Book Club I
All Book Club I articles are collected here.
Book Club I to meet February 21Event Date:John Bantle will lead the discussion of A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson when the UMRA book club meets via Zoom on February 21. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘Tom Lake’Event Date: 'Tom Lake' by Ann Patchett is set in the early summer of 2020 at a cherry orchard on the shores of Lake Michigan, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the three daughters of the main character have returned home to help with the harvest. More... |
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Book Club I in DecemberEvent Date:Planning meeting for 2025. More... |
Book Notes | ‘A Fever in the Heartland’Event Date: This riveting story of the Ku Klux Klan’s reemergence in the 1920s, particularly in the Midwest, has many parallels with today. Members of UMRA’s Book Club were surprised to learn of the Klan’s phenomenal rise and control over the North in the ’20s. They agreed that there are differences today but that there is still much to be done. More... |
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Book Club I October: Should We Stay or Should We GoEvent Date:Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver. More... |
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Book Notes | Reckoning with historyEvent Date: Emily Strasser's memoir, published in 2023, is about the work at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a secret city for 70,000 people constructed in 1942–43 as part of the Manhattan Project for developing the atomic bomb. Her grandfather George Strasser was a chemist at Oak Ridge, and members UMRA's Book Club I agreed the author’s family stories made the book meaningful. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘The Bookbinder’ by Pip WilliamsEvent Date: The story takes place in Oxford, England, between 1914 and 1920. As men are sent to the continent to fight in the Great War, women in England work to keep the nation going. Peggy and Maude are twin sisters who work together binding books for the Oxford University Press. More... |
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How Stella Learned to TalkEvent Date:Laura Ericksen will lead the discussion of How Stella Learned to Talk by Christina Hunger, a true story by a speech-language pathologist who taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using buttons associated with different words. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘Scoop’ by Evelyn WaughEvent Date: Named “one of the 1,000 novels everyone should read” by the Guardian newspaper, Evelyn Waugh’s satirical portrayal of foreign correspondents and British journalism in the 19th century drew mixed reviews from members of UMRA’s Book Club I. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law’Event Date: Author Mary Roach has gone around the world to collect stories of animal behavior that has come into conflict with humans and to describe the measures that humans have taken to reach compromises to allow the animals and humans to live in harmony. She is a superb researcher and has a witty way of writing. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘The Scarlet Letter’Event Date: Set in the 1600s in a small town in Puritan New England, 'The Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story of sin, cowardice, and survival. Members of the UMRA Book Club found the writing to be laborious, riddled with many words no longer in use, and wondered why the novel was on high school reading lists. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘The Other Einstein’Event Date: In 'The Other Einstein,' an historical novel about the life of Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, author Marie Benedict speculates that Marić contributed significantly to the papers and relativity theory that are attributed to Einstein. The book raises several questions. More... |
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Book Club I to discuss E. M. Forster's masterpiece 'Howards End'Event Date:Pat Tollefson will lead the discussion of E. M. Forster’s classic work Howard’s End when the UMRA Book Club meets on Friday, February 16. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘Fox Creek’Event Date: Set in the Northwoods of Minnesota, 'Fox Creek,' the 19th book in the Cork O’Connor mystery series by William Kent Krueger, is about the conflict between Native and white people in the use of natural resources in both the U.S. and Canada. More... |
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Book Notes | ‘Strongmen from Mussolini to the Present’Event Date: The topic covered by this well-researched and carefully documented history is depressing but very important as the battle between democracy and autocracy continues around the world today. More... |
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