Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The University of Washington eight man crew team rowed their way into the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Berlin.  This is their story.  Although it is primarily about the sport - its coaches, the boats, the competition - it is also about the era.  One of the young men on the team, Joe Rantz, provides us the life story that is a window into the times - the poverty, the desire to get an education, the Depression in general.  Many of the details of the story come from his daughter who was interviewed for the book. This is also a fascinating look at Hitlers Germany.  So many life lessons attached to this one event.  I started it Eugene waiting for my red-eyed flight and finished it that morning in the Newark airport.  It was great to read it from cover to cover.  It is a non-fiction book that reads like a novel - AND - you can actually still see the boat on the UW campus.

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

In spite of her life a sequestered Carmelite nun, Sister John has gained significant recognition for her inspirational poetry.  She believes her writing is a gift delivered directly from God.  When she begins experiencing extreme headaches and seizures, brain surgery is recommended.  It might mean an end to her poetry but what does it mean for her connection with God?  Where does a person's faith reside? Surgery or no surgery - which choice represents a positive quality of life?  Lots of points of discussion in this very short book.

Ake:the years of childhood by Wole Soyinke

Wole Soyinke, a Nigerian poet and playwright, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 - the first African to do so.  This is very young Wole as the brilliant, sensitive observer of Yoruba life in his Nigerian town of Abeokuta.  Although he came from an educated family, he was not immune to the comings and goings of village life.  There are tragic moments in this story but this is a life filled with the joy of discovery as Wole strives to make sense of a world we can only understand from afar.  The importance of family, the love of learning, and the respect for tradition are the lenses Wole uses to help us understand life in "Ake".

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr

"..mathematically speaking, all light is invisible...".  this is just one part  of the fascinating lectures Werner and his sister Jutte are able to listen to on their hidden radio.  Orphaned in prewar Germany - brilliant Werner dreams of a life as a scientist while he strives to protect his  practical sister.  Meanwhile, in Paris, Marie-Laure, blind at a young age, wanders through the Natural History Museum soaking up nature's wisdom through her fingertips and the guidance of her father.  Twice he builds perfect scale models of the neighborhoods they live in for her fingers to create an internal map and encourage her independence.  Hitler's Germany will set  both Werner and Marie-Laure on paths that will connect in fatalistic ways.  This is a story of the devastation of WWll that took place beyond the battlefields and the death camps - the small towns that offered sanctuary and resistance, the people who believed the lie and then suffered the consequences or traded the lie for a greater dangerous truth.  The language is often poetic but the bad guys are just as ugly. 

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Even if you don't read this book while sitting in front of the Cathedral in Santa Fe, you will still feel like you have dropped back into New Mexico in the 19th century.  Each chapter is an episode in the simple challenging lives of Bishop Latour and his good friend Father Villiant.  It is such a story of time and place and what life must have been like in the frontier.  You might also ponder what the world would be like if all the missionaries that went out in the world had been so interested and respectful of the cultures they encountered.

Quiet by Susan Cain

Cain argues that in a world where the culture of personality has replaced the culture of character, there is not enough opportunity to hear the voice of the introvert.  To the introverts of the world this book provides validation of their quieter nature and multiple examples of the contributions made by people like them.  To the extroverts of the world the request is clear - slow down, step back, leave space for the voices and opinions of the introverts.  Cain has done a lot of reading and research for the book but although she is former lawyer and a current author, she is not a trained scientist.  The fact that all the research she references supports her premise puts this is the pop psychology category for me.  I did enjoy the chapters about how partners argue (or discuss - depending on whether you are an introvert or an extrovert) and the teacher/student examples are worth thinking about for both teachers and parents.  Wherever you place yourself on the introvert/extrovert continuum, there is much to think about and it is great book group fodder - just make sure the extroverts don't dominate the conversation.

graphic the valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

Tenaya was named after a great Yosemiti warrior.  He has never left the Merced valley or the rocky outlines of Yosemite Park.  He and his Yosemiti parents have lived deep in the hidden valleys of the park, eating off the land, scavenging those things left behind by the tourists, out of sight of the rangers.  He has never been to school and, although he can read well enough, he understands little of the world described in the occasional newspaper he finds.  There is not a rock face he cannot climb, not a turn of the wind and weather he cannot interpret.  He never questions the life he has been nobly born into - until Lucy.   He has always understood that he bore some responsibility to challenge with any means possible the world's encroaching hotels and hamburger stands that are about to alter his valley forever  - until McKenzie.  A survivor and a warrior, he finds his clear sense of purpose blurred by these strange new passions.  And if the Sampson and Delilah similarity wasn't enough from the beginning, a natural disaster of biblical proportions will make it clear in the end.  The language is sometimes poetic, the tragic Native American history woven throughout all too familiar, and the jumping back and forth in time sometimes confusing but you can't help wanting to read to see what happens in the end.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I was looking forward to one of my favorite historical intrigues - the court of Henry VIII - More, Cromwell (the central figure in this trilogy), Wolsey, Boleyn - the whole crew.  They are all here but after the first 300 pages or so, it all just seemed incestuous, narcissistic, nasty and repetitive. And  I was barely half way though the book.  In the end, Henry was still married to Anne, More was history and everyone was still whining about the Church.  I guess all the good stuff happens in the next book, Bringing up the Bodies.  The really annoying thing about the book was that after a sentence referencing about three people (all either named Tom or Henry), the next sentence starts with "he".  He who?   It did win the Man Booker prize and received a lot of hoopla - whatever.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

June is just 14 when her beloved uncle and renown artist Finn Weiss dies of AIDS.  When his partner Toby reaches out to her, she is unsure how to respond.  Her mother believes Toby has caused Finn's death.  June is angry that her family and Finn kept Toby's existence hidden from her.  In addition, June is also mourning the change in her relationship with her own sister.  Always the perfect and beautiful one that June adored, Greta has grown hurtful and cruel.  Neither of the girls seem to be the ones in the final portrait painted by Finn.  But they are not the only ones in the family who are not what they seem to be.  Both generations suffer from their own resentments, secrets and regrets.  While it is Finn's death which brings many of these to light, it is Toby's that allows the healing to begin.  This is a story of grief, family and the AIDS of the 1980's told through the voice of a young girl trying to make sense of any of it.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

They came on boats at the beginning of the twentieth century clutching phony pictures and chasing false promises.  They were abused, abandoned and tested.  They were strong, disappointed, and broken.  They worked in the fields, in the homes of the wealthy and in small stores in J-town.  They raised families, buried children and forty years later they disappeared.  "They" are young mail order brides from Japan.  A mystery narrator follows the lives of the group by listing fictional specifics drawn from real documents using the consistent narrative style I began with.  It is not a pretty story from the beginning and, in the end, their incarceration forces the reader to ponder again one of America's most devastating decisions.