Hi everyone!

Today at Book Club we chose the titles for the next two months:

Thursday, April 14, 2011 – Parfum by Patrick Süskind (trans. from the German)

Thursday, May 12, 2011 – The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (trans. from the French)

To get Parfum, you can put a hold on Gleeson’s copy, request it through Link+, or check it out of the SF Public Library.

To get The Elegance of the Hedgehog, you can put a hold on Gleeson’s copy, request it through Link+, check it out of the SF Public Library, or check out one of our iPads or Kindle, which will be loaded with the book.

Upon its publication last year in Germany Susskind’s first novel Perfume immediately became an international best seller. Set in 18th-century France, Perfume relates the fascinating and horrifying tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a person as gifted as he was abominable. Born without a smell of his own but endowed with an extraordinary sense of smell, Grenouille becomes obsessed with procuring the perfect scent that will make him fully human. With brilliant narrative skill Susskind exposes the dark underside of the society through which Grenouille moves and explores the disquieting inner universe of this singularly possessed man.

– Library Journal

Happy New Year! The USF Book Club has selected its next book. We are reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and will meet on Thursday, March 3, 2011 to discuss it. We’ll be in the seminar room (#209) of Gleeson Library from 12 noon – 1 pm.

This book is somewhat longer than our usual selections (541 pages) and is insanely popular right now, so make sure to request your copy soon!

Gleeson’s copy is currently checked out, but you can try requesting it through Link+ or accessing it through the San Francisco Public Library, who have numerous paper copies, as well as a spoken word e-edition, an online e-version, and as spoken word via CD. Any California resident can get a library card to SFPL, so if you haven’t yet, I recommend doing so!

Since the book is so popular, you might not have luck getting it through a library. The NOOK (Barnes and Noble) and Kindle (Amazon) e-version is only $5, or you could help out a local independent book store like Green Apple or the Booksmith by purchasing it there. Remember, Gleeson’s iPads and Kindle will also have Cutting for Stone loaded on them!

Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother’s long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese’s weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.

You can visit our wiki or you can sign up for the Book Club’s email list by emailing kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu. Hope to see you there!

The USF Book Club is looking towards 2011 with the ferocity of scholars ~ we’ve picked  a nonfiction title for our first selection of the new year!

We’ll read Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed.

We’ll meet on Wednesday, January 12, 2010 from 12 noon – 1 pm in the seminar room (#209) of Gleeson Library to discuss the book. Bring your lunch and tell your friends/colleagues!

How to get the Book

Since Gleeson and many other libraries will be closed for a week-long period over the holidays, make sure to request your copy soon! You can request the book through Link+ by clicking here since our copy is checked out right now. You can also try to pick up a copy at the SF public library. Last but not least, an e-book version of Bright-Sided will be on all the iPads and Kindles we loan to patrons (on the iPads, it will be on the Amazon Kindle App).

A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a “positive” people–cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes–like mortgage defaults–contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best–poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

~Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, LLC

Hello book lovers and library patrons! The USF Book Club has selected its final title for 2010: The Help by Kathryn Stockett. We will meet on Wednesday, Dec 8, 2010 from 12-1 pm in the electronic classroom of Gleeson Library, which is room #139.

Better pick up this book fast! It’s insanely popular right now and our meeting is less than 3 weeks away. I hear it’s a real page turner so I don’t think anyone will have trouble finishing it With the selection of this title, we continue our tendency to read historic novels about minorities and issues of equality. I am pretty excited and just requested a large print edition through Link+… just because that’s the only copy I could get!

How to get the book:

Our copy in Gleeson is checked out, but our Kindle and iPads have the e-book version on them. To get a hard copy, try requesting the book through this list of holdings on Link+, or put a hold on one of the SF Public Library’s copies. Worse case scenario, support your local book store by purchasing a copy.

Publisher’s Weekly says:

What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn’s new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing “about what disturbs you.” The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies–and mistrusts–enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who’s raised 17 children, and Aibileen’s best friend Minny, who’s found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.

We hope to see you there!

Hello! The USF Book Club will read and discuss Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons for our November selection. We will meet on November 17, 2010 from 12 noon – 1 pm in the seminar room (#209) of Gleeson Library. Feel free to bring your lunch!

How to get the book: since Gleeson’s copy is checked out, you can request Cold Comfort Farm through our free service Link+ by clicking here. The book will arrive at USF within 4 business days. You can also check out a copy from the San Francisco Public Library. Lastly, an ebook version of this title is available on the Kindle and iPads that the library is loaning to patrons.

(yes I picked the weirdest cover art of the many editions of this book, hah!)

In Gibbons’s classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora’s mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora’s confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons’s wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs.

I think I heard someone compare the power structure in this book to USF’s own hierarchy. Blasphemous? Or true? Read it and let us know what you think. Hope to see you there!