Our New Read

I have chosen the book for March.  We will be reading A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.  Here is a little teaser summary:

Gemma, 16, is prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true.  She has had an unconventional upbringing in India, until the day she foresees her mother’s death in a black, swirling vision that turns out to be real. Sent back to England, she is enrolled at Spence, a girls’ academy with a mysterious burned-out East Wing. There Gemma is snubbed by powerful Felicity, beautiful Pippa, and even her own dumpy roommate Ann, until she blackmails herself and Ann into the treacherous clique. Gemma is distressed to find that she has been followed from India by Kartik, a beautiful young man who warns her to fight off the visions. Nevertheless, they continue, and one night she is led by a child-spirit to find a diary that reveals the secrets of a mystical Order. The clique soon finds a way to accompany Gemma to the other-world realms of her visions "for a bit of fun" and to taste the power they will never have as Victorian wives, but they discover that the delights of the realms are overwhelmed by a menace they cannot control.

So, pick up a copy at the library, borrow it from a friend, or you can purchase it on amazon for $9.99 if you think you'd like to add it to your collection.  Hope you all enjoy the book, I know I did.  Happy Reading!

Our New Read

Dari chose our book for February.  We will be reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok.  Here is a little description of what the book is about:

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.

So, go to your local Library, borrow it from a friend, or if you feel like this is something you'd like to own you can purchase it on Amazon for $7.99 if you get the Mass Market Paperback edition, or $10.20 for the regular Paperback edition.  Happy reading!

Teaser Wednesday--The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Rehnquist loved to sing, and he always led the caroling at the Court's annual Christmas party.  (Every year or so, a group of law clerks would write the chief justice an earnest letter complaining that the party created an atmosphere of exclusion for non-Christians; Rehnquist, who pointedly never adopted the term "holiday party," would reply by invititing the young lawyers, in effect, to get over it.)  In his early years on the Court, Rehnquist even sometimes wrote the sketches for the occassion.  In 1975, as Jeffrey Rosen first reported, he wrote a song about his least-favorite Supreme Court opinion, Miranda v. Arizona.  Sung to the tune of Angels from the Realms of Glory," it went: Liberals from the realms of theory should adorn our highest bench / Though to crooks they're always chary / At police misdeeds they blench."  The members of the chorus then fell to their knees and sang, "Save Miranda, save Miranda, save it from the Nixon Four."  Nixon's nominees were Warrent Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and of course, Rehnquist himself.

Debby's Tuesday Teaser

"Contrary to my legal training, I have come to realize that feelings are often more important than facts.  The law doesn't have much to do with feelings.  A feeling is rarely actionable or even admissible. But our most important decisions, though accompanied by a careful study of facts, are usually most immediately motivated by feelings.  Who we marry is an example.  What fact or facts, unaccompanied by feelings, would motivate that decision? 
Feelings are vital to the process of revelation.  In a talk, I listed eight purposes or functions of revelation.  They were testifying, prophesying, comforting, uplifting, informing, restraining, confirming, and impelling. Significantly, seven of these eight - all except informing - come as a feeling.  For example, we should always be prepared to act upon an impression when we "feel that it is right" (D&C 9:8), even though it is not justified by the facts."

From Life's Lessons Learned ~ Personal Reflections by Dallin H. Oaks

Our New Read

Cecilia picked our new read, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. And since the holidays are such a busy time we won't be meeting till January, so you all have plenty of time to read this. It will be a fun time for some of us to brush up on a classic read and a great time for others to experience a new read. Here is a little summary of what it is about:

At the age of eight, Scout Finch is an entrenched free-thinker. She can accept her father's warning that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because mockingbirds harm no one and give great pleasure. The benefits said to be gained from going to school and keeping her temper elude her.

The place of this enchanting, intensely moving story is Maycomb, Alabama. The time is the Depression, but Scout and her brother, Jem, are seldom depressed. They have appalling gifts for entertaining themselves—appalling, that is, to almost everyone except their wise lawyer father, Atticus.

Atticus is a man of unfaltering good will and humor, and partly because of this, the children become involved in some disturbing adult mysteries: fascinating Boo Radley, who never leaves his house; the terrible temper of Mrs. Dubose down the street; the fine distinctions that make the Finch family "quality"; the forces that cause the people of Maycomb to show compassion in one crisis and unreasoning cruelty in another.

Also because Atticus is what he is, and because he lives where he does, he and his children are plunged into a conflict that indelibly marks their lives—and gives Scout some basis for thinking she knows just about as much about the world as she needs to.

So, grab a copy from the library, a friend, or on Amazon (You can get the paperback for as little as $6.99) Happy reading!

Our New Read

Monique picked our new read for November. It is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Here is what it is about:

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? So, check your local library, borrow it from a friend or you can purchase it on Amazon for $13.49 here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319158697&sr=8-1 Happy reading!

A Late teaser Cecilia

     A wave of emotions, a mixture of angers and longings, washed over Mack and as if on cue his father's colors burst from across the meadow and enveloped him.  He was lost in a wash of ruby and vermillion, magenta and violet, as the light and color whirled around and embraced him.  And somehow, in the middle of the exploding storm, he found himself running across the meadow to find his father, running toward the source of the colors and emotions.  He was a little boy wanting his daddy, and for the first time he was not afraid.  He was running, not caring for anything but the object of his heart, and he found him.  His father was on his knees awash in light, tears sparkling like a waterfall of diamonds and jewels into the hands that covered his face.
   "Daddy!" yelled Mack, and threw himself onto the man who could not even look at his son.  In the howl of wind and flame, Mack took his father's face in his two hands, forcing his dad to look him in the face so he could stammer the words he had always wanted to say:  "Daddy, I'm so sorry! Daddy, I love you!"  The light of his words seemed to blast darkness out of his father's colors, turning them blood red.  They exchanged sobbing words of confession and forgiveness, as a love greater than either one healed them.

                                                                  The Shack by William P. Young

This book was a challenge for me to read.  The first part read pretty good and then came the part where Mack went to the shack and met God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost.  It is how the author portrayed them that I had to work through.  I did enjoy the book, I just have to realize that the world looks on religion different that I do and be open minded.