January OCFPL Book Club

Welcome back everyone!

This year we kicked off book club with Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Trevor Noah is a South African comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television hos, who is widely known for being on the Daily Show on Comedy Central. This is his story of his time growing up in South Africa during and after the apartheid era.

We enjoyed the stories of him being mischievous, clever but overall naughtiness as a child. His challenging nature and the way he narrates the story to intertwine the deeper issues with funny outtakes, shows how much he has overcome. You can definitely see the comic being form and molded as he was growing up. One thing that the members found fascinating was his ability and talent for learning languages. Using it as a tool for survival, to trick people, getting out of trouble, and overall to make connections with those who under normal circumstances would not have connected with due to him being a Colored person (one who is half black and half white) in South Africa.

Overall, we enjoyed this book and definitely recommend others to read it. There is talks that this book would be adapted for film, something we all agree we will be on the look out to watch.

Join us next month on Tuesday, February 18th at 6pm as we meet next to discuss The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams. We welcome all to read the book and drop in for the discussion. Hope to see you there.

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Fault Lines by Nancy Huston

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, Fault Lines takes an interesting narrative approach and follows four generations of a family counter-chronologically. Family secrets start to unravel as each generation's character is revealed. We first meet 6 year old Sol, a coddled spoiled brat of a character, as he and his family are on a trip to Germany to revisit a long-lost relative. Huston then introduces the reader to the other generations; his father Randall, grandmother Sadie, and great grandmother Erra. As each character's story unfolds, you can see how each narrative weaves into one. The last section, which centers on Erra, is the most eye-opening one and is the final piece of the novel's puzzle. I don't want to say much more because it'd be giving too much away, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty intense (and sad) read.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

A short but very moving tale about a man who uncovers the awful truth about a former lover. Michael is 15 when he first meets Hanna, who is 36. Despite the creepy age difference, the two become lovers, though Michael is far more captivated by the mysterious and distant Hanna than she is to him. Their affair is all too brief and one day, Hanna just disappears. Years later, Michael unintentionally sees Hanna as the defendant when he is observing a court case for law school. As Michael slowly learns about Hanna's horrible past, he must struggle to accept the question - if he loves (or loved) a monster, what does that make him? There is redemption in the end, but it's very bittersweet. And of course, they made a movie out of this one. If the weather is decent, perhaps I'll go see it this weekend - Kate Winslet is supposed to be fabulous.

"A Banquet of Consequences" by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...

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