The Aria Book Club is held the last Wednesday of every month (January through October). You can purchase the book at any time from our store or on-line with a 20% book club discount. The discussion starts at 6:30 pm.  All are welcomed!

           February 2009 Book Club Pick:  Meets Wed, Feb 25th 6:30pm

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home

by

Kim Sunee

At a South Korean marketplace, three-year-old Kim Sunee's mother deposits her on a bench with a fistful of food and a promise to return. Three days later, a policeman takes the little girl and what is now a fistful of crumbs to a police station, where she learns that her mother isn't coming back. From here, her extraordinary life journey begins. Adopted by a young New Orleans couple, Kim spends her youth as one of only two Asian children in her entire school and church. At the age of 21, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman, and suddenly finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses and stepmother to his eight-year-old daughter. But despite this glamorous lifestyle, Kim feels like an outsider, and it is in food and cooking that she finds solace and a sense of place.

March 2009  Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb

His name was Rob Castor. Quite possibly, you've heard of him. He became a minor cult celebrity in his mid-twenties for writing a book of darkly pitch-perfect stories set in a stupid sleepy upstate New York town. Several years later, he murdered his writer girlfriend, and then committed suicide. . . .

With extraordinarily luxuriant and evocative prose, award-winning author Eli Gottlieb takes us deep into the human psyche, where the most profound of secrets are kept. "Now You See Him" is a wrenching and enthrallingly suspenseful story that mines the explosive terrains of love and paternity, marriage and its delicate intricacies, family secrets and how they fester over time, and ultimately the true nature of loyalty, trust, friendship, envy, deception, and manipulation.

April 2009  Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If you thought the true gothic novel died with the nineteenth century, this will change your mind... This is one gorgeous read. (Stephen King) a]rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up "The Shadow of the Wind," (Michael Dirda, "The Washington Post") Wondrous... masterful... "The Shadow of the Wind" is ultimately a love letter to literaturea]

May 2009  Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Lily is haunted by memories-of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.
In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu ("women's writing"). Some girls were paired with laotongs, "old sames," in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.  With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become "old sames" at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.

June 2009 Blindness by Jose Saramago

A very lively book discussion ensued with this book.

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

July 2009 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy. 100,000 first printing. (Sept.)

August 2009  That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story by Marlena DeBlasi

Strangers seldom wander into the mountainous wild at Sicily’s heart. The locals, having resisted repeated waves of invaders, maintain their own traditions in defiance of the outside world. So when de Blasi and her Venetian husband trek into Sicily’s core in search of background for a travel guide, they discover a world much removed from modern life. Persevering in what seems a fruitless search, they finally stumble upon the Villa Donnafugata, an old wreck of a castle presided over by an imperious woman called Tosca. The villa has become a refuge for widows from the region. It also houses a birthing clinic, vital to the mountains’ isolated women. The residents eat well and heartily, the leftovers distributed to the local town’s poor. De Blasi uncovers Tosca’s past, an extraordinary tale of passion and love stretching over decades of the twentieth century. Admirers of this author will relish her latest volume. --Mark Knoblauch

September 2009 White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

In this darkly comic début novel set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China, in anticipation of the leader’s upcoming visit to Balram’s homeland, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"—those areas of rural India where education and electricity are equally scarce, and where villagers banter about local elections "like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra"—to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian élite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few. Adiga’s message isn’t subtle or novel, but Balram’s appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling.

October 2009  Theses is my Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881 -1901 by Nancy Turner

Based on the real-life exploits of the author's great-grandmother, this fictionalized diary vividly details one woman's struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last century. When she begins recording her life, Sarah Prine is an intelligent, headstrong 18-year-old capable of holding her own on her family's settlement near Tucson. Her skill with a rifle fends off a constant barrage of Indian attacks and outlaw assaults. It also attracts a handsome Army captain named Jack Elliot. By the time she's 21, Sarah has recorded her loveless marriage to a family friend, the establishment of a profitable ranch, the birth of her first child?and the death of her husband. The love between Jack and Sarah, which dominates the rest of the tale, has begun to blossom. Fragmented and disjointed in its early chapters, with poor spelling and grammar, Sarah's journal gradually gains in clarity and eloquence as she matures. While this device may frustrate some readers at first, Taylor's deft progression produces the intended reward: she not only tells of her heroine's growth, but she shows it through Sarah's writing and insights. The result is a compelling portrait of an enduring love, the rough old West and a memorable pioneer. First serial to Good Housekeeping; author tour; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections. (Feb.) FYI: Selected as the March 1998 Good Housekeeping "Novel of the Month."

