The UHMC Book club brings UHMC faculty, staff, and community members together for discussion and sharing ideas based on books selected on topics relating to diversity, education, equity and the human condition. UHMC Librarian Dorothy Tolliver leads rich discussion that develops members’ expression and knowledge, while making connections with colleagues and community members.
Join the UHMC Book Club on the last Friday of the month, 8:30 am, in the UHMC Library Lounge. Dates are subject to change. Check our calendar for updates.
For information on the UHMC Book Club, contact UHMC Librarian Dorothy Tolliver (tolliver@hawaii.edu, 984-3583) .
Spring 2018 Book List
The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (January 26, 2018)
The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.
The Descendants: A Novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings (February 23, 2018)
Matt King is an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.
The Snow Child and To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey (March 16, 2018) – with author discussion!
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart – he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.
This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place, things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
Mahalo to author Eowyn Ivey for sharing delightful insight on her perspective, the writing process and details on her two books with the UHMC Book Club members.
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor (April 20, 2018)
An instant American icon – the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court – tells the story of her life before becoming a judge in an inspiring, surprisingly personal memoir. With startling candor and intimacy, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a progress that is a testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.
The Horse Boy by Michel Orion Scott (May 11, 2018)
Follows one Texas couple and their autistic son as they trek on horseback through Outer Mongolia in an attempt to find healing for him. When two-year-old Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson, a writer and former horse trainer, and his wife Kristin sought the best possible medical care, but traditional therapies and little effect. They discovered that Rowan has a profound affinity for animals, particularly horses and the family set off on a quest that would change their lives forever.
Fall 2018 Book List
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (August 24, 2018)
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like in postwar America.
Small Great Things by Judi Picoult (September 28, 2018)
A woman and her husband admitted to a hospital to have a baby requests that their nurse be reassigned – they are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is black, to touch their baby. The hospital complies, but the baby later goes into cardiac distress when Ruth is on duty. She hesitates before rushing in to perform CPR. When her indecision ends in tragedy, Ruth finds herself on trial, represented by a white public defender who warns against bringing race into a courtroom. As the two come to develop a truer understanding of each other’s lives, they begin to doubt the beliefs they each hold most dear.
LaRose by Louise Erdrich (October 26, 2018)
Tells the story of two families dealing with the aftermath following the accidental death of a small boy. It gives good insights into the traditional ways of Ojibwa people, the impact of the residential school system, and family dynamics.
Orchardist by Amanda Coplin (November 30, 2018)
At the turn of the 20th century in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a gentle solitary orchardist, Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots. Then two feral, pregnant girls and armed gunmen set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (December 14, 2018)
Wealthy Count Alexander Rostov lives under house arrest in the famed Moscow Hotel Metropol, for a poem deemed incendiary by the Bolsheviks, and meets Nina. Nina is a precocious and wide-eyed young girl who holds the keys to the entire hotel, wonders what it means to be a princess, and will irrevocably change his life. Despite being confined to the hallway of the hotel, the Count lives an absorbing, adventure-filled existence, filled with capers, conspiracies and culture. Alexander Rostov is a character for the ages – like Kay Thompson’s Eloise and Wes Anderson’s M. Gustav, he is unflinchingly (and hilariously for readers) devoted to his station, even when forced to wait tables, play hide and see with a young girl, or confront communism.
