St. Luke's Book Group
Literature and story evoke meaningful discussion on issues of morality, spirituality, family, community, and Christian discipleship. For the members of the Book Group at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Alexandria, Virginia, reading is a spiritual discipline. They enjoy a good book, lively conversation, and coffee and dessert on Sunday evenings in the church library. Their reading list and book descriptions follow.
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2006–2007
September 24, 2006
by Jonathan Franzen (discussion to be led by Patsie Uchello). After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man-or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
October 22, 2006
The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything
by Brian MacLaren (discussion to be led by Marge Stallman). Brian McLaren, one of TIME magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,” leads readers on a journey that will prove to be as unsettling and groundshaking as it is thrilling and life-changing. McLaren's quest is to find the essential message of Jesus' life-even if it overturns our conventional ideas, priorities, and practices. "Through the years, I have frequently had an uncomfortable feeling:" writes McLaren, "that the portrait of Jesus I found in the New Testament didn't fit with the images of Jesus in the church. I'd like to share my search with you, and invite you to be a part of it. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I'll let you in on this: the farther I go on this search, the more inspired, moved, challenged, shocked, and motivated I become about the secret message of Jesus."
November 19, 2006
by Toni Morrison (discussion to be led by Carlo Uchello). In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved. Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by.
January 28, 2007
by James Lee Burke (discussion to be led by Mary Lawrence Aitken). Detective Dave Robicheaux is facing the most painful and dangerous case of his career. A troubled young woman breezes into his hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana. She happens to be the daughter of Robicheaux's onetime best friend -- a friend he witnessed gunned down in a bank robbery, a tragedy that forever changed Robicheaux's life. In Pegasus Descending, James Lee Burke again explores psyches as much as evidence, and tries to make sense of human behavior as well as of his characters' crimes. Richly atmospheric, frightening in its sudden violence, and replete with the sort of puzzles only the best crime fiction creates, Burke's latest novel is an unforgettable roller coaster of passion, surprise, and regret. Once again, Burke proves why he is the virtual poet laureate of southern Louisiana, and why his novels, especially those featuring Dave Robicheaux, stand as brilliant literature and entertainment for our time.
February 25, 2007
by Anne Tyler (discussion to be led by Joyce Delaney). Maggie Moran's mission is to connect and unite people, whether they want to be united or not. Maggie is a meddler and as she and her husband, Ira, drive 90 miles to the funeral of an old friend, Ira contemplates his wasted life and the traffic, while Maggie hatches a plant to reunite her son Jesse with his long-estranged wife and baby. As Ira explains, "She thinks the people she loves are better than they really are, and so then she starts changing things around to suit her view of them." Though everyone criticizes her for being "ordinary," Maggie's ability to see the beauty and potential in others ultimately proves that she is the only one fighting the resignation they all fear. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1989.
March 25, 2007
The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem
by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan (discussion to be led by John and Sharon Ewing). Taking Mark, the earliest Gospel, as their guide, Borg and Crossan "retell a story everyone thinks they know too well and most do not seem to know at all." So doing, they offer an alternative passion of the Christ, the primary feature of which is not suffering but passion, understood as "consuming interest, dedicated enthusiasm, or concentrated commitment." Jesus' passion was the kingdom of God declared in terms of God's justice, they say, and the fact that such declaration was seen, despite Jesus' nonviolence, as a threat to the system of domination by Rome and its wealthy Jewish collaborators led to his suffering.
May 20, 2007
by Susan Orlean (discussion to be led by Ilga Pakalns). The Orchid Thief centers on south Florida and John Laroche, a quixotic, charismatic schemer once convicted of attempting to take endangered orchids from the Fakahatchee swamp, a state preserve. Laroche, a horticultural consultant who once ran an extensive nursery for the Seminole tribe, dreams of making a fortune for the Seminoles and himself by cloning the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii. Even Orlean--so leery of orchid fever that she immediately gives away any plant that's pressed upon her by the growers in Laroche's circle--develops a desire to see a ghost orchid blooming and makes several ultimately unsuccessful treks into the Fakahatchee. Filled with Palm Beach socialites, Native Americans, English peers, smugglers, and naturalists as improbably colorful as the tropical blossoms that inspire them, this is a lyrical, funny, addictively entertaining read.