November/December 2009:  The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Meet Enzo, the unforgettable canine narrator of this bittersweet and transformative story of family, love, loyalty, and hope. Enzo is a philosopher with a nearly human soul, and he's gained a wealth of knowledge from hours spent in front of the TV.

January 2010:  Elegance of a Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Ren'e, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated super to avoid suspicion from the buildings pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Ren'es observations and Palomas journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

February 2010:  Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

We read this book in coordination with The Big Read and Howell Carnegie Library.

First published in 1930, The Maltese Falcon stands today as one of the classics of both suspense literature and American writing.

March 2010:  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge" offers profound insights into the human condition--its conflicts, tragedies, and joys. Strout constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion" ("USA Today").

April 2010

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon ( Vintage Departures )

In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called "The Lost City of Z." In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett's quest for "Z" and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.

May 2010

   Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Resist opening it until you are ready to start reading, for once you begin you'll find yourself unable to stop. ... Prepare yourself for Cleave's poignancy, his control, and the pathos he so effortlessly evinces. Expect astonishment, for this is a work inspiring in depth and style; a work that alters perceptions." -- Bookslut

June 2010

   Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.

Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia's eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.

More than a parable of one man's arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, "Fordlandia" depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford's great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained. "Fordlandia" is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

July 2010

  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jaime Ford

Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.

August 2010

  Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who had journeyed to the U.S. to find work. "Into the Beautiful North" is the story of a young woman's quest to find herself on both sides of the fence.

September 2010

   The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson

"A sensitive boy suddenly becomes groom to Timothy and Jenny, the first pair of young elephants brought into England in the 1700s. This informative, engaging and moving book has clear insight into the impact of poverty, alienation and isolation that is as relevant today as it was then."--"San Francisco Chronicle Book Review."

October 2010

  The Exile of Sara Stevenson by Darci Hannah (Howell, MI Author)

This haunting, elegiac tale pays tribute to the power and endurance of love. After Sara Stevenson, daughter of renowned lighthouse designer Robert Stevenson, falls in love with sailor Thomas Chrichton, a man her family considers far beneath her station, the young lovers set plans in motion for a secret elopement. When Thomas fails to show up at the designated rendezvous point, a devastated Sara is left pregnant, alone, and yet curiously hopeful. Cast out by her righteous family, she is sent to live in a remote lighthouse on the windswept shores of Cape Wrath at the northernmost tip of Scotland. Making peace with her strange new life, she attracts the attention of the enigmatic lightkeeper and slowly begins to move forward. Both the narrative and the early-nineteenth-century setting are suffused with gloriously gothic elements as a ghostly mystery takes shape around the true circumstances of Thomas puzzling disappearance and dramatic reentry into Saras life. True romantics will suspend their disbelief and revel in the mystical passion of this timeless love story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

November/December 2010

 The Jewel of St. Petersburg by Kate Furnivall

Beginning in the lead-up to the Bolshevik uprising, Furnivall's sure-to-please prequel to her successful The Russian Concubine centers on Valentina Ivanova, the daughter of a minister in Tsar Nicholas's crumbling regime. When revolutionaries bomb her father's home, leaving her sister crippled and her world uncertain, Valentina must search for her path in life: should she submit to the unloving arranged marriage her controlling father wants, or should she pursue her scandalous (for noble ladies) dream of becoming a nurse? To complicate matters, Valentina falls for Jens Friis, a Danish engineer who is politically moderate, intensely passionate, and completely off limits. Furnivall skillfully intertwines historical fact with a heartfelt love story and ends where Russian Concubine picks up. This will be a delight for Furnivall's fans, and equally a joy for those new to her work. (Aug.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

January 2011

  Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Steel Magnolias" meets "The Help" in this "New York Times" bestseller sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom. Laugh-out-loud funny, Hoffman's charming work offers the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

February 2011

  Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad

March 2011

  The Blessing of the Animals by Katrina Kittle

Beginning with the end of Cami Anderson's marriage, Kittle (The Kindness of Strangers) wades through heartache and tragedy yet manages to find elegance and charm in her latest novel. Cami's distress is palpable as she deals with her husband's seemingly inexplicable decision to leave her and their teenage daughter, Gabriella. Juggling her veterinary practice, her now cynical daughter, and her own feelings takes up all of Cami's time but she soon realizes that she has no monopoly on struggle: her brother and his male partner lose their adopted daughter to the child's biological mother. Cami taps into her own experience with loss to help the couple, which leads her to take a more honest look at her marriage and the new life ahead of her. While Cami stumbles through post-divorce dating and raising Gabriella, her family of animals--horses, cats, dogs, and a goat--provide respite. Cami's reflections, in tandem with those of delightful friends, present a long-view of the nature of marriage and relationships. (Aug.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

April 2011

  The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

n 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it.
Meanwhile, Frankie Bard broadcasts from overseas with Edward R. Murrow. Her dispatches beg listeners to pay heed as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But both Iris and Frankie know better...
"The Postmistress" is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully na?ve-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so. Through their eyes, and the eyes of everyday people caught in history's tide, it examines how stories are told, and how the fact of war is borne even through everyday life.

May 2011

  A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova

 Elena Gorokhova's "A Mountain of Crumbs "is the moving story of a Soviet girl who discovers the truths adults are hiding from her and the lies her homeland lives by. Elena's country is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars, but a nation struggling to retain its power and its pride. Born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, Elena finds her passion in the complexity of the English language--but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s such a passion verges on the subversive. Elena is controlled by the state the same way she is controlled by her mother, a mirror image of her motherland: overbearing, protective, difficult to leave. In the battle between a strong-willed daughter and her authoritarian mother, the daughter, in the end, must break free and leave in order to survive.

Through Elena's captivating voice, we learn not only the stories of Russian family life in the second half of the twentieth century, but also the story of one rebellious citizen whose curiosity and determination finally transport her to a new world. It is an elegy to the lost country of childhood, where those who leave can never return.

June 2011

  The Help by Kathryn Stockett

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

July 2011

  A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

A Dog's Purpose" is not only the emotional and hilarious story of a dog's many lives, but also a dog's-eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man's best friend. This moving and beautifully crafted story teaches that love never dies, that true friends are always here, and that every creature on Earth is born with a purpose.

August 2011

  My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

 Mary Sutter is a brilliant young midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine--and eager to run away from recent heartbreak--Mary travels to Washington, D.C., to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded.

September 2011

  The Tower, The Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

Set in the popular tourist attraction in present-day London, "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise "is an exquisite story of love, loss, and a one-hundred-eighty-one-year-old pet.
Balthazar Jones has lived and worked in the Tower of London for the past eight years. Being a Beefeater is no easy job, and when Balthazar is tasked with setting up an elaborate menagerie of the many exotic animals gifted to the Queen, life at the Tower gets all the more interesting. Penguins escape, giraffes go missing, and the Komodo dragon sends innocent tourists running for their lives. Still, that chaos is nothing compared to what happens when his wife, Hebe, makes a surprise announcement. What's a Beefeater to do?

October 2011

  Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

n Paris for a weekend visit, Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again. "Lunch in Paris" is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau and the other with French cuisine.

November/December 2011

  The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey

A woman, confined to her bed, watches a snail on her night stand, living a life that mirrors the limitations of her own. What follows is an oddly compelling story of her discovery of companionship and beauty in the most unexpected of creatures.