Book No. 12

It is June, and finally, we're pleased to announce our second read of 2011 and our twelfth book in the history of The Book Club... the all-time classic ::

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

'Shoot all the bluejays you want,

if you can hit 'em,

but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes if literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

"No one ever forgets this book"

Independent

Book No. 11

The Time Traveler's Wife is the love story of Henry and Clare DeTamble, a young married couple living in Chicago. Their lives together are complicated by a mystifying and exasperating genetic condition that causes Henry to involuntarily time travel. While Clare is left wondering if the man she always knew she would marry is safe from harm, Henry is taken on journies that are unpredictable, and alternately harrowing and amusing. While Henry strains to live as normal a life as he can, pursuing goals that will be familiar to most — a steady job, love, good friends, children of his own — Clare has always known that their love was pre-destined, having already met Henry as a young girl when he would timetravel from their present to her past before they met.

Their bizarre life and the challenges they face are the same burdens that ultimately we all must deal with the inability to have control over their lives. However, what Henry's affliction does provide them is a glimpse to their final hours and to the novel's breathtaking ending. The TimeTraveler's Wife is a story about adoration, separation, and ultimately about how time defines so much in our lives.