Thank you to everyone who participated in our discussion in the comments section of the articles on the website and at our meeting over Zoom about The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Now, it is time to select our next two readings!

Each Tuesday, we’ll post a thread here on seniorplanet.org inviting you to comment on each section of the book. Then, during our final week of reading, we’ll host a group discussion over Zoom.

But first! We’ve put together a shortlist of engaging books suggested by our participants and staff. Now it’s up to you to pick the books we’ll read in August and September! Read on for details about each book, then take the poll at the end and tell us: What two books should the Senior Planet Book Club read next?

The book with the highest number of votes will be the August read, and the book with the second highest number of votes will be the September read. We’ll announce the result of the poll this Friday, August 2nd!

Have any feedback on the book club? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

The Books:

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

“In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.” – GoodReads.com

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by Hames McBride

“In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood’s quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town’s first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill’s residents—roused by Chona’s kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.” – GoodReads.com

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya

“Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were “thunder.” It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety–hiding under beds, foraging for food, surviving and fleeing refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing unimaginable cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were alive. At age twelve, Clemantine, along with Claire, was granted asylum in the United States–a chance to build a new life. Chicago was disorienting, filled with neon lights, antiseptic smells, endless concrete. Clemantine spoke five languages but almost no English, and had barely gone to school. Many people wanted to help–a family in the North Shore suburbs invited Clemantine to live with them as their daughter. Others saw her only as broken. They thought she needed, and wanted, to be saved. Meanwhile Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, found herself on a very different path, cleaning hotel rooms to support her three children.” – GoodReads.com

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

“A fascinating novel that reworks elements of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island’s darker forces.” – GoodReads.com

Click here to learn about the winners!

Photo by Paul Schafer on Unsplash