Book List for 2016/2017
October
Marilyn
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos (304 pgs)
Dominic Smith
November
Beryl
Unnecessary Woman (304 pgs)
Rabih Alameddine
December
Bethany
The
After Party (384 pgs)
Anton Disclafani
January
Chris
The Book That Matters Most (368 pgs) (August 2016 release)
Ann Hood August
February
Pat
My Grandmother Asked
Me to Tell You She's Sorry (400
pgs)
Fredrik Backman
March
Karen
If the Oceans Were
Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (352 pgs)
Carla Power
Memoir
April
Layne
Re Jane (352 pgs)
Patricia Park
May
Mary Dowe
Paula Hawkins
June
Jane
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of
Two Society Girls in the West
(304 pgs)
Dorothy Wickenden
Nonfiction
July
Mary Brower
Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children (382 pigs)
Ransom Riggs
Ransom Riggs
Finished Major Pettigrew last night and look forward to hearing from the group about it. Sorry I missed last month!
ReplyDeleteKaren
I’ve published a novel featuring adventurous older women that your group members might be interested in reading. I would be available via Skype or some other means to join in a discussion of the novel. It’s available in both paperback and Kindle/Nook form. Here is more info about it:
ReplyDeleteFling! features 57 year-old Feather and her 90 year-old mother Bubbles. They travel from Canada to Mexico, making stops in San Francisco and the Isle of Skye, seeking answers to family mysteries during their odyssey. What they find instead is a whole new view of life that they hadn’t considered before.
Praise for Fling:
Lewis Buzbee, who teaches creative writing in the University of San Francisco’s MFA in writing program and has published several volumes of fiction and non-fiction, says, “Fling is both hilarious and touching, the madcap journey of an aging mother and her adult daughter from cold Protestant Canada into the hallucinogenic heart of Mexico's magic, where the past literally comes to life. Every page is a surprise, and "Bubbles" is one of the most endearing mothers in recent fiction. A scintillating read.”
He also said, I so enjoyed reading Fling. A terrific book. The writing is wonderful and such a good read. And the characters! I especially loved Bubbles. Thanks for letting me read it.
About Fling! When ninety-year-old Bubbles receives a letter from Mexico City asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, lost there seventy years earlier and only now surfacing, she hatches a plan. A woman with a mission, Bubbles convinces her hippie daughter Feather to accompany her on the quest. Both women have recently shed husbands and have a secondary agenda: they’d like a little action. And they get it.
Alternating narratives weave together Feather and Bubbles’ odyssey with their colorful Scottish ancestors, creating a family tapestry. The two women travel south from Canada to Mexico where Bubbles’ long-dead mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their hilarious antics.
In Mexico, where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother, and Bubbles’ quest for her mother’s ashes—and a new man—increases her zest for life. Unlike most women her age, fun-loving Bubbles takes risks, believing she’s immortal. She doesn’t hold back in any way, eating heartily and lusting after strangers, exulting in her youthful spirit.
Readers will believe they’ve found the fountain of youth themselves in this character. At ninety, Bubbles comes into her own, coming to age, proving it’s never too late to fulfill one’s dreams.
About me? A Canadian by birth, a high school dropout, and a mother at 17, in my early years, I supported myself as a stock girl in the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a long distance operator for the former Alberta Government Telephones, and as a secretary (Bechtel Corp sponsored me into the States). I also was a cocktail waitress at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, briefly broke into the male-dominated world of the docks as a longshoreman (and almost got my legs broken), founded and managed a homeless shelter in Marin County, co-created THE STORY SHOPPE, a weekly radio program for children that aired on KTIM in Marin County, CA, and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in Creative writing and one in the Humanities). I have published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 150 American and Canadian venues. Bone Songs, another novel, will be published in 2016. My poetry collection All This was published in 2011. I also teach writing at the University of San Francisco and am vice-president of USF's part-time faculty union. I blog at https://lilyionamackenzie.wordpress.com.
Lily Iona MacKenzie
Fling, a novel, published in July 2015 by Pen-L Publishing
Bone Songs, a novel, coming in 2016