Subject: A Spot on the Globe
Our reader could not find a book with the subject of the Azores, so he finished this book.
Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel
Based on actual surviving letters of Galileo’s daughter Maria Celeste, this is a carefully crafted book about a scientist far ahead of his time who caused problems with the Catholic Church.
Discussion centered around scientists who espoused then radical theories and were often persecuted, even killed for speaking their minds, even if later they were proven correct. Is there any way to go back and change things? Nope! Do we then totally reject those who fought the change, or consider when in history this happened? Has anyone changed since then? Think of climate change at present.
In spinning the globe her finger ended up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Between You And Me: by Mary Norris
Subtitled Confessions of a Comma Queen.
This book was written by an editor at the New Yorker magazine. It is about use of the English language, punctuation and spelling and communicating this to people who write. In attempting to get their point across, is an author’s grammar usage sometimes necessarily correct or incorrect?
Discussion revolved around many current novels and their language.
Oceans For Dummies by Ashlan Cousteau and Phillipe Costeau
Fish are the largest food item traded in the modern world. The ocean currents often delegate where fish are found, and it changes. There is a difference between weather and climate.
Discussion was of the current weather changes, bringing vast amounts of rain off the ocean. The water temperatures on coastal zones change often and change the fishing catch. At times fishermen have to go long distances to catch their normal harvest.
Our next reader ended up in Ethiopia. Not desiring to read a dreary history of Ethiopia or a biography of Haile Selassi, they decided to read the story of a missionary who worked there, which often gives an insight into the people there.
Under An African Sky by Julene Hodges Schroeder
Subtitled: The Unusual Life of a Missionaries’ Kid in Ethiopia.
Julene was born in Ethiopia and did not go back to her home country, Canada, until se was high school age. Her parents were missionaries in small rural communities in the mountain area of that country, which was green and beautiful. As ministers of the Bearean Baptist Church, her parents started their ministry in 1947. They stayed five years, then went back to Canada for a year and, in all, did three stints. Our reader was disappointed in the book in that the descriptions were of missionary family life not of the Ethiopian people. The children were raised as Canadians going to boarding schools in Addis Ababa and returning to their parents for summer time.
Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible this is not, but probably a more honest tale of a missionary kid.
This book will be in the next book sale, which is on April 1st.
Next Meeting: February 14, 2023
Subject: Love — after all it’s Valentine’s Day
Nicolas Sparks or Janet Daily. Love cats? The Cat Who series by Lillian Jackson Braun. Love dogs? Marley and Me. Love crazy? Janet Evanovich, who will win, Ranger or Morelli? The Art of Love by Erich Fromm.
Fran Strauser