June 24, 2007
by T.C. Boyle (discussion to be led by Bobbi Bruce). In this timely novel, T.C. Boyle seriously examines social and political issues. He establishes an obvious dichotomy by interweaving the scrapping, makeshift, in-the-present lives of illegal aliens Candido and America Rincon with the politically correct, suburban, plan-for-the-future existence of wealthy Americans Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher. The Rincons' lives, though full of fear and hardship, contain far more passion and endurance than the Mossbachers' mundane and materialistic lifestyles. An initial, pivotal car accident briefly unites, and ultimately separates, Delaney and Candido, provoking question after question concerning immigration, unemployment, discrimination, and social responsibility. Surprisingly, Boyle manages to address these issues in a nonjudgmental fashion, depicting the vast inequity in these parallel existences. This highly engaging story subtly plays on our consciences, forcing us to form, confirm, or dispute social, political, and moral viewpoints.
2005–2006
September 18
by James Lee Burke (discussion to be led by Mary Lawrence Aitken). Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life - and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all.
October 30
by Khaled Hosseini (discussion to be led by Susan Harris). As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, Amir and Hassan are inseparable. they spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories until an unspeakable event changes their relationship forever. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains hauhted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and his quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.
November 20
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott (discussion to be led by Marge Stallman). Traveling Mercies chronicled Anne Lamott's slow journey toward faith. Lamott still insists upon sugarcoating nothing in this enlightening update. she combines brilliant sparks of wit, self-deprecating humor, wisdom, and appreciation in these essays. But the lesson is the same: Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity. Although Lamott has had her share of life struggles, she sure makes it look easy. As Lamott says: God has extremely low standards.
January 22
by Arundhati Roy (discussion to be led by Ilga Pakalns). In this story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the consequences of forbidden love, twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. When their cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability, yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
February 26
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler (discussion to be led by Joyce Delaney). Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through loife's obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace.
March 19
by Marilynne Robinson (discussion to be led by Carlo Uchello). Narrator John Ames is 77 years old, infailing health, with a much younger wife and six-year-old son; as a preacher in the small Iowa town where he spent his entire life. This extended letter from an aging pastor to his young son works on many levels. Philosophically, it delves into morality, racial justice, the decline of religion in American life, and the nature of faith in a beautiful, often undecipherable, world. On the personal level, it offers soul-searching lessons for fathers and sons.
May 21
by sue Monk Kidd (discussion to be led by Patsie Uchello). Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair is the soulful tale of Jessie Sullivan, a middle-aged woman whose stifled dreams and desires take shape during an extended stay on Egret Island, where she is caring for her troubled mother, Nelle. Like Kidd's stunning debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, her highly anticipated follow up evokes the same magical sense of whimsy and poignancy.
June 18
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi (discussion to be led by Marge Stallman). Reading Lolita in Tehran is a brilliant, evocative, chilling, and highly literary memoir of life as a woman in Iran under the current repressive government. Although Nafisi focuses on the secret meetings at her home with several female former students, during which they read and discuss banned works of Western literature, the book is also a portrait of a life of fear and optimism at a time when hope is elusive.
2004–2005
September 19
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
by Karen Armstrong (discussion to be led by Ilga Pakalns). At the age of 17 – too young, she recognizes now, to have made such a momentous decision – Karen Armstrong entered a Roman Catholic convent, smitten by the desire to "find God." The Spiral Staircase tells the spellbinding story of her spiritual journey, beginning with her departure in 1969 from the convent – hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God.
by Ron Hansen (discussion to be led by Ilga Pakalns). Mariette in Ecstasy is a quiet and forceful study of religious passion, in which a 17 year old girl enters the cloistered convent of Our Lady of the Afflictions as a postulant in rural, upstate New York just after the turn of the 20th century.
October 31
by Susan Vreeland (discussion to be led by Carlo Uchello). There are only 35 known Vermeers extant in the world today. In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland posits the existence of a 36th. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of his colleagues. He claims to have an authentic Vermeer painting, and says only that his father "picked it up, let us say, at an advantageous moment."
November 21
by Tracy Kidder (discussion to be led by Connie Wilmot). At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious–disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world–class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.
January 23
by Anna Quindlen (discussion to be led by Marjy Jones). In an instant, the world of the estate called Blessings is changed forever. This is the story of Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, who finds a baby asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep her, and of matriarch Lydia Blessing, who, for her own reasons, decides to help him. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The Washington Post Book World said, "Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family."
February 27
by James Lee Burke (discussion to be led by Joyce Delaney). The Neon Rain pits New Orleans homicide detective Dave Robichaux against the mob, the contras, the Feds, and just about all the other cops. The trouble starts when Robichaux insists on investigating the murder of a young prostitute and discovers that it isn't only the crooks who don't want the truth to come out: the police don't want it revealed, either.
April 17
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
by Elaine Pagels (discussion to be led by Susan Harris). Elaine Pagels, one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work The Gnostic Gospels, reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the 21 century. Her new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945.
May 22
by Irshad Manji (discussion to be led by T. Joly). In blunt, provocative, and deeply personal terms, Irshad Manji unearths the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today: tribal insularity, deep–seated anti–Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God. Manji offers a practical vision of how the United States and its allies can help Muslims undertake a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities, and fosters a competition of ideas.
June 19
by Lynn Schnurnberger and Janice Kaplan (discussion to be led by Patsie Uchello). In The Botox Diaries, Best friends Jess and Lucy have seen each other through everything: Jess' divorce from her sexy French husband and the adoption of her daughter, Jen; Lucy's marriage to the perfect suburban father, Dan, and her tenacious clawing to the top of the television show production heap. Now they face their forties and must get through what appears to be a second childhood.
2003–2004
September 14
The Varieties of Religious Experience
by William James (discussion to be led by Ilga Pakalns). This classic work on the psychology of religion proposes that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter all support his thesis.
October 19
by Gail Tsukiyama Tsukiyama (discussion to be led by Connie Wilmot). The Samurai's Garden has been described as an extraordinary graceful and moving novel about goodness and beauty. Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20–year–old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese costal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis, where he recovers his physical strength but also profound spiritual insight.
November 23
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
by Adam Nicolson (discussion to be led by Susan Harris). The King James Bible is arguably the greatest work of English prose ever written. About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions. How did such ordinary men make such extraordinary prose? In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king; of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible; of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.
January 25
by Wallace Stegner (discussion to be led by Marjy Jones). In Wallace Stegner's American classic, wheelchair–bound historian Lyman Ward decides to write about the frontier lives of his grandparents at a time when he has lost connection with his living family. It is an enterprise that will cast as much light on the lives of the members of succeeding generations as on the grandparents'. Last year, Angle of Repose was selected by the board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.
February 22
Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith and Community
by Diana Butler Bass (discussion to be led by the author, Diana Butler Bass). Diana Butler Bass writes of her life in eight different Episcopal churches and even if the book stopped there, it would be magnificent. Each chapter is more intriguing than the last, but what strikes the heart is Bass's own journey from conservative evangelicalism to mainline liberalism. This book records a soul's search for God and communion with God's people.
March 21
by Sue Monk Kidd (discussion to be led by Carlo Uchello). In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14–year–old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well–written coming–of–age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest.
May 23
by Jared Diamond (discussion to be led by Skip Jones). In his winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.
June 27
by Kathleen Norris (discussion to be led by Marge Stallman). A book of stories, a book of prayer, a book to be read meditatively and well, Kathleen Norris offers a timeless tribute to a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth. From the award–winning author of Amazing Grace, Dakota is Kathleen Norris at her most thoughtful, her most discerning, and her best.
2002–2003
September 29
by James Carroll. Constantine's Sword is a sprawling work of history, theology, and personal confession. Carroll begins his landmark project by describing contemporary Catholic remembrances of the Holocaust and the Church's intolerable legacy of hostility towards Jews.
October 20
by Gail Tsukiyama. The Samurai's Garden has been described as an extraordinary graceful and moving novel about goodness and beauty. Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20–year–old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese costal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis, where he recovers his physical strength but also profound spiritual insight.
November 24
by Wallace Stegner. Called a "magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom," Crossing to Safety has established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.
January 19
by Nick Hornby. Kate, a doctor, wife and mother, is in the midst of a difficult decision: whether to leave or stay with her bitter, sarcastic husband David (who proudly writes a local newspaper column called "The Angriest Man in Holloway"). The long–term marriage has gone stale, but is it worth uprooting the children and the comfortable lifestyle?
February 16
by Richard Russo. In the small Maine town of Empire Falls, replete with long defunct logging and textile mills, the Whiting clan embarks on its inexorable demise. The family has owned the town and controlled its environment, economy and inhabitants for generations. Why and how they bring about their own demise unfolds slowly, character by character, incident by incident, year by year.
March 23
by Studs Terkel. In Studs Terkel's powerful new book, Will the Circle be Unbroken? a wide range of people address death and its impact on the present in which we live. In talking about the ultimate and unknowable culmination of our lives, these people give voice to their deepest beliefs and hopes, reflecting on the lives they have led and what still lies before them. The result is a book that may well be Terkel's most popular, a universal and deeply moving account of death and religion.
May 25
by Henri Nouwen. This little paperback contains some of the greatest, most basic truths of Christianity, silence, solitude, and prayer, and reminds us that in the practice of these simple truths that we can find the true essence of God and of our relationship to Him.
June 22
by Yann Martel. A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement – "a story that will make you believe in God," as one character says.
2001–2002
September 9
by C. S. Lewis. At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C. S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly–wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging and humorous account of temptation – and triumph over it – ever written.
October 14
by Anne Tyler. On the first page of Tyler's stunning new novel, Rebecca Davitch realizes that she has become the "wrong person." No longer the "serene and dignified young woman" she was at 20, at 53 Rebecca finds she has become family caretaker and cheerleader, a woman with a "style of dress edging dangerously close to Bag Lady." So she tries to do something about it.
December 9
by Louis DeBernieres. This novel, set on the idyllic Greek island of Cephallonia, follows the lives of its inhabitants from the peaceful days before World War II through the Italian occupation of the island into the present. It is funny, heartbreaking, and horrifying in its fictional testimony to the changes the war exacts on the drunken town priest, the bumpkin fisherman, the gay man who enlists in the army before the war, and the other townspeople.
February 10
Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream
by John Derbyshire. This novel is the story of Chai, a former Red Guard from Northeastern China who fled his country by swimming to Hong Kong, eventually making his way to the U.S. Happily married and living in Long Island, he has developed an obsession for Calvin Coolidge, whose low–key, laissez–faire approach to government makes him sound to Chai like the ideal Confucian leader. Through Chai, we gain insights on the difference between China, where citizens are crushed by the weight of a long and enduring history, and the United States, where a relative lack of history gives its citizens the opportunity to endlessly remake themselves.
April 14
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. From the Nobel Prize–winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than 50 years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr. Juvenal Urbino so many years before, Garcia Marquez has created a vividly absorbing fictional world, as lush and dazzling as a dream and as real and immediate as our own deepest longings.
June 9
by Beverly Donofrio. When Beverly Donofrio entered her fortieth year, she began a love affair with the Virgin Mary. Suffering from guilt over a grown son she's neglected and unsure of where her life is really headed, she begins to meditate, and to collect statues of the Virgin Mary at yard sales. Beverly is hardly a devout Catholic: she starts out thinking of her Mary collection as nothing more than kitsch. But by effectively making a shrine of her home, she has invited the Virgin Mary in. Knowing a good opportunity when she sees one, the Virgin Mary sneaks into Beverly's heart.