FFWNC Book Club
October 27th – 1:30 pm – The novel Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov – contact Harriett Hilton for details.
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There is an interest among club members to share recommendations for book and movie titles that feature world cultures. Please email your suggestions to Diane Tokarski, and she will be sure to include them on this web page and provide a few sentences about the book/movie.
Here are a few for a start:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie – Adichie is the daughter of Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, considered a world literature masterpiece. Half of a Yellow Sun is about the Biafran War and the world’s lack of response. It is an insight into “modern” African culture and the suffering of so many in Third World countries. (Submitted by Larry Harvey)
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi – A true story of an English literature teacher in Tehran University during the time of the Iranian Revolution. Meeting secretly with students, she uses English literature to counter the simplistic right/wrong of the mullahs and the Taliban. She was expelled in 1977. (Submitted by Larry Harvey)
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy who helped win WWII by Sonia Purnell – A true story about a young Baltimore socialite (with a wooden leg!) fluent in French and hired by the British to work as a spy with the French Resistance. (Submitted by Bonnie Dees)
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan – Another true story about a young Italian fluent in several languages who volunteered to work as a driver and translator for a Nazi officer, all the time spying and sending information to the Allied Forces. (Submitted by Bonnie Dees)
The Enchanted April by British writer Elizabeth Von Arnie, written in 1922. (Book and Movie) Four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria and solitude as needed. The women are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other and a castle of their dreams . The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t expect that the month will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. (Submitted by Ellen Brazauskas – also the first book that was selected for our FFWNC Book Club.)
Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves, initially published in 2009. Rick highlights visits to Europe, Central America, Asia and the Middle East to bring to light that travel connects people-to-people and provides creative thinking on potential new solutions to solve persistent world problems. Rick says that we can’t understand our world without experiencing it. (This is the second book selection of our FFWNC Book Club, selected by Diane Tokarski.)
Movies and TV Series
Longmire, a series on Netflix and Amazon Prime – A Wyoming sheriff struggles to cope with his wife’s death as he attempts to move on with his life and career. Based on the Walt Longmire mystery novels by Craig Johnson. If you are looking for something with an old-fashioned western theme, this is it. (Submitted by Ron Partin)
The Etruscan Smile (2018 – movie on STARZ) stars Brian Cox (HBO’s SUCCESSION and recent Broadway leading man in THE GREAT SOCIETY) as Rory MacNeil, a rugged old Scotsman who reluctantly leaves his beloved isolated Hebridean island and travels to San Francisco to seek medical treatment. Moving in with his estranged son, Rory’s life will be transformed, just when he expects it least, through a newly found love for his baby grandson. , Rory’s fish-out-of-water experiences quickly sag into familiarity: He’s at first resistant to embracing Ian’s modern life, with his upper-class wife Emily (Thora Birch), and doesn’t know what to make of their infant son. (Submitted by Ellen Brazauskas and Diane Tokarski)