International Book Discussion
Lots of the folks at Grace, Corvallis, are readers and members of book discussions. So they'd been dreaming about ways to combine that love of reading to their concerns for understanding the world at large and it's problems. So each month we read a book with an international focus and meet for an hour an a half to discuss it. A really good books keeps us there even longer. In January we are reading _The Bastard of Istanbul_, a novel that addresses inter-cultural conflicts that impacts people's personal lives, in the Turkish and American context, for February we are reading _Globish_, a book on the impact of English on communication around the world.
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Good read
My first thought was' "what are you reading?" Thanks for sharing that. I just finished 'Proust was a Neuroscientist." interesting book about the nature of the 'self' and how we perceive reality.
Book List
When I get back to Corvallis, I'll post our annotated book list.
"Cutting For Stone" by Verghese
If you haven't discussed this novel you might want to consider it. It features family and community of East Indian, British, and Ethiopians. It is placed in Ethiopia beginning during the reign of Haile Sallaise. (sp?) Some of it takes place in America, but from a non-native born, immigrant, professional class of people.
Book List 2010-2011
September 9 Kaffir Boy. Mark Mathabane. This is an autobiography of a black youth growing
up in a ghetto suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa
during apartheid. A story of the middle east conflict
through the experiences of people who live there.
October 14 Stubborn Twig. Lauren Kessler. This book was included in the Oregon Statewide
Reading Project for 2009. It is about a Japanese
immigrant who comes to Oregon.
November 11 Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew and the Heart of the Middle
East. Sandy Tolan.
December 9 Poetry. Bring a favorite poem or two to share.
January 13 End of Poverty. Jeffrey D. Sachs. . Sachs talks about economic possibilities
for our time including investing in health for economic
development.
February 10 Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle
Against World Poverty. Muhammad Yunus.Yunus was born in Bangladesh,
received graduate education in the USA and received
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work with
banks convincing them to lend small amounts to financially
untouchables.
March 10 Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced
People, and the Environment. Jacques Leslie. A work of narrative nonfiction
meant to illustrate dams’ consequences by portraying
three people who have contended with them in quite
different ways.
April 14 The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central
Asia. Peter Hopkirk. The Great Game was the struggle between Great Britain and
Russia over Central Asia which has affected today’s geopolitics.
May 12 Hot, Flat and Crowded. Thomas Friedman. . This is a look at the intertwined problems
of climate change, population growth and green
energy revolution.
June 9 The Bookseller of Kabul. Asne Seierstad. Seierstad is a
Swedish journalist who documents the lives and rela-
tionships of an Afghani family after she lives with them
for a period of time.
Book List 2009-2010
December 10 – Wild Swans, Jung Chang
(January 7 – Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
(February 4 – What Is the What? Dave Eggers
March 4 – Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China,
John Pomfret
April 8 – The Hospital by the River, Dr. Catherine Hamlin
– Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi
May – The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
June 3, 7 p.m. – Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson
Book List 2011-2012
Sept: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression
into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by
Nicholas D. Kistof and Sheryl WuDunn, Vintage
Books Division of Random House, Inc. New York.
2010.
This book is described as a call to arms against the
oppression of women around the world by several
of the reviewers. It includes both the tragic reality
and the inspirational stories of women in developing
countries. It encourages us to be involved at
various levels.
The authors focus on three abuses to women: sex
trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based
violence, including honor killings and mass rape;
and maternal mortality
October 20, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.
Fadiman chronicles an immigrant Hmong family’s struggle to care for their daughter with epilepsy according
to their cultural beliefs, which conflict with doctors’ scientific based treatments
in a county hospital in Merced, CA in the 1980's.
November 17, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the
New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild.
This is a thought-provoking book about economic conditions which force the movement of women (voluntarily and
involuntarily) away from their own countries and families for employment.
January 19, The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. This novel spans two continents and the cultures of an Armenian
American family and a Turkish family, their fate and their history.
February 16, Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s
Language by Robert McCrum. This is an historical review of the development of English and how it has
spread world-wide as a second language and how the world has changed English as well.
March 15, Journal of an Ordinary Grief by Mahmoud Darwish, translated
by Ibrahim Muhawi. The “grief” is the loss of a Palestinian family’s lands to the Jewish settlers in Israel. The book offers
insights into the minds of the Palestinians, Israelis and Israeli Arabs
through prose, poetry and diary memoirs.
April 19, Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s Frontline Account of
Life, Love and War in His Homeland by Basharat Peer. . Basharat Peer was raised in Kashmir, then left the
area and later returned as a journalist. He writes about what he has seen
and about the accounts of others in this war-torn area.
May 17, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity
and Hope by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Maeler. C 2009. William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi. He wanted
to go to school, but was forced to drop out during a famine. He read a library
book on energy and built a windmill from scrap materials to provide
his family with electricity and water.
June 21, In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar.
Books and society
I have just finished reading for the first time, C.S. Lewis's space triology. The last "Hideous Strength" really showed the power of the press. And definitely not in a positive sense. How words can be manipulated to say one thing but mean just the opposite. By using the word rehabilitation instead of punishment or torture or laboratory experimentation, the public will go along with such abuse.
Another book, Patterson's Maximum Ride series leads into the discussion of genetics and genetic alterations. I would recommend some of these youth fantasy books for parents and youth workers to read and so can interact with young people.