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The group is reading:
The Golden Compass
(His Dark Materials book 1)
by Philip Pullman
The Golden Compass
is a complex story that turns on a simple word: "Dust."
This Dust does not gather in the unswept corners of Jordan College,
Lyra's Oxford home. Rather, this Dust seems to reveal - or perhaps
contain - the thing that makes each human being a unique creature. The
concept of Dust provokes fear in some; others realize that mastery over
Dust could be the source of great power. Although she does not quite
realize it, Lyra - along with her dæmon Pantalaimon - finds her life
inextricably entangled with the exploration of Dust. And as her
understanding of Dust and her mastery over a mysterious tool called the
alethiometer increases, the dangerous journey that she seems destined to
make takes some astounding twists and turns.
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The group is reading:
Hotel on
the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by
Jamie Ford
In the opening
pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner
of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered
outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has
been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible
discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded
up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the
owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the
war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and
to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow
up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary,
where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese
American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry
and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the
long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and
her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and
Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their
promise to each other will be kept.
Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko.
In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe
family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin
to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words
that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might
bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that
might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American
history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and
Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of
the power of forgiveness and the human heart.
Book
Discussion Group