Join BMC alumnae/i in reading both fiction and non-fiction, mostly avoiding the most current books but delving into older ones we may have missed, especially for fiction.
Meetings rotate among book group members’ homes. Current members live in Berkeley, SF, and Fairfax but we welcome new members.
WHERE: At a member’s home in Berkeley. Meeting address will be given to interested alumnae/i.
QUESTIONS/RSVP: Please contact Marilyn V. at northerncalifornia@brynmawr.edu
NEXT BOOKS:
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson and The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?
Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
In March 1913, Frank Reid's wife abruptly leaves him and Moscow for her native England. Naturally, she takes their daughters and son with her. The children, however, only make it as far as the train station - and even after returning home remain unaffected by their brief exile.
'The Beginning of Spring' is filled with echoes of past wrongs and whispers of the revolution to come, even if the author evokes these with abrupt comic brio. (In one disturbance, "A great many shots had hit people for whom they were not intended.")
As ever, Fitzgerald makes us care for - and want to know ever more about - her characters, even the minor players. Her two-page description of Frank's chief type compositor, for instance, is a miracle of precision and humor, sympathy and mystery. And the accountant Selwyn Crane - a Tolstoy devotée, self-published poet, and expert at making others feel guilty -is a sublime creation. His appetite for do-gooding is insatiable.
After one fit of apparent altriusm, "Selwyn subsided. Now that he saw everything was going well, his mind was turning to his next charitable enterprise. With the terrible aimlessness of the benevolent, he was casting round for a new misfortune." As she evokes her household of tears and laughter, Fitzgerald's prose is as witty as ever, rendering the past present and the modern timeless. - Kerry Fried