2017
April
The Families Who Made Rome: A History and a Guide
Anthony Majanlahti
Both history and guide, this fascinating book tells the stories of the noble clans who built the piazzas, palazzos and fountains we see today ... >>
Submission
Michel Houellebecq
It's 2022. Francois is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the Sorbonne and an expert on J.K. Huysmans, the famous nineteenth-century Decadent author. But Francoiss own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, ... >>
March
A Burmese Days
George Orwell
Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, this book describes corruption and imperial bigotry. Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends ... >>
Clip Viewed
We saw a clip from the Indian film "Rangoon", the song entitled, "Bloody Hell.”
February
L'Archipel d'une autre vie
Andreï Makine
We read a french book : A hunt for man through the infinite taiga, at the twilight of the Stalinist era. Who is this criminal with multiple faces that Pavel Gartsev and his companions have to capture? ... >>
Coming Home
Rosamunde Pilcher
Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the ... >>
Music, Food and Love
by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow
Music, Food and Love conveys the vivid experiences of a boy with a passion for music and cooking who grew up in Beijing before and during ... >>
Politico: America, you look like an Arab country right now
by Karl Sharro
January
A Child's Christmas in Wales
Dylan Thomas
First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading his A Child’s Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long ... >>
Love Me
by Garrison Keillor
Meet Larry Wyler, a man with a big heart, broad shoulders and some very odd baggage. After the runaway success of his novel, ‘Spacious Skies’, Larry decides... >>
Capital
by John Lanchester
Celebrated novelist John Lanchester (author of The Debt to Pleasure) returns with an epic novel that captures the obsessions of our time... >>
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra
In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home... >>
The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life
Ryszard Kapuściński
In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland’s state newspaper... >>
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Haruki Murakami
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later he'd completed.. >>
Video Clip
As a film clip, we viewed the opening remarks from President Barack Obama's final press conference on 18 January 2017.