Book Chat at Caribou Book Discussion
The goal of this group is to read a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that will stimulate the mind and some lively conversation. This book discussion meets Monday evenings at 7 p.m., approximately every six weeks, at Caribou Coffee. Caribou Coffee is located at 90 East Northwest Highway in downtown Mount Prospect. Limited copies of the book are available at the Fiction/AV/Teen desk six weeks prior to the discussion.
Book Chat @ Caribou Book Discussion Titles for 2008:
January 14, 2008: Measure of a Man by Sydney Poitier
An engaging memoir written by American screen legend Sidney Poitier. Poitier shares stories from his upbringing on a small island in the Bahamas and explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity.
February 25, 2008: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
This novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression.
April 7, 2008: Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund
This fictionalized portrayal of Marie Antoinette unfolds like classical tragedy-the outcome known, the account riveting-as famous incidents are reinterpreted. With vivid detail and narrative technique, Naslund exemplifies the best of historical fiction, finding the woman beneath the pose, a queen facing history as it rises up against her.
May 19, 2008: Digging to America by Anne Tyler
When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense and sometimes awkward friendship.
June 30, 2008: The Coffee Trader by David Liss
Set in 17th-century Amsterdam's, this is the story of Miguel Lienzo. He escaped the Inquisition in Portugal and lived by his wits trading commodities. Miquel is delighted when a Dutch widow enlists him as partner in a secret scheme to make a killing on "coffee fruit," but she may not be as altruistic as she seems.
August 11, 2008: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. A powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.
September 22, 2008: Breakfast with Tiffany by Edwin John Wintle
Wintle, a 40-year-old gay, obsessive-compulsive New Yorker, rescues his 13-year-old niece, Tiffany, from her Connecticut home, where she fought with her recovering alcoholic mother. The lighthearted tone makes a serious subject amusing, and Wintle is charmingly self-deprecating.
November 3, 2008: The Space Between Us by Thrity N. Umrigar
Umrigar's engaging novel illustrates the intimacy, and the irreconcilable class divide, between two women in contemporary Bombay.
December 8, 2008: The Flander's Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte
When an art restorer sets out to solve the riddle of a 15th-century masterpiece in this uneven but intriguing, multi-layered thriller, she finds that one murder begets another, down through five centuries. The author, a TV journalist in Spain, makes interesting use of the chessboard as metaphor for various human interactions, and his characters' analysis of the painting's symbols and the details of its frozen chess game is clever and quite suspenseful.
