First Presbyterian Church Book Group

First Presbyterian Church, Bloomington, Indiana

This book discussion group was organized in January, 2000.

Thanks to Judy Schroeder for her work in promoting the idea of the group, advertising it, developing our first list of possible books to read, and even hosting the first two meetings!

Recent participants include , Kathryn Brown, , Allan Edmonds, Judy Holy, Norma Miller, Lou Moir, Kathy Ruesink Judy Schroeder, Dorothy Soudakoff, Martha Wailes, Gloria Westfall,

New members and "drop-ins" are always welcome! Feel free to check with any member of the group about participating.

Charter members who attended the first meeting include Jean Anderson, Allan Edmonds, Margaret Harter, Jeanette Hendry, Judy Schroeder, Martha Wailes, and Gloria Westfall.

On July 30, 2006, we said goodbye to longtime group member Muriel Nazzari, whom we still hope to involve in discussion. Group picture.

Schedule for 2008

Usually we meet the last Sunday of the month, 7:00-9:00 pm.

January 27, 2008: Christopher Buckley, Boomsday (April 2007, hardcover, 336 pp.). With delectable, smart-talking characters and a devilishly clever story line, prizewinning humorist Buckley, author of the novel-turned-movie Thank You for Smoking (1994), has created a scrumptiously shrewd and hilarious political satire that takes bold measure of the newly widening generation gap and politics even worse than usual. Leader: Judy Schroeder, subbing for Martha Wailes. Meet in the third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
February 24, 2008: Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't (March 2007, hardcover, 304 pp.). Religious illiteracy is rampant in the United States. Such ignorance is perilous because religion "is the most volatile constituent of culture." Prothero traces the surprising historic roots of the problem and prescribes concrete solutions that address religious education while preserving First Amendment boundaries. Leader: Kathy Ruesink. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
March 30, 2008: Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (May 2007, hardcover, 432 pp.). The 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist posits that Sitka, Alaska, has been turned into a sanctuary for 2 million Jews fleeing the rising Nazi menace. This multilayered novel is a detective yarn, alternate history, love story, and terrorist thriller wrapped in one genre-bending package. Leader: Kathryn Brown. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
April 27, 2008: Kahf, Mohja. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel (paperback, 2006, 448 pp.). The 2008 One Book, One Bloomington choice looks at the life of a Muslim girl growing up in Indiana during the 1970s. The family moved to Indianapolis from Syria. Khadra is a compelling protagonist, and the supporting cast is varied and believable, but Kahf's authorial incursionscritiques of religion and societyare heavy-handed. However, Khadra's ever-evolving view of herself and her religion resonate and provide a valuable portrayal of an oft-misunderstood faith. - Publishers Weekly. Leader: Martha Wailes. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
May 25, 2008: McEwan, Ian. Atonement (paperback, 2007, 382 pp.) McEwan's instantly addictive story line is of the bad-to-worse variety as he moves from the events of a single day in 1935 to the harrowing vicissitudes of World War II. Every scene is charged with both despair and diabolical wit, and McEwan's Jamesian prose covers the emotional spectrum from searing eroticism to toxic guilt. In sum, he excels brilliantly at depicting moral dilemmas and stressed minds in action without losing a keen sense of the body's terrible fragility, the touching absurdity of desire, and time's obstinacy. Leader: Judy Schroeder. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
June 29, 2008: Applegate, Debby. The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (April 2007, paperback, 560 pp.). This lively biography of Beecher (18131887), an immensely famous minister, abolitionist, and public intellectual, explains how his mesmerizing oratory and fiery newspaper columns made him one of the first celebrities of the nascent mass media. 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Leader: Kathryn Brown. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
July 27, 2008: Egan, Tim. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Sept. 2006, paperback, 352 pp). The Great Plains weren't suited to farming. Plowing up the grass to plant wheat, along with a confluence of economic disaster--the Depression--and natural disaster--eight years of drought--resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. His portraits of the families who stayed behind are sobering and far less familiar than those of the "exodusters." Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for nonfiction. Leader: Virginia Dearborn. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
August 31, 2008: Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees (paperback due out in June, 240 pp.). The Pulitzer Prize-winner, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, meditates on the mysteries of marriage and the nature of forgiveness in her second novel. Critics generally praise her erudite, lyrical prose; evocative descriptions of Cape Cod's landscape; and perceptive analyses of individuals and relationships. Dillard wryly questions notions of love, exalts in life's metamorphoses, and celebrates goodness. As she casts a spell sensuous and metaphysical, Dillard covertly bids us to emulate may trees--the resilient hawthorn--the tree of joy, of spring, of the heart. Leader: Judy Holy. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
September 28, 2008: Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (August 2007, paperback, 480 pp.). Wright, a writer for The New Yorker, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism. A penetrating analysis of how Islamic fundamentalism has reshaped the modern world, the work has been called the most riveting, informative, and heart-stopping account yet of the men who shaped 9/11. 2007 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction; nominated for 2006 National Book Award in nonfiction. Leader: Kathy Ruesink. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
October 29, 2008: Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns (hardcover, 2007, 387 pp.). The author of The Kite Runner covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. Leader: Ann Armstrong. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
November 16, 2009: Graham, Tom. Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball (hardcover, 2006, 272 pp., paperback, fall, 2007). NOTE CHANGE OF BOOK AND DAY IN ORDER THAT THE GROUP MAY MEET WITH THE AUTHOR. Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of college basketball. Because Indiana was as racially intolerant as the South, it wasn't surprising that although Garrett had led his small towns underdog team to the 1947 state high school championship, he couldn't play for Indiana University, which followed the Big Ten schools gentlemans agreement not to recruit or play blacks. But during the postwar period, IU's administration was pressured to accept Garrett on the team. Garrett played from 1948 to 1951 and on the night of his last game was given a roaring ovation.(paperback may be out in November) Leader: Judy Schroeder. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.

Books for the beginning of 2009:

January 25, 2008: Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (paperback due out August 2008, 400 pp.). The New Yorker legal writer surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life. (paperback due out in August) Leader: Allan Edmonds. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.
February 22, 2009: Brooks, Geraldine. People of the Book: A Novel (hardback, Jan. 2008, 384 pp.). In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient bindingan insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hairshe begins to unlock the books mysteries. The author of March was inspired by a true story in writing this book. Leader: Lou Moir. Meeting site: Third floor meeting room at Bell Trace.