It's time to choose another book!

Here are the choices for you to vote on for our meeting in January:

Life of Pi by Yan Martel

{Fiction}

At the center of this intriguing novel is Pi (short for Piscine, a famous swimming pool in Paris) Patel, an engaging Indian boy growing up in and around his family’s zoo in Pondicherry the former capital of French India. Growing up as he does Pi knows a great deal about animals and their captivity. His other passion is religion. A Hindu by birth, Pi soon adds Christian and Moslem to the list much to his parents chagrin.


Due to the unrest of 1970’s India, his family decides to sell the zoo animals and move to Canada to start a new life. The Japanese steam ship transporting the Patels and the animals to North America sinks off the coast of the Philippines, however, with only Pi, an Orangutan, a hyena, and a Bengali tiger escaping on a twenty-six foot lifeboat. Nature takes its coarse and soon it is just Pi and the tiger alone at sea. It from this point on that the story the storytelling really begins.



The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

{Memior}

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever...

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. 


Change of Heart by Jodi Piccoult

{Fiction}

Shay Bourne - New Hampshire’s first death row prisoner in 69 years – has only one last request: to donate his heart post-execution to the sister of his victim, who is looking for a transplant. Bourne says it’s the only way he can redeem himself…but with lethal injection as his form of execution, this is medically impossible. Enter Father Michael Wright, a young local priest. Called in as Shay’s spiritual advisor, he knows redemption has nothing to do with organ donation – and plans to convince Bourne. But then Bourne begins to perform miracles at the prison that are witnessed by officers, fellow inmates, and even Father Michael – and the media begins to call him a messiah. Could an unkempt, bipolar, convicted murderer be a savior? It seems highly unlikely, to the priest. Until he realizes that the things Shay says may not come from the Bible…but are, verbatim, from a gospel that the early Christian church rejected two thousand years ago…and that is still considered heresy.