Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Club Rating: 4.5

These short stories capture the difficulty in transitioning from Indian to American culture as well as so much more.  Most of us said that we typically don't enjoy short stories but enjoyed this book.  The author does a wonderful job of capturing the cultures.  This was a very enjoyable read with wonderful writing.

Keeper of the Light by Diane Chamberlain

Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is—Annie O'Neill.

The woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with. When Annie dies on the operating table, she leaves behind three other victims. Alec O'Neill, who thought he had the perfect marriage. Paul, whose fixation on Annie is unshakable. And Olivia, who is desperate to understand the woman who destroyed her marriage. Now they are left with unanswered questions about who Annie really was. And about the secrets she kept hidden so well.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

Club Rating: 1.9  
Eve Ensler's tour into the last frontier, the forbidden zone at the heart of every woman. Adapted from the award-winning one-woman show, this groundbreaking book gives voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, and thoroughly human stories, transforming the question mark hovering over the female anatomy into a permanent victory sign. With laughter and compassion, Ensler transports her audiences to a world we've never dared to know, guaranteeing that no one who reads The Vagina Monologues will ever look at a woman's body the same way again.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

This is about the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce a newspaper—and one woman who reads it religiously, if belatedly. Although the chapters clearly intersect, it reads like a short story.  In the opening chapter, aging, dissolute Paris correspondent Lloyd Burko pressures his estranged son to leak information from the French Foreign Ministry, and in the process unearths startling family fare that won't sell a single edition. Obit writer Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and sheer inky wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels.

Club Rating: 3.5

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

Club Rating: 3.7

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Alice Howland - Harvard professor, gifted researcher and lecturer, wife, and mother of three grown children - sets out for a run and soon realizes she has no idea how to find her way home. She has taken the route for years, but nothing looks familiar. She is utterly lost. Medical consults reveal early-onset Alzheimer's. Alice's slowly but inevitably loses memory and connection with reality, told from her perspective.

People could relate but also understood that at a certain point, this disease goes so far beyond what we can relate to.   How horrific to understand you have this disease and there is nothing you can do.  This disease is harder for those around you. 

Club Rating: 3.4

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

When college student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating.  The unworldly Ana realizes she wants this man, and Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian’s secrets and explores her own desires.

Some hated it, some enjoyed it.  All agreed that it is a fluffy beach read.  The difference between a quality romance novel  and this book is, this book is "story, sex, story, sex, story, sex", there was no natural progression towards the sex like romance novels.


Club Rating: 3.0

The Solder's Wife by Margaret Leroy

A wife who's husband has gone off to war and is left in their home on Guernsey Island to take care of their two daughters and his mother-in-law while the Germans occupy the Island. So many beautiful descriptions that make you feel the conflicting emotions and what it would have been like to have lived in that time.

Everyone liked it. There were a couple incongruences in the story line that some found frustrating. The mother was weak but, who is to say what we would do in those. An enjoyable read that did a beautiful job of capturing the flowers, chocolate and other sensations. Made for a good discussion 

Club rating:4.3

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

This is a slow, magical fairy tale type of book. Everything from the wonderful  character development to the author's ability to capture the haunting dramatic breathtaking wilderness and lifestyle of Alaska. Everyone in the club really enjoyed this book

Club Rating: 4.6

Unsaid by Neil Abrahamson

Helena, a vet, has died and she finds that it is not so easy to move on. She is terrified that her 37 years of life were meaningless, error-ridden, and forgettable. So Helena haunts-- and is haunted by-- the life she left behind. Meanwhile, her attorney husband David, struggles with grief and the demands of caring for her houseful of damaged and beloved animals. But it is her absence from her last project, Cindy-- a chimpanzee who may unlock the mystery of communication and consciousness-- that will have the greatest impact on all of them.

Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk

It's the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. (Hilarity and disaster -- of a sort peculiar to the tropics -- ensue.)

Wouk draws on his own experience (Wouk and his family lived for seven years on an island in the sun) to tell this story.

Club Rating: 4.0

When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe

A historical fiction that is a mix of the horrid atrocities of the Japanese on the Filipino people in WWII, and the wonderful magical tales of the Philippines -

Club Rating: 3.8