Dates and events
30 January 2007: White Mughals (William Dalrymple)
27 February 2007: The Glass Palace (Amitav Ghosh)
27 March 2007: Foreign Babes in Beijing (Rachel De Woskin)
24 April 2007: various (see note/comment)
29 May 2007: Human Traces (Sebastian Faulks) OR Observations (Jane Harris)
26 June 2007: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 25th Anniversary Edition by Robert M. Pirsig
OR
The Apologist by Jay Rayner
31 July 2007: “A good holiday read” – choose a book and come along ready to persuade others that it would be a good read!
25 September 2007: One Good Turn (Kate Atkinson)
30 October 2007:
27 November 2007:
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April’s Book
After the last meeting it was suggested that rather than we all read the same book, we read a book from the following list. We don’t tell what we’ve read until we share it the next meeting. We are sticking to the theme from the East.
The suggested titles are –
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
When O-lan, a servant girl, marries the peasant Wang Lung, she toils tirelessly through four pregnancies for their family’s survival. Reward at first is meagre, but there is sustenance in the land – until the famine comes. Half-starved, the family joins thousands of peasants to beg on the city streets. It seems that all is lost, until O-lan’s desperate will to survive returns them home with undreamt of wealth. But they have betrayed the earth from which true wealth springs, and the family’s money breeds only mistrust, deception – and heartbreak for the woman who had saved them. THE GOOD EARTH is a riveting family saga and story of female sacrifice – a classic of twentieth-century literature.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
This book is about a grand friendship which, like all marriages at the time, was arranged. The eight characters of Lily and Snow Flower matched, according to the matchmaker, but still the girls were so different: Lily was very attached to traditions and stubbornly wanted to follow the rules, while Snow Flower was “modern”, she enjoyed sex, she was desperate over her newborn death despite it being a “worthless” babygirl, she was interested in politics and culture. This friendship went through many hard years, but still was the focal point of the lives of the two girls: it doesn’t matter where and how long ago the story was set, their friendship was so much similar to those of nowadays – including the secrets, the fights and the misunderstadings.
Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
Mo’s main characters in an unknowing innocent simply living their live, such that the reader can see the wider implications of their actions when they cannot do so themselves. “Sour Sweet”, the thought of triad involvement is more often with the reader than with the characters. Often, the dramas that unfold in the story are the result of quirky accidents rather than design – but that’s what gives the stories such authenticity. Consequently, you feel as if you’re a privileged observer quietly watching the characters live their ordinary lives for a few years.
The Secrets of Jin-Shei by Alma Alexander
This story takes you on a Journey from a child into old age of a young girl named Tai and her Jin-shei circle. Each sister features her own special talent. Each sister in the Jin-shei circle is living for the other sister. Apart from one sister who expects to be obeyed by her Jin-sei sisters to fulfil every dream she has and orders that must be met at any cost-after all she is the dragon Empress.
This is a special bond and takes these girls on a journey in medieval China as they become sisters of the heart. They are not born as family, but chose to be sisters through this special jin Shei circle.
Tai is the poet or embroiders’ daughter she is soft and the most genuine sister, Nhia has a fasination with the temple and the gods and is the washer womens daughter again similar to Tai and has a heart of gold, Yuet is the healer, Quian is Guardsman’s daughter with a gentle touch and wants to live for the needy and the poor, Xaforn is the Guard-the best trained guard that the guard chamber holds, Amri is the Gypsy girl that is a fantastic dancer, Khalin is the daughter of a father who has links to the courts-she has the a fasination in immortality and death, the gods and the temple sages and then there is Luidan who is the Empress the ‘Dragan Empress’. She became the dragon Empress after she declares she will run the empire without an Emperor. She takes her Jin shei sister through the most difficult and agonising task to achieve her goals. This is where the sisterhood comes to breaking point and Tai is left alone with her poems and her thoughts on her sisters.
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
From the author of the international bestseller, Red Azalea, comes the stirring, croucally charged story of the woman known as ‘the white-boned demon’ – the ambitious wife of Chairman Mao whose actions led to the death of millions in the Cultural Revolution. From the young, unwanted daughter of a concubine, defiant in her refusal to have her feet bound, to the wayward, beautiful actress on the stages of Shanghai, to the ruthless, charismatic partner of the great revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong, Anchee Min moves seamlessly from the intimately personal to the broad sweep of world history in this fascinating portrait of an extraordinary woman driven by ambition, betrayal and a desperate need to be loved. Finely nuanced and always ambiguous, Min penetrates the myth surrounding Madame Mao with passion and sensitivity to paint a surprising picture of one of history’s most vilified women. Rich with compressed drama and all the lyrical poetry of great opera, Becoming Madame Mao is a startling and moving achievement.
Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester
Fragrant Harbour is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia’s last seventy years. Tom Stewart leaves England to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong’s best hotel. Sister Maria is a beautiful and uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face of money and power and big business. Matthew Ho is a young Chinese entrepreneur whose life has been shaped by painful choices made long before his birth.
Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet by Mary Craig
From the author of Kundun , a powerful work that reveals the true horrors behind Chinas liberation of Tibet. . Since 1959, when China claimed power over this tiny mountain nation, more than one million Tibetans are believed to have perished by starvation, execution, imprisonment, and abortive uprisings. Many thousands more, including their spiritual and political leader, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, have been driven into exile. The country has been systematically colonized, so that indigenous inhabitants are now a second-class minority. Not only are Tibetans being squeezed out by Chinese settlers, but there are reports of Tibetan women being forcibly sterilized and of healthy full-term babies being killed at birth. Thousands of Tibetans languish in prison and suffer appalling torture. Rich mineral resources have been plundered and the delicate ecosystem devastated. Buddhism, the life blood of Tibet, has been ruthlessly suppressed. Mary Craig tells the story of Tibet with candor and power. Based upon extensive research and interviews with large numbers of refugees now living in exile in India, this book presents four decades of religious persecution, environmental devastation, and human atrocities that have caused Tibetans to weep tears of blood.