FFWNC Book Club
April 26th – 1:30 pm – We will discuss Democracy Awakening – Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson. Ellen Brazauskas will host this session. Please contact her for details.
The FF Book Club is held quarterly on the last Friday in January, April, July and October. The Book Club welcomes new members. Contact Gerri Gurbuz for information.
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There is an interest among club members to share recommendations for book titles that feature world cultures. Please email your suggestions to Diane Tokarski, and she will be sure to include them on this web page and provide a few sentences about the book.
Here are a few for a start:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie – Adichie is the daughter of Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, considered a world literature masterpiece. Half of a Yellow Sun is about the Biafran War and the world’s lack of response. It is an insight into “modern” African culture and the suffering of so many in Third World countries.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi – A true story of an English literature teacher in Tehran University during the time of the Iranian Revolution. Meeting secretly with students, she uses English literature to counter the simplistic right/wrong of the mullahs and the Taliban. She was expelled in 1977. (Submitted by Larry Harvey)
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy who helped win WWII by Sonia Purnell – A true story about a young Baltimore socialite (with a wooden leg!) fluent in French and hired by the British to work as a spy with the French Resistance.
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan – Another true story about a young Italian fluent in several languages who volunteered to work as a driver and translator for a Nazi officer, all the time spying and sending information to the Allied Forces.
The Enchanted April by British writer Elizabeth Von Arnie, written in 1922. (Book and Movie) Four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria and solitude as needed. The women are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other and a castle of their dreams . The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t expect that the month will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy.
Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves, initially published in 2009. Rick highlights visits to Europe, Central America, Asia and the Middle East to bring to light that travel connects people-to-people and provides creative thinking on potential new solutions to solve persistent world problems. Rick says that we can’t understand our world without experiencing it.