East Bay Book Club - Virtual

NOTE: Zoom link will be available the night before the event.
Nominated by Pam Norton, who will present a brief background about the book and author, provide discussion questions, and lead the discussion.