July Multicultural Book Group
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayles is the book selection for July. It is a fairly light, entertaining and humorous travel journal about a British couple's first year of experiences adjusting to life in Provence, France. Provence could be Door County. The story sounds familiar, a newly retired couple adjusts to life in a beautiful, idealic location full of interesting "characters."
For those who really enjoy the book, check out the DVD's of a television series based on the book.
A Year in Provence television series
More information:
June Multicultural Book Group
MAISIE DOBBS by Jacqueline Winspear
The summer season at the Door County Library starts Tuesday, June 1 with the summer reading program, Water Your Mind, and the discussion of an English mystery story, Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. The story is set in 1929 and involves the emotional and physical effects of injuries that occured during World War I. Maisie herself is a very strong, intelligent and independent character, and suffers her share of tragedy and effects from the war. This novel has a strong sense of time and place, the London of 1929. What makes it really interesting is how many of the novel's themes are very pertinent to today.
More:
Jacqueline Winspear interview on Barnes and Noble's Meet the Writers
Official Jacqueline Winspear web site
May Multicultural Books - The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, is set in Sligo, Ireland as are all of his novels. He writes about the places he knows and incorporates the stories he heard as a child from his mother. In an interview the author describes how this book is fiction but the concept is based on his great aunt who lived in an asylum much of her life. According to Sebastian Barry, people were not only placed in asylums for medical reasons, but also for moral reasons, such as having a child out of wedlock.
What were these asylums like? A website that documents the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in photographs describes the history of an asylum in Menston, Yorkshire, England. One inmate from this asylum was committed for having "milk fever."
St. Columbus Lunatic Asylum is the asylum in The Secret Scripture and the building itself, like the asylum in Yorkshire, is a beautiful and impressive structure reminicent of a palace. In modern days it has been turned into a luxury hotel, The Clarion Hotel Sligo.
Sebastian Barry reads from the Secret Scripture : Roseanne's testimony of herself
Finally, a fun review of Sebastian Barry from Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa :
April Multicultural Book Discussion
Guernica by Dave Boling
This month the book group is discussing a novel set in the Basque Country on the Atlantic coast northeast of Spain and west of France. It is an epic novel reminiscent of Hemingway, which spans the Spanish Civil War through the bombing of Guernica by the Germans in 1937 on the eve of WWII. Guernica was made famous by Picasso with his powerful painting which memorialized the tragedy of the attack.
A recent PBS special Simon Schama's Power of Art devoted a chapter to this work. A DVD of this program is available through InfoSoup.org.
Historical background on the bombing of Guernica, including videos of survivors is available online:
More information, including an eyewitness account:
March Multicultural Book Discussion
The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim tells the story of Najin Han, the daughter of a skilled artist, a calligrapher, in the early part of the 20th century Korea. In order to escape an arranged marriage near the beginning of the novel, Najin is sent to court to serve as a companion to the Princess. Her time in the royal household ends with the death of Emperor Sunjong, the last emporer of the Joseon dynasty in 1926. She goes on to college, marriage, life as a servant in the house of her in-laws, and later prison and hardship in Korea under Japanese contol at the dawn of World War II.
Background information:
February Multicultural Book Discussion
The Floor of the Sky by Pamela Carter Joern is the story of a modern day family living in the rural farmlands of the Nebraska sandhills. As with most contemporary families, there are plenty of mysteries and emotion churning beneath the surface. Want to know what happened to the descendants of the pioneer immigrant families of Willa Cather's My Ántonia? Join the Multicultural book discussion on Tuesday February 2 at 1:00 pm in the Sturgeon Bay Library.
Background information:
January Multicultural Book Discussion
Sarah's Key, a work of historical fiction, interweaves the stories of a modern American woman living in Paris, with the story of the round-up of French Jews by the French police during WWII. Author, Tatiana de Rosnay, describes the book in this short video:
Multicultural book for December
Things Fall Apart
By Achebe Chinua
This book tells the story of Okonkwo, a leader of the Igbo tribe of Nigeria. His family and his tribal community described in the beginning of the book have formed a sustainable culture which existed for hundreds of years. Once British colonialists move into the area bring new values and laws, the old tribal system starts to fall apart.
"I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them" -Achebe Chinua (from Morning Yet on Creation Day, 1975)
Background information:
Out Stealing Horses - join the discussion Oct. 6
This October the Mulitcultural Book Group will focus on Norway with the award winning book -
Out Stealing Horses
By Per Peterson
Translator Anne Born
"An early morning adventure out stealing horses leads to the tragic death of one boy and a resulting lifetime of guilt and isolation for his friend, in this moving tale about the painful loss of innocence and of traditional ways of life that are gone forever."
