Hi everyone, first up, here is the information regarding our March book club gathering. We’ll be meeting on Friday, March 11 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Room

Our March read is Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

Print copies of the book are available for book club members to pick up at the Circulation Desk and eBook and digital audiobook version are available in the Digital Catalog (AKA Libby app).

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Secondly, and better late than never, here are the notes from our January meeting:

January 2022:

Our January meeting was held at the library on Friday, January 14, 2022 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Our January read was the slightly dystopian novel Klara And The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

I say the book is a “slightly dystopian” novel, because although the protagonist is an artificial life form, a basic android named Klara who was created to be a friend to a teenager; the book is set in the very near future and really could be set in our time.

As the book opens we are introduced to Klara who has been turned on by the Store Manager, and becomes self-aware at the shop where she is for sale. Klara  she discovers she is one of a number of artificial friends for sale; and the author does a great job of describing how Klara see the world while living in the shop, particularly in his description of how Klara, as a solar powered artificial friend, worships the sun. Klara is a good learner and does exactly what she is told to do by the Store Manager, while she is sitting in the display window at the front of the store.

Eventually Klara is purchased for a young teenage girl named Josie. Klara is purchased by Josie’s mother who is never referred to by her first name and whom Klara always thinks of as “The Mother.”

Klara goes home with Josie to live in her house as her friend. And the readers’ view of the plot unfolds as Klara experiences what life is like living in Josie’s household with Josie, Josie’s mother and Melania the Housekeeper. Also of note, on the very day she arrives at Josie’s house Klara also meets Josie’s best friend Rick, who lives next door, and who is flying several drones that he engineered.

And as she begins her new life as Josie’s friend, Klara realizes in short order, that Josie has some vague recurring health issue, that the adults imply that Rick has less of a chance of succeeding in life than Josie, and that Josie’s father who once had a good job was “substituted” and now lives apart from Josie and her mother in a fringe community.  

Klara is the reader’s guide for the story, and we learn what she learns as the plot unfolds; although with a bit more insight than Klara has. And cliff notes version of what happens in the rest of the book is that in the near future era the book is set in, parents have the option to have their children’s genetic code tweaked so that they will excel academically and be admitted to the best colleges. If a child has not has his or her genetic code adjusted than that child has much less of a chance of succeeding as an adult because he, or she, is not seen as being as good as a child who has had their genetic code tweaked. This genetic tweaking is something the fictional futuristic society of novel values, but it can be deadly. It is revealed that Josie had an older sister who died after her genetic code was re-written; that the tweaking of Josie’s genetic code is the reason she is frequently ill; that Rick is looked down on by adults because he didn’t have his genetic code tweaked; and that Klara was purchased not only to be Josie’s friend but to observe her so if Josie too were to die, than Klara could impersonate her for Josie’s mother – transitioning into a new role as a “new Josie.”

Josie survives her genetic tweaking illness, and by the end of the book she has gone off to college. And our friend Klara, and I say that as I felt Klara became a friend by the end of the book, and she really is the most sympathetic and likeable character in the book, has been disposed of. As the story ends readers discover that Klara has been left sitting outside in what one can infer is a junk yard for artificial friends and other disposable items; and readers are left pondering what Klara has learned and experienced; as well as the obvious related questions, is a good idea to create artificial life or to tweak the code of life that naturally exists?

The general consensus of the book club member is to give the novel Klara And The Sun a read-it thumbs-up as very interesting read; although several members noted that the world-view of Klara as an artificial life form with internal projection screens, and an A.I.’s view of the world, occasional presented a challenge in understanding what Klara was experiencing.

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Books Club Members Recommended at January meeting:

Gordo: Short Stories by Jamie Cortez: The first-ever collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. A young, probably gay, boy named Gordo puts on a wrestler’s mask and throws fists with a boy in the neighborhood, fighting his own tears as he tries to grow into the idea of manhood so imposed on him by his father. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, watches his father’s drunken fights, and discovers even his own documented Mexican-American parents are wary of illegal migrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist, uses tiny library pencils to draw huge murals of graffiti flowers along the camp’s blank walls, the words “CHICANO POWER” boldly lettered across, until she runs away from home one day with her mother’s boyfriend, Manny, and steals her mother’s Panasonic radio for a final dance competition among the camp kids before she disappears. And then there are Los Tigres, the perfect pair of twins so dark they look like indios, Pepito and Manuel, who show up at Gyrich Farms every season without fail. Los Tigres, champion drinkers, end up assaulting each other in a drunken brawl, until one of them is rushed to the emergency room still slumped in an upholstered chair tied to the back of a pick-up truck.

These scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious matters – who belongs to America and how are they treated? How does one learn decency, when laborers, grown adults, must fear for their lives and livelihoods as they try to do everything to bring home a paycheck? Written with balance and poise, Cortez braids together elegant and inviting stories about life on a California camp, in essence redefining what all-American means.

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach:

Experience Jonathan Livingston Seagull’s timeless and inspirational message like never before in the new complete edition of this philosophical classic, perfect for readers of all ages—now with a fourth part of Jonathan’s journey, as well as last words from author Richard Bach.

This is the story for people who follow their hearts and make their own rules…people who get special pleasure out of doing something well, even if only for themselves…people who know there’s more to this living than meets the eye: they’ll be right there with Jonathan, flying higher and faster than they ever dreamed.

A pioneering work that wed graphics with words, Jonathan Livingston Seagull now enjoys a whole new life

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A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash: For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can’t help sneaking a look at something he’s not supposed to—an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess’s. It’s a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he’s not prepared. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he now knows that a new understanding can bring not only a growing danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance as well.

Told by three resonant and evocative characters—Jess; Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience; and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past—A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. These are masterful portrayals, written with assurance and truth, and they show us the extraordinary promise of this remarkable first novel.

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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Like Ishiguro’s previous works (The Remains of the Day; When We Were Orphans), his sixth novel is so exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. The dystopian story it tells, meanwhile, gives it a different kind of electric charge. Set in late 1990s England, in a parallel universe in which humans are cloned and raised expressly to “donate” their healthy organs and thus eradicate disease from the normal population, this is an epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. By age 31, narrator (and clone) Kathy H has spent nearly 12 years as a “carer” to dozens of “donors.” Knowing that her number is sure to come up soon, she recounts—in excruciating detail—the fraught, minute dramas of her happily sheltered childhood and adolescence at Hailsham, an idyllic, isolated school/orphanage where clone-students are encouraged to make art and feel special. Protected (as is the reader, at first) from the full truth about their eventual purpose in the larger world, “we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information. But of course we’d take it in at some level, so that before long all this stuff was there in our heads without us ever having examined it properly.” This tension of knowing-without-knowing permeates all of the students’ tense, sweetly innocent interactions, especially Kath’s touchingly stilted love triangle with two Hailsham classmates, manipulative Ruth and kind-hearted Tommy. In savoring the subtle shades of atmosphere and innuendo in these three small, tightly bound lives, Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics. Publishers Weekly Review

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Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond:  Former model Diamond (Naked Rome) offers a transfixing chronicle of her coming-of-age bouncing from city to city and country to country to outrun the authorities. Her family—a tight band of five comprising her parents, sister, and brother—lived a life straight out of a thriller that was marked by false identities, financial schemes, deep mistrust, and a desperation to avoid Interpol officers. “By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities,” she writes. As her family flitted from India to South Africa to America—committing forgery and fraud along the way—she was taught how to survive through judo lessons and a detailed escape plan (which she was entrusted with at age 13) to use “if everything goes to hell”—but she never learned her parents’ real names to protect them and herself. In a propulsive, at times harrowing, narrative, Diamond recounts the tutelage of her psychologically abusive father, how she went from being homeless to a successful fashion model in New York City, and a debilitating illness that devastated her mind and body in her early 20s. Eloquent and bracing, Diamond’s story will haunt readers long after the last page. Publishers Weekly Review

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Prey by Michael Crichton: Michael Crichton’s Prey is a terrifying page-turner that masterfully combines a heart–pounding thriller with cutting-edge technology.

Deep in the Nevada desert, the Xymos Corporation has built a state-of-the-art fabrication plant, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but cactus and coyotes. Eight people are trapped. A self-replicating swarm of predatory molecules is rapidly evolving outside the plant. Massed together, the molecules form an intelligent organism that is anything but benign. More powerful by the hour, it has targeted the eight scientists as prey. They must stop the swarm before it is too late…

In Prey, Michael Crichton combines scientific brilliance with relentless pacing to create an electrifying, chilling techno-thriller

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And I’m still working on a short overview of each of the 12 essays in the February read – Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion. I will have that work completed by the end of the week and will post the notes as soon as I finish them.

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

P.S. If you’ve found this blog and are interested in the book club, but haven’t yet attended a meeting – you can sign up for upcoming meetings on the calendar of events page found on our website at –> https://ssclibrary.org/ –>Calendar

P.S.S. If you’ve previously signed up for a book club meeting, and thus get my monthly book club emails – you don’t need to register for upcoming book club gathering – just join us each month!