Upcoming Book club dates in December and January

I've just realised that I haven't posted the "results" of our last book club meeting and what and when we're meeting next. Big oops and apologies for the delay.


December Meeting:
When: Saturday, December 12 at 4pm
Where: The Blue Moon Cafe (2 doors down from the central Quaker Meeting House beside the Cathedral)
Book: Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faiza Guene


For more about the book, click here. Quick summary: this was written by a 19 year old last year and tells about growing up poor in the Parisian ghettos as a Muslim girl with "no future" and depression. How do you find a way out?

We usually take about 1 one and a half to two hours to talk about the book, to each other and choose future books. It is very casual and you don't even have to have read the book as the process is to talk about themes. However, for December and January we chose especially "easy" quick-reads as these are usually busy months for everyone. Both books fro Dec and Jan are young adult novels that can probably be read in under 2 hours. So if you order it today from Amazon/buy it at your local bookstore, you could still come along having read the book!

January Meeting:
When: Saturday, January 9 at 4pm
Where: The Blue Moon Cafe (2 doors down from the central Quaker Meeting House beside the Cathedral)
Book: My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Some of you may have noticed that there was a Jewish issue recently (November 27) of The Friend and that My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok is reviewed in there. That's because this is widely regarded as one of the best books on "Jewishness". It actually is part of a trilogy but can be read as a stand-a-lone. Thanks to Beryl for her recommendation on this. I first read this book at 13 and it had such an impact on me...it made me want to convert to Judaism (or at least celebrate Passover) for a significant portion of my teenage years. Enough said?

Perhaps not. This is about the tension between interpreting "God's Will" in Jewish orthodoxy and doing what you feel is right (in this case a boy's need to express his artistic talent). Click here for more info about the book.


I should point out again that you are welcome to come along even if you haven't read the books. Obviously you wouldn't contribute as much about the book, but we are doing a creative listening process and talking about spititual and activist/international themes as well that come up for us as part of the reading process.

At the December meeting we will be trying to choose a number of books so that we can let people know which books and when much more in advance. However, there is no expectation that people will come every month. Hope to see you there.

Nadine

Silence...book club

I'm going to introduce the idea of a book club at this morning's 10:30 meeting to see if people are interested. The book is Endo's Silence.

I've been part of a number of book clubs and have found reading classics okay, but I already know about those books "I should have read". The books that I've really gotten the most from and have expanded my worldview are books from other cultures that had a spiritual dimension that I had never heard of before. I find that I learn and am able to best take action when I've understood other people's situations through stories. So, this is where I would like to start. If you are interested, please join me at The Blue Moon (just down the road from the Quaker Meeting House next to the Cathedral, it offers fairtrade, organic, vegetarian and vegan food and drink) for the first meeting to decide how and where we might continue on Saturday, November 7th at 4pm.

On that day we could discuss how exactly the group might continue, but also talk about a book! The book I thought might be appropriate to start off is Shusaku Endo's Silence. Endo is a Catholic writer who has been called the "Japanese Graham Greene". For a brief background about Endo go here. His writing is simple and focuses on the question about what happens to us and our faith when our lives become difficult and circumstances seem to test us beyond our limits?

However, we are very lucky that the Sheffield literary festival, Off the Shelf, is having a talk on Endo this Tuesday (October 13) at the Cathedral at 8pm. I'm not sure if I can make it but if you are interested, you can buy tickets at City Hall or the Main Library. I think you can also just show up on the night.

I will leave a copy of Silence in the library. You can buy a copy from Amazon or order it from your favourite bookseller. The author may come up as Martin Scorsese (the filmmaker) as he writes the foreword.

So, I think this gives you enough to know if you are interested and about the kinds of books I'd like to explore over the next year. I invite people to join me in reading every month or so. I've chosen this book to begin with, but thought (and this is something that has worked well in other groups I've been part of but if someone has a better suggestion we can do that instead) in the future, we could rotate around the group. If it is your turn, you come with 3 books, introduce them and then let the group decide which one they would like to read. They would, of course, have to be easily accessible and maybe available for under £10-15 or at the library.

I hope to see you on Saturday, November 7th at 4pm in The Blue Moon. If you want to contact me about this, I will leave my mobile number and email address on the noticeboard in the Meeting House.