June 2011's pick...

For June of 2011 our next Ascotian, Mr. Artie O'Daly, has selected a 1951 modern classic, The End of the Affair.
The book was adapted into 2 movies (one in 1955 and on in 1999) and later into an opera in 2004.

Wikipedia gives us this brief synopsis:

"The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during World War II in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. Bendrix is loosely based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel. Sarah is based loosely on Greene's mistress at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated.

Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation."

To order your copy of The End of the Affair, click here to buy it on Amazon.com!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The reviews are in and the book club gave Ms. Lacks and her never ending cancerous cells an impressive 7.9 rating at our May meeting. Not too bad for our first Non-Fiction selection for the club.
Thank you again to all who came and to Mr. Grant Sloss for hosting a wonderful evening.

Survey for next Book Club meeting

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Click Here to survey which date and time work best for you for this month's book club!

Thoughts on the book so far??

May 2011's pick...

The new selection for The Ascot Book Club in the month of May 2011 is...

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By: Rebecca Skloot

A non-fiction retelling of the life of a woman whose cancerous cells were taken with out her knowledge or permission just before her death and went on to become the largest aid in scientific discovery over the past century.

For more information on Henrietta Lacks click here.

To purchase a copy of the book, click here.

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage

April 2011. Rain. Despair. Sorrow. Spring.

All of this and more ran abundantly in the April 2011 selection of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife. Selected by Nathan Van Dyke, the book received a rating of 7.43.

"Lives in stories have direction and meaning. Even stupid, meaningless lives, like Lenny's in "Of Mice and Men," Acquire through their places in a story at least the dignity and meaning of being Stupid, Meaningless Lives, the consolation of being exemplars of something. In real life you do not get even that." 
— Sam Savage (Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife)


To find out more about Sam Savage and his works, including Firmin, click here.
To purchase a copy of Firmin, you know what to do.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

In keeping with the celebration of Purim, we celebrate the coming of spring and the deliverance of the Jewish people from the Persian Empire by reading The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. Our March 2011 selection was picked by Jeff Kaplan, and it received a rating of 7.8.

"World War II has begun. A boy is sent to live in a village while his parents go into hiding from the Nazis. A woman who takes care of him, dies, leaving the boy to fend for himself. He is soon taken in by various individuals including a miller who gouges out his plowboy's eyes, and a man who sells birds. He walks to a village occupied by German soldiers. The local partisans turn him over to the Nazis. A soldier allows him to escape. The boy moves to another village, where he sees trains with Jews and Gypsies heading to concentration camps. He decides that fair-haired, blue-eyed people are God's favorites."


For more information on The Painted Bird and its author Jerzy Kosinski click here.
To Purchase your copy of The Painted Bird click here.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Roe vs. Wade caused the sudden decrease in murder and violent crimes in the 1990s?
This question and many others were examined in Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, our February 2011 selection. Selected by David Anderson, the book received a rating of 6.6.

"The numbers we're talking about, in terms of crime, are absolutely trivial when you compare it to the broader debate on abortion. From a pro-life view of the world: If abortion is murder then we have a million murders a year through abortion. And the few thousand homicides that will be prevented according to our analysis are just nothing—they are a pebble in the ocean relative to the tragedy that is abortion. So, my own view, when we [did] the study and it hasn't changed is that: our study shouldn't change anybody's opinion about whether abortion should be legal and easily available or not. It's really a study about crime, not abortion."


For more information on Freakonomics and Steven D. Levitt, check out Wikipedia.
And you can purchase your copy of Freakonomics here.