This is the reading schedule for Project Read's learner and tutor book club for the second half of 2014. Tutor-learner teams are encouraged to pick up FREE books and audio books (yours to keep). All we ask is that learners who take these materials make plans to join the lively and rewarding discussions held on the last Wednesday of each month at 6:00 PM. We make the unabridged audio books available so that learners at any reading level can take part in these book discussions.
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge (books/audio available June 25, discussion on July 30)
Bainbridge vividly re-creates Robert Scott's early-twentieth-century journey to Antarctica in a fictional account narrated by the imagined voices of Scott and four members of his expedition who were destined to die with their leader. The emotional lives and complex relationships of these five men are beautifully rendered, with passages illuminated by the spiritual and pensive musings of each individual. Bainbridge's richly conceived tale portrays the adverse conditions from the doomed adventure's beginnings. (189 pages)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (books/audio available July 30, discussion Aug. 27)
Henry Lee is a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel. As the hotel owner displays objects owned by Japanese internees, Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. (290 pages)
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (books/audio available August 27, discussion on September 24)
Each chapter of screenwriter Esquivel's utterly charming interpretation of life in turn-of-the-century Mexico begins with a recipe--not surprisingly, since so much of the action of this exquisite first novel (a bestseller in Mexico) centers around the kitchen, the heart and soul of a traditional Mexican family. The youngest daughter of a well-born rancher, Tita has always known her destiny: to remain single and care for her aging mother. When she falls in love, her mother quickly scotches the liaison and tyrannically dictates that Tita's sister Rosaura must marry the luckless suitor, Pedro, in her place. But Tita has one weapon left--her cooking. (256 pages)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (books/audio available September 24, discussion on Oct.29)
In rural Mississippi in the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town. Twenty years later, Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friends are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades. (272 pages)
White Fang by Jack London (books/audio available October 29, discussion on December 3)
Up in the frozen north, life is harsh & dangerous. But this is where White Fang, the wolf-dog, feels at home - in the wild. When White Fang lives among man-animals, he must learn to fend for himself. And when he finds himself with a man who is kind to him, he must learn to love. (343 pages – approximate 5th grade reading level)
