Do you enjoy reading and discussing what you read? If the answer is yes, the Edenvale Book Club is the club for you!

The next meeting is on Wednesday January 9, 2012 from 4:00 pm until 6:00 PM in Meeting Room B at the Edenvale Branch Library.

The January book selection is Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan.

This book is available in the following formats:

Book

BookCD

Axis360 eBook

OverDrive eAudiobook

All are welcome to attend.  

Meet author G. Willow Wilson on Wednesday February 29 at 6:00 PM in the Community Room of the Edenvale Branch Library.  Willow Wilson is the author of the The Butterfly Mosque. This remarkable book is one of the books selected for Silicon Valley Reads 2012!  If you enjoy memoirs and if you are interested in other cultures, you will love this book and enjoy the presentation. This event is co-sponsored by Friends of Edenvale Branch Library, who will also provide refreshments.

For more information about Silicon Valley Reads, please visit their website and this blog posting.

Do you think you could sum up your life in six words? How about Not Quite What I Was Planning? That’s the title of a collection of six word memoirs by “writers famous and obscure.” The idea was originally put forward in Smith, the online magazine. Readers were invited to contribute on the Smith website and many of their contributions are included in the book. The book itself was so successful that it spawned several others including a sequel, "It All Changed In An Instant", and a volume by “teens famous and obscure” called I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets.

Smith (whose motto is “Everyone has a story. What’s yours?”) is also well worth checking out.& It continues to accept and publish six word memoirs but also solicits longer pieces on various topics. It has a comics section with ongoing comic stories, including one by Harvey Pekar, and there is a separate section for contributions by teens. If you enjoy writing you may want to contribute. If not, it can be fun just browsing other’s work. Or, if you're not quite ready to broadcast to the world how about a smaller audience? SJPL would welcome your six word memoirs; please enter yours below.

Heather Sellers’ book You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness and Forgiveness is a moving memoir of her life with prosopagnosia, or face blindness. This is a neurological condition where a person does not reliably recognize familiar faces. Growing up, Sellers thought she must be crazy when she couldn’t recognize people or places, and her parents made her feel like she was either stupid or careless. However, her childhood was so disrupted by her mother’s mental illness and her father’s alcoholism that she never stayed at one school long enough for her face blindness to be apparent to outsiders. As she got older she began to realize that something wasn’t right. She once hugged a stranger in a store, thinking it was her boyfriend, and she often would introduce herself to colleagues, thinking they were newly hired, but then discover she had known them for years. Sellers eventually learns some methods for coping with her face blindness, like explaining the condition to everyone she comes into contact with so they understand she isn't being rude when she doesn't remember their name.

Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks also explores prosopagnosia in one chapter of his work The Mind’s Eye. Sacks reveals that he suffers from face blindness, and has since childhood. Like Sellers, Sacks also has trouble identifying places, even his own street and home. Sacks even has trouble recognizing himself, going so far as to apologize for almost bumping into someone, only to realize it is his own reflection in a mirror. Sacks uses coping techniques similar to Sellers', though they aren't always effective.

Sellers and Sacks both explain that prosopagnosia was once thought to occur only as a result of injury or trauma to the brain. However, research now seems to indicate that the condition may have a genetic basis and that many people are born with it. Visit www.faceblind.org to see more about what researchers at Harvard University and University College London have found so far, or to seek help with your own recognition impairment.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like with a different kind of job? While it may be fun to dream about all the possibilities, most of us will never know what it would be like to make our living as a food critic for one of the most prestigious newspapers in the nation. Luckily we can all live vicariously by reading Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl’s bestselling memoir about that very thing – her time as the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. It turns out the position also has qualities of being an actress, diplomat, secret shopper, and celebrity in addition to the more obvious comparison of writer with a chef’s palate.

As in Ms. Reichl’s other books, favorite recipes are sprinkled throughout. Additionally, the reprinted reviews which follow chapters describing the events leading up to and through the restaurant visits are so beautifully crafted and the food described in such sensuous detail that they are just as entertaining to read several years after their original printing in the paper. As readers we are conscious not only of the appreciation of the glorious food itself but also of the extravagant use of words to convey the atmosphere of the entire experience. Along the way we also find out about creative costuming, newsroom rivalries and relationships.

Reading Ruth Reichl’s books will encourage you not just to eat, but to savor. One word of warning, you may get very hungry…

In his memoir The Longest Trip Home, John Grogan, author of the bestselling Marley & Me, recounts his experiences growing up in a strong Irish-Catholic family outside of Detroit, and the decisions he makes as he grows to adulthood. It’s a testimony to the power of family throughout our lives. The book is divided into three parts.  In part one, Growing Up, Grogan brings to vivid life the adventures and misadventures of his youth as he recounts incidents both hilarious and touching. In part two, Breaking Away, he begins his career, marries, and establishes a family of his own. His life choices and decisions don’t always align with his parents’ faith and values, straining their relationship as they avoid or tip toe around sensitive issues. Finally, as his parents age and their health begins to fail, Coming Home, recounts the author’s reconnection with the love and faith of his parents. It’s a book for adult children who’ve made life choices at odds with those of their parents, but also for the parents whose love for them never wavers. This engaging title is also available as an audiobook, digital audiobook, and downloadable electronic book.