Please join us for our March book group discussion:

All Over Creation

by Ruth Ozeki

“When Yumi Fuller returns to her hometown after a twenty-five-year absence, she comes face to face with an old friend, her aging parents, and her conflicted pastas well as the Seeds of Resistance, a rollicking environmentalist group that finds trouble wherever they plant themselves. With a quirky cast of characters and a keen eye for the vicissitudes of corporate life, political resistance, youth culture, aging baby boomers, and globalization, as well as the beauty of seeds, roots, and all growing things, All Over Creation offers something for just about everyone.”

Source

RSVP on Facebook

If you are unable to make this meeting, but still want to participate in discussion, please visit us at Goodreads!

Upcoming Reads:
April: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
May: TBD.  Please do me a favor and go to Get Lit!’s Author’s Page and recommend a book you have read or would like to read by one of these authors! You can comment here or on either our Facebook Group or Fan Page.

If you have any questions or recommendations, please email:
beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com
or shrinkingvioletsociety[at]gmail[dot]com

Hello Violets!

As you can see, our website is back!  Which means I will be posting our monthly book group discussion events here.  For February, we will be discussing :

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women – mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends – view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

Link

Upcoming reads:

March: All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki

April: The Wind-Up Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

If you have any questions or recommendations, please email me at beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com or shrinkingvioletsociety[at]gmail[dot]com.

Thank you for everyone who showed up to our last book group meeting!  Luxe Coffee House proved to be a great place for our group discussion.
For November, we are reading:

The Geography of Bliss

by Eric Weiner

Weiner spent a decade as a foreign correspondent reporting from such discontented locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. Unhappy people
living in profoundly unstable states, he notes, inspire pathos and make for good copy, but not for good karma.  So Weiner, admitted grump and self-help book aficionado, undertook a year’s research to travel the globe, looking for the “unheralded happy places.” The result is this book, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and philosophical, a journey into both the definition of and the destination for true contentment.

More here

Thursday, November 3rd
6-8pm
Luxe Coffee House
1017 W 1st Ave, Suite A, Spokane, WA 99201

Upcoming reads:

December: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
January: Let the Great World Spin by Colum Mccann
February: The Help by Kathryn Stocket

We’re on Goodreads! We have both a Profile and a Group,  so please check us out if you are on there!

Please email me if you would like more information about our book group or would like to recommend a book.  Hope to see you in November!

Becky
beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com

Our October’s book choice is

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz

“Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuk-the curse that has haunted the Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Díaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Díaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.” -Source: Goodreads

Future Reads

November: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

December: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

January: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

**Important Information**
If you need a book, please contact me. I have 5 regular books, a large print book, and an audio book available for you to borrow through the Spokane County Library District book club bags.

We now have a Goodreads profile and group page. Please follow/friend/add us here:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5992664-shrinking-violet-society?ref=header
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/52608.Shrinking_Violet_Society

If you would like more information or have any book recommendations, please contact me at: beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com or shrinkingvioletsociety[at]gmail[dot]com

Hope to see you there!
Becky

Hey Violets!
Thank you for everyone that attended our August book meeting!  It was great to see new and familiar faces while discussing such a difficult and pertinent topic. Also, thank you Heather D. for letting us use the conference room at your work.

During our meeting, we discussed our next book group choices.

For September:

Salt: A World History

By Mark Kurlansky

November: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
December: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

If you have any book recommendations or would like more information about our group, please email:
Beckybeckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com
Shrinking Violet Society: shrinkingvioletsociety[at]gmail[dot]com

Our July book club choice is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, which comes at a very interesting time in Mortenson’s career.  Needless to say, there will be a lot to discuss!

Three Cups of Tea

by Greg Mortenson

Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse’s unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town’s first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson’s efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers’ hearts.

Link

So please, join us on:

Thursday, July 7^th

Location: Main Market Co-Op

Time: 6-8pm

For August, we are reading:

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

If you have any book recommendations please email the coordinators:
Becky: beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com
Hilary: hilwhitt[at]gmail[dot]com

Hello Violets!

I’m going to be frank with you; our last  book group meeting was a bust!  Considering it was the Big Read (highly accessible all over Spokane, quick and interesting read, several dozen events pertaining to the book, etc.) we were expecting more than two people to show up.  Our February meeting had a total of three people.  We understand that it was quite a long and dreary book, but the meeting was at the same house the author used to live in and possibly wrote the book in (you can’t get more local than that).

Us book group coordinators are stumped.  We really want our meetings to be consistently successful.  We had 17 people show up to our January “Water for Elephants” meeting and have had several very successful meetings prior to that.  We’ve also had several busts.

So, we’re asking for your feedback.  If you have ever been interested in attending our book group meetings (whether you have or not), we would like to hear your reasons on why you may or may not attend our meetings.   Also, it’s about that time we ask for recommendations of books for future reads. Please fill out this short survey of only 8 questions and/or respond here (or email us) if you have any other additional information you would like to add.

Shrinking Violet Society Book Group Survey

Thank you!

Becky

beckyhuss[at]gmail[dot]com

shrinkingvioletsociety[at]gmail[dot]com

For our March book club meeting, we are participating with the Get Lit! Programs (a literary festival that takes place during April 13-17^th).  Their Big Read this year is:

The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien

Tracing the tour of one American platoon, The Things They Carried, is not just a tale of the Vietnam War, although it is considered one of the finest books ever written about combat. This award-winning book is a brutal, sometimes funny, often profound narrative about the human heart—how it fares under pressure, and what it can endure.

The Vietnam War still has the power to divide Americans between those for it and those against. Today it also divides us, just as surely, between those who remember its era firsthand and those not yet born when the troops came home. There may be no better bridge across these twin divides than Tim O’Brien’s novel in stories The Things They Carried. The details of warfare may have changed since Vietnam, but O’Brien’s semiautobiographical account of a young platoon on a battlefield without a front, dodging sniper fire and their own misgivings, continues to win legions of dedicated readers, both in uniform and out.

Link

North Spokane Library (44 E. Hawthorne Rd)

March 20th

1-3pm

RSVP Here

Check out all the Big Read! events here!

April – Zeitoun – David Eggers

May – Three Cups of Tea -Greg Mortenson

**As part of the Presidential Speaker Series, Greg Mortenson will be speaking at Gonzaga University on March 28th from 7pm-8:30pm at the McCarthey Athletic Center.  For more info, please visit Gonzaga University’s website and buy tickets here.

Gonzaga University (McCarthey Athletic Center)

Monday, March 28th

7pm-8:30pm

• $10 Public
• $7 Senior Citizen
• $5 Education (students and employees of any education institution)

June - Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com