On the Second Sunday of each month, the Book Club will meet to discuss a literary offering, from Autobiography to Mystery, from Children's Books to Historical Drama, we're covering a range of tastes and genres. You might get to read something you'd never think of reading or even one of your old time favorites. 

Margot Nelson's
2970 Corte Hermosa 
Newport Beach, CA 92660

Discussion 4:30 - 6:30 PM
Because Book Clubs are so civilized, and so the evening can be enjoyed by all, we do have a few rules: 

1. You can only discuss the portions of the book you have read.
2. Practice courteous public group behavior. 
3. Arrive on time. 
4. Take turns talking. 
5. Listen when others are talking. 
6. Stick to the point of the discussion.  
7. Trust your own opinions. 
8. Have opinions to contribute, but don’t dominate the discussion. 
9. Once you’ve made your own point, let it go and enjoy considering all the different ways other people look at the same issue.  

(These rules were gleaned from "How to Run a Book Club" by Dorothy Hodder.)

If you'd like to bring a main dish, or anything else, please RSVP to ecaldwell@aol.com

THINGS FALL APART

by Chinua Achebe

One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. In 2009, Newsweek ranked Things Fall Apart #14 on its list of Top 100 Books: The Meta-List.

WHEN: August 22, 2010, 4:30 - 6:30 PM Note the date change
WHERE: Margot's House, 2970 Corte Hermosa, Newport Beach

PEACE LIKE A RIVER

by Leif Enger

To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the center of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of the northern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's how it went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty. 

In the winter of his 11th year, two schoolyard bullies break into the Lands' house, and Rube's big brother Davy guns them down with a Winchester. Shortly after his arrest, Davy breaks out of jail and goes on the lam. Swede is Rube's younger sister, a precocious writer who crafts rhymed epics of romantic Western outlawry. Shortly after Davy's escape, Rube, Swede, and their father, a widowed school custodian, hit the road too, swerving this way and that across Minnesota and North Dakota, determined to find their lost outlaw Davy. In the end it's not Rube who haunts the reader's imagination, it's his father, torn between love for his outlaw son and the duty to do the right, honest thing. Enger finds something quietly heroic in the bred-in-the-bone Minnesota decency of America's heartland. Peace Like a River opens up a new chapter in Midwestern literature.

WHEN: September 12, 4:30 - 6:30 PM 
WHERE: Margot's House, 2970 Corte Hermosa, Newport Beach

THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

by C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain answers the universal question, "Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow people to experience pain and suffering?" Master Christian apologist C.S. Lewis asserts that pain is a problem because our finite, human minds selfishly believe that pain-free lives would prove that God loves us. 

WHEN: October 10, 2010, 4:30 - 6:30 PM 
WHERE: Margot's House, 2970 Corte Hermosa, Newport Beach

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

by Charles Dickens

In his "Ghostly little book," Charles Dickens invents the modern concept of Christmas Spirit and offers one of the world’s most adapted and imitated stories. We know Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, not only as fictional characters, but also as icons of the true meaning of Christmas in a world still plagued with avarice and cynicism.

WHEN: November 14, 2010, 4:30 - 6:30 PM 
WHERE: Margot's House, 2970 Corte Hermosa, Newport Beach

ATLAS SHRUGGED

by Ayn Rand

In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts? In defense of those greatest of human qualities that have made civilization possible, one man sets out to show what would happen to the world if all the heroes of innovation and industry went on strike. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? And why does he fight his hardest battle not against his enemies but against the woman he loves? Tremendous in scope and breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus, an electrifying moral defense of capitalism and free enterprise which launched an ideological movement and gained millions of loyal fans around the world.

WHEN: January 9, 2011, 4:30 - 6:30 PM 
WHERE: Margot's House, 2970 Corte Hermosa, Newport Beach