "true" origin of the theory of evolution is particularly inspired and more than enough to sustain another Darntonian bestseller.

Victoria-

Julie-

Cris- 4

Stacy-

Kasie-

Gina-

Ethan Frome is the story of a man who, following the death of his father, gives up his education and other opportunities to return to the family farm in Starkfield, Massachusetts, to support his ailing mother. When his mother dies, Ethan, overcome by loneliness, impulsively marries Zeena Pierce, an older cousin who helped nurse his dying mother. Within a year of their marriage, Zeena becomes ill and Ethan must again assume the role of caregiver and give up his dreams of moving to a large town and becoming an engineer. Ethan's outlook changes, however, when Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to live with them as Zeena's aid. She shares Ethan's sense of wonder and sensitivity to the appeal of natural beauty. Mattie is every thing that Zeena is not. She restores Ethan's ability to imagine happiness.....

Victoria- 3.5
Julie- 2.5
Cris-
Stacy-
Kasie-
Gina-

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the autobiographical story of the pain that accompanies a young girl's loss of innocence. Feeling rejected by the totally segregated society of Arkansas in the 1930s and by her mother who deserts her at age three, Maya must also struggle with a troublesome body image and feelings of sexual inadequacy. She even blames herself for the death of the man who rapes her. Until she gives birth to a son, Guy, Maya feels that she has little or no control of her own destiny. Once she learns to accept Guy, and the events leading to her pregnancy, she begins to feel less like the 'caged bird' of the book's title, less imprisoned by her race and gender. She finds freedom in self-expression and begins to take control of her life.
Hoping to portray emotional reality, Angelou melds fact and fiction in her book. Angelou's account of a white dentist who refuses to treat her because she is black actually took place, but Angelou names him 'Dr. Lincoln' for symbolic emphasis. Dr. Lincoln represents the white establishment that unfairly discriminates on the basis of color, in effect mocking the emancipation statement issued by President Lincoln in 1863 proclaiming blacks free from bondage. This kind of literary technique, combined with Angelou's lyrical prose, results in a powerful and poignant story of growing up black in America.

Book Club Reviews
Victoria -
Julie -
Stacy -
Cristen -
Kasie -
Jennifer -
Melanie -
Gina -
Regina -

Discussion Questions:
1. What does Maya think about her grandmother's religious beliefs? Why is the church so important to Momma?
2. Why is the next door neighbor, Mr. McElroy, able to be independent?
3. What secrets does Maya share with her brother? How does her relationship with her brother develop as they both grow older?
4. How does Maya respond to the violence in her life and society?
5. After her rape, why does Maya refuse to talk to anyone but Bailey? Why will she talk to him?
6. Why does Maya fight the San Francisco street car authorities for a job?
7. What is Maya's reaction when she learns that she is pregnant?
8. Why does Maya dislike herself? How does she learn to recognize her positive qualities?
9. How are Momma and Vivian different? What does Maya learn from each of them?

The Bell Jar - Slyvia Plath

The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef, with the protagonist's descent into mental illness paralleling Plath's own experiences with what may have been either bipolar disorder or clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first publication.

Plot summary
Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, gains a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City under editor Jay Cee. At the time of the Rosenbergs' execution, Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city and glamorous culture and lifestyle girls her age are expected to idolize and emulate, but her experiences also frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the hedonism of her friend Doreen, but also identifies with the piety of Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna Cowgirl" by Doreen, because she's from Kansas), a 'goody-goody' sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a benefactress in Philomena Guinea, a formerly successful fiction writer, who will, later, during Esther's hospitalization, pay for some of her treatments.

Esther describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship, and reminisces about her friend Buddy, whom she has dated more or less seriously and who considers himself her de facto fiancé. She returns to her Massachusetts home in low spirits. During her stay in New York City, she had hoped to return to another scholarly opportunity to attend a writing course taught by a world-famous author, but after being rejected, she decides to spend the summer potentially writing a novel, although she feels she hasn't got enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered around doing well academically; she has no idea what to make of her life once she leaves school, and the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific child-bearer and vacuous Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) do not appeal to her.

Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages her, or perhaps forces her to see a psychiatrist, who then hastily diagnoses her with a mental illness and administers electroconvulsive therapy. Also, this first therapist is noted by his sex, and also his good looks, which Esther resents. By this time, Esther is suffering from intense insomnia and is traumatised by the therapy, which was improperly administered. When she tells her mother she refuses to go back, her mother smugly announces, "I knew you'd decide to be all right."

Esther's mental state worsens. She describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She makes several half-hearted attempts at suicide, including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves a note that says she is taking a long walk, then crawls into the cellar and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills that have been prescribed for her insomnia. She is discovered under her house after a rather dramatic episode in the newspapers has presumed her kidnapping and death, all taking place over an indeterminate amount of time. She survives, is sent to a different mental hospital, and meets Dr. Nolan, a female therapist, who prescribes electroconvulsive therapy and ensures that it will be properly administered. Esther describes the ECT as beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant effect, lifting the metaphorical bell jar in which she has felt trapped and stifled. Her stay at the private institution is funded by her benefactress, Philomena Guinea.

Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events — such as losing her virginity and her final understanding of death through the suicide of her friend Joan — help her regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which would decide whether she was free from the hospital or not. The reader does not find out the outcome of the interview, and the novel ends with the words: "I stepped into the room."

Book Club Reviews

Victoria -3

Julie - 3.5

Stacy - 4

Cristen - 3

Kasie -

Jennifer -

Melanie -

Gina -

Regina -

Maya -

Discussion Questions

1. What factors, components, and stages of Esther Greenwood's descent into depression and madness are specified? How inevitable is that descent?

2. In a letter while at college, Plath wrote that "I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." Is this the primary meaning of the novel's titular bell jar? What other meanings does "the bell jar" have?

3. What terms does Esther use to describe herself? How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen and others in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?

4. What instances and images of distortion occur in the novel? What are their contexts and significance? Does Esther achieve a clear, undistorted view of herself?

5. Are Esther's attitudes toward men, sex, and marriage peculiar to herself? What role do her attitudes play in her breakdown? What are we told about her society's expectations regarding men and women, sexuality, and relationships? Have those expectations changed since that time?

6. Esther more than once admits to feelings of inadequacy. Is Esther's sense of her own inadequacies consistent with reality? Against what standards does she judge herself?

7. With what specific setting, event, and person is Esther's first thought of suicide associated? Why? In what circumstances do subsequent thoughts and plans concerning suicide occur?

8. In addition to Deer Island Prison, what other images and conditions of physical and emotional imprisonment, enclosure, confinement, and punishment are presented?

9. What are the primary relationships in Esther's life? Is she consistent in her behavior and attitudes within these relationships?

10. Esther bluntly tells Doctor Nolan that she hates her mother. What is Mrs. Greenwood's role in Esther's life and in the novel?

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

This chilling nonfiction novel about a brutal 1959 killing in Holcomb, Kansas makes powerful reading. Author Truman Capote (1924-1984) writes superbly as he recreates the events of this horrid crime, and lets us peek into the minds of the perpetrators. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were losers who took it on faith from a fellow inmate that a certain farm family in Western Kansas had a cash-filled safe in their house. There was no such safe, and all these punks got for their terrible deed was $40. The author examines the family background of the two killers, their friendship, and their crime. We also learn about their capture, trial, and life on Kansas' death row. Ever mindful of the victims, Capote also lets us know the four members of the Clutter family who tragically lost their lives. Capote apparently hoped to make a powerful statement against the death penalty, but his subjects are hardly the type to elicit sympathy. Still, this is a superbly moving (and at times disturbing) nonfiction novel.

Victoria - 4
Maya -
Jennifer -
Regina -
Stacy - 4
Gina - 4.5
Jules - 3.5
Cris - 4
Melanie - Opted not to read :(
Kasie -

Questions -

1. How does Capote build suspense despite the fact that readers know the ultimate outcome from the beginning of In Cold Blood?
   
2. In what ways is In Cold Blood like a fiction novel? How does Capote report the facts and allow different voices to speak without using a journalistic style?
   
3. In Cold Blood starts with details about the Clutter family's last day alive. Did any of the details particularly stick out to you? Did Capote make you feel attached to the family by sharing these details?
4. Were there any other characters you empathized with because of small details Capote wrote about them? Bobby Rupp? Alvin Dewey?
   
5. Why do you think Capote split the narrative into three sections? Why do you think he did not describe how the murders happened until Dick and Perry were caught and gave their confessions?
   
6. Did you feel sympathy for Dick or Perry at any point?
   
7. How did Capote humanize the killers? Were you surprised by how likable they could seem despite the brutality of their crime and unremoresefulness to the end?
   
8. Capote seems to paint Perry in a more sympathetic light than Dick. He seems sensitive and even kind at points; however, by the end you find out that Perry committed all four murders. Did that surprise you? Did you sympathize with Dick more than Perry at any point? Or did you not buy any of the kind characterizations?
   
9. Do you think Dick and Perry were sane? Did the psychiatric analysis of them and descriptions of other cold blooded killers surprise you? Scare you? Make you think differently about violent crime or the death penalty?
   
10. Rate In Cold Blood by Truman Capote on a scale of one to five.

News Flash

We are now going to meet on the second Friday of each month. So be there or be square..ya i said it...

Our next book will be In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
Cris is going to host it. :)

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.


Victoria - 3
Julie - 3
Stacy - 4.25
Cristen - 4
Kasie - 2
Jennifer - 3
Melanie - did not read
Gina - did not read
Regina - did not read

Questions:

1. Why do you think McCarthy wrote The Road?
   
   
2. Why did the father choose to survive and not the mother? What did he see that she could not?
   
   
3. What do you think the coast represents (physically and literally)? Why?
   
   
4. One man they meet on the road says "There is no God and we are his prophets." What does he mean by this?
   
   
5. What are the key moments that help push the father to keep striving on?
   
   
6. When does the boy become a man? What does he see that his father can’t?
   
   
7. What do you think McCarthy is saying about humanity in The Road?
   
   
8. What would you do in a world like this? Would it change your beliefs? What would you hope in?
   
   
9. What do you think of the end of The Road? After such a fate, could things be "put back again?" Could they be "made right?"
   
   
10. What do you think McCarthy is thinking of when he speaks of "the deep glens where all things are older than man and hum of mystery?" What does it make you think of?

Updates

So we are ready to choose our next round of books to read.
We have decided to do themes, the first of which is American Literature.
For our next meeting bring a list of a few books you would like to read that fit under this theme as well as some theme ideas for future rounds.
Jen has suggested a Books and Film type theme. So we can read the book and then watch the film during our meeting.
Julie is thinking about a Mythology theme.

Our next meeting is on the 6th so hurry and get to reading! :)

ALSO, lets welcome our newest members!
Melanie
Kasie
Gina
Maya

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho's charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.
The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.
The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

Regina - 4
Victoria - 3
Julie - 3
Stacy - 3.5
Jennifer - 0
Cristen - 2

Questions:

1. At the start of his journey, when Santiago asks a gypsy woman to interpret his dream about a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids, she asks for one tenth of the treasure in return. When Santiago asks the old man to show him the path to the treasure, the old man requests one tenth of his flock as "payment." Both payments represent a different price we have to pay to fulfill a dream; however, only one will yield a true result. Which payment represents false hope? Can you think of examples from your own life when you had to give up something to meet a goal and found the price too high?

2. Paulo Coelho once said that alchemy is all about pursuing our spiritual quest in the physical world as it was given to us. It is the art of transmuting the reality into something sacred, of mixing the sacred and the profane. With this in mind, can you define your Personal Legend? At what time in your life were you first able to act on it? What was your "beginner's luck"? Did anything prevent you from following it to conclusion? Having read The Alchemist, do you know what inner resources you need to continue the journey?

3. One of the first major diversions from Santiago's journey was the theft of his money in Tangiers, which forced him into taking a menial job with the crystal merchant. There, Santiago learned many lessons on everything from the art of business to the art of patience. Of all these, which lessons were the most crucial to the pursuit of his Personal Legend?

4. When he talked about the pilgrimage to Mecca, the crystal merchant argued that having a dream is more important than fulfilling it, which is what Santiago was trying to do. Do you agree with Santiago's rationale or crystal merchant's?

5. The Englishman, whom Santiago meets when he joins the caravan to the Egyptian pyramids, is searching for "a universal language, understood by everybody." What is that language? According to the Englishman, what are the parallels between reading and alchemy? How does the Englishman's search for the alchemist compares to Santiago's search for a treasure? How did the Englishman and Santiago feel about each other?

6. The alchemist tells Santiago "you don't have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation." With this in mind, why do you think the alchemist chose to befriend Santiago, though he knew that the Englishman was the one looking for him? What is the meaning of two dead hawks and the falcon in the oasis? At one point the alchemist explains to Santiago the secret of successfully turning metal into gold. How does this process compare to finding a Personal Legend?

7. Why did Santiago have to go through the dangers of tribal wars on the outskirts of the oasis in order to reach the pyramids? At the very end of the journey, why did the alchemist leave Santiago alone to complete it?

8.Earlier in the story, the alchemist told Santiago "when you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed." At the end of the story, how did this simple lesson save Santiago's life? How did it lead him back to the treasure he was looking for?

The Lodger - Marie Belloc Lowndes

The murders seemed to be the work of a woman-hating fanatic. There were a number of likely suspects, but all have alibis. The police were baffled and the citizens terrified, for somewhere in the gas-lit, fog-bound alleys of London a madman was at large. And then one night there came a knock at the door of a quiet lodging house on Marylebone Road...When The Lodger was first published in 1912, about twenty-five years after the gruesome 'Jack the Ripper' murders in London's Whitechapel section, praise was forthcoming from both sides of the Atlantic.

Regina - 2
Victoria - 4
Julie - 4
Stacy - 4.5
Jennifer - 2
Cristen - 4

Some questions to ponder:
Did Marie Belloc Lowndes emphasize any specific themes throughout The Lodger?

What do you think Marie Belloc Lowndes is trying to explain with this theme?
What was unique about the setting of The Lodger and how did it affect the storyline?
Could you relate to any of the characters? If so, which ones and why?
How do characters change or learn throughout The Lodger? What events caused these changes? Have you or someone you know experienced the same thing?
How does The Lodger reveal Marie Belloc Lowndes's own perspectives about people and the world?

For a lively discussion, describe why you think Marie Belloc Lowndes is liberal or conservative.
Did certain parts of The Lodger affect you emotionally?

Why did it evoke those emotions?
Did Marie Belloc Lowndes's point of view on things lend new perspective to your own view of the world?