"Monday is the key day of the week." ~ Gaelic Proverb

Suggestions from the January 3, 2011 Gathering


Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (nonfiction); other fine narrative nonfiction titles by Kidder include: Among Schoolchildren; Home Town; House; My Detachment; Old Friends; The Soul of a New Machine and Strength in What Remains. Group member Evelyn Shatkin invited us to look at a website dedicated to the continuation of her late granddaughter’s philanthropic efforts in Haiti, http://belikebrit.org.

Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks (nonfiction); fiction titles by Nicholas Sparks (many with autobiographical elements) include: At First Sight; A Bend in the Road; The Choice; Dear John; The Guardian; The Last Song; The Lucky One; Message in a Bottle; Nights in Rodanthe; The Notebook and The Rescue.

Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (fiction)

Finding Nouf and City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris (fiction)

The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfūz (fiction)

The Invisible Wall and The Dream by Harry Bernstein (nonfiction)

The Widow’s War and Bound by Sally Gunning (fiction)

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton (nonfiction)

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven; Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café; I Still Dream about You; Standing in the Rainbow and Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!--all by Fannie Flagg (fiction)

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns (fiction)

“The Revolt of Mother” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (This short story can be found in The Signet Classic Book of American Short Stories, edited by Burton Raffel.)

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (fiction)

~ A related film: Man on Wire - a 2008 British documentary film directed by James Marsh


The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (juvenile/fiction)

~ A related film: A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black and white silent science fiction film. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells. The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès.