Book list from/for the book club
The book discussion’s group yearly planning meeting was held Thursday morning. 20 books were suggested for consideration to be included in the program. See the full list below, out of which nine will be selected to be read by the group.
- Maggie Anton: Rashi’s Daughters, Book III: Rachel: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France
- Paul Auster : The Brooklyn Follies
- Muriel Barbery : The Elegance of the Hedgehog
- Dave Boling: Guernica
- Dov Peretz Elkins (editor): Jewish Stories from Heaven and Earth: Inspiring Tales to Nourish the Heart and Soul
- Jonathon Keats : The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six
- Steve Luxenberg: Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret
- Peter Manseau : Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter
- Claire Messud: The last life
- Jonah Raskin: Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California
- Tatiana de Rosnay: Sarah’s Key
- Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things
- Ariel Sabar: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
- Asne Seierstad : A Hundred And One Days: A Baghdad Journal
- Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge
- Sandy Tolan: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
- Margaret Truman : Bess W. Truman
- Burton L Visotzky: A Delightful Compendium of Consolation: A Fabulous Tale of Romance, Adventure and Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean
- Markus Zusak : The Book Thief
Jeannette Katzir:
I would like to send you my memoir Broken Birds, The Story of My Momila, for your book club to consider. How and to whom do I send it?
Broken Birds examines the Holocaust, not as an event frozen in history, but as a looming force shaping the lives of future generations.
Like so many other survivors, my parents immigrated to America after World War II, attempting to regain a sense of normalcy in Suburban California. Despite new surroundings, they could not escape the psychological effects of their pasts. They raised my four siblings and me according to the laws they learned during the war—laws that are an ill fit for normal life. As we grew into adults and formed families of our own, we found ourselves at odds with the lessons our mother taught us—lessons to cling desperately to one another while viewing the world outside our home as a place filled with imminent danger.
Broken Birds is the memoir of my experiences as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, from the horrific events that shaped my parents to the collapse of a family whose identity was built around the atrocities they survived.
Broken Birds is the work of extensive study of both my own family history and the experiences of families like mine. I have spent the last few years of my life digging through old family documents and photographs and lining my parents’ stories up against the events of history. I also gained invaluable insight from the personal testimonies of other survivors, whose perspectives enabled me to better understand and explain the parents who raised me. Their stories, my parents’ stories, and the stories of all first and second generation survivors fuel this book.
Jeanette Katzir thebrokenbirds@aol.comå
31 December 2009, 1:47 pm