shanghai book club

The same college counselor moved to another school this year in Shanghai, and she started a book club there too. I snagged this list of their books to share.


October: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

December: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

January: Freedom: a novel by Jonathan Franzen

February: The Marriage Plot by Jefferey Eugenides

March: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

April: The Paris Wife; A Novel by Paula McLain

May: Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows

The only book of theirs that I have read is Outliers by Gladwell, and I really liked it. He explores why certain people/groups/stereotypes exist for being outliers in their field. I've heard a lot about Jonathan Franzen, so I would definitely like to read that book. I'm sure all of them are great, but we will see if I get around to reading any, and I will share if I do.

BLBC reading list

Last year, the college counselor at the school I worked at in Bulgaria decided that we should have a book club. She named it the Bulgarian Ladies Book Club, though we were all non-Bulgarian but living in Bulgaria, working at the school. I had never done anything like that, but I dearly missed English classes and discussing books, so I was in from the first email. In addition to reading and discussing, another key aspect was eating. Each month, we would have a meeting to discuss a book. One pair would take care of the discussion questions and another pair (usually the ones hosting it at their residence) would make a lot of delicious food. It was wonderful. I really miss it.

We even compiled recipes that I then turned into an orderable book. Check it out here.

Anyway, here is a list of the books that we read over the course of the year together. I think they were trying to set up another book club for this year, so I will see if I can get my hands on that list.


The BLBC 2010 - 2011 Book List:

October:
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

November:
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonesca

December:
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

February:
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

March:
Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories by Cynthia Morrison Phoel

April:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

May:  
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson makes another appearance. And he will keep on doing so if I ever write about all his books that I've read. This one had the double draw to me of being by Bryson and about the English language.

The Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson

A note: the link above is a link to the google book version of the book, which as far as I can tell, is the electronic version of the whole book.

It took me quite some time to read this, but that is because I was being a lazy pleasure reader and not because it wasn't interesting. It has all of Bryson's trademark factoids and humor, and it outlines the development and use of the language well.

While reading this, I kept thinking of my students in Bulgaria, whom I was trying to teach more about English reading and writing. Bryson makes an effort to explain why English is the strange language that it is, how it got that way, and how it is effecting the world today. There were so many small facts that I learned that I wished I had read the book before going to Bulgaria because I'm pretty sure I could have answered a lot more questions about my language. While I think anyone would benefit from reading this and find it interesting, I think it would be a great book for my students to read. It definitely requires a pretty strong command of the English language, but it explains so many things that we struggle with in the process of learning or teaching or using it that it provides a sense of relief at the clarification.

Some particularly funny parts were when he talked about English dialects, words in other languages (like long German word phrases, Welsh, Australian sayings, English cockney, and so on). He has an entire chapter on names, so obviously much of that is aimed at the comical. Another of the later chapters is on wordplay and the various types of wordplay that exist. My students are already familiar with the lipogram, but there were many types that I had never heard of, like a holorime or a Clerihew.

What the Dog Saw

Last year while I was in Bulgaria, this was one of the books I read. I bought it in Amsterdam after I finished the book club book that I brought with me. I really love Gladwell's books and articles because he researches interesting, real life things and then writes about them. They usually aren't really all that related to each other. This is his most recent book, but I also read two others that I'll get around to posting.

What the Dog Saw
Malcolm Gladwell

A unique thing about this book is that it is a collection of articles/essays that he wrote for the New Yorker. Therefore, each chapter stands alone as a study of whatever subject he chose. Another great thing is that there is a website that has links to all the chapter's original articles, which means you can read the whole book online via the article links.

I used excerpts from one of the chapter/articles in my class in Bulgaria last year. One of the later chapters in the book was about late bloomers and why we associate genius with precocity. I wanted my students to practice reading and analyzing what they read and then comparing it to their lives. I also wanted them to not feel discouraged if they weren't one of the precocious types and may be a late bloomer. It can be very frustrating to struggle in the beginning, and I hope that they (and everyone else) don't give up or have a negative opinion about something just because it isn't easy for them. I think math certainly has this effect on a lot of people. In many respects, I am lucky to understand it well. But I wonder how much of that comes from 4th grade, when I decided that I hated math and didn't like it and my dad said, "no daughter of mine is going to be bad at math," and quizzed me on my times tables and other homework until I knew it like the back of my hand. From then on, I always loved math. I can't really say whether it is related to how my brain works or that I learned to push through the confusion until I figured out how it worked.

The list of chapters from the website with the links and quick snippets of what they are about:


The Pitchman - Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen. (Oct 30, 2000)

The Ketchup Conundrum - Mustard now comes in dozens of different varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same? (Sept 6, 2004)

Blowing Up - How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy. (Apr 22, 2002)

True Colors - Hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America. (Mar 22, 1999)

John Rock's Error - What the inventor of the birth control pill didn't know about women's health. (Mar 13, 2000)

What the Dog Saw - Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery. (May 22, 2006)

Open Secrets - Enron, intelligence and the perils of too much information. (Jan 8, 2007)

Million Dollar Murray - Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage. (Feb 13, 2006)

The Picture Problem - Mammography, air power, and the limits of looking. (Dec 13, 2004)

Something Borrowed - Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? (Nov 22, 2004)

Connecting the Dots - The paradoxes of intelligence reform. (Mar 10, 2003)

The Art of Failure - Why some people choke and others panic. (August 21, 2000)

Blowup - Who can be blamed for a disaster like the Challenger explosion? No one, and we'd better get used to it. (Jan 22, 1996)

Most Likely to Succeed - How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job. (Dec 15, 2008)

Dangerous Minds - Criminal profiling made easy. (Nov 12, 2007)

The Talent Myth - Are smart people over-rated? (Jul 22, 2002)

Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity? (Oct 20, 2008)

The New Boy Network - What do job interviews really tell us? (May 29, 2000)

Troublemakers - What pit bulls can teach us about crime. (Feb 6, 2006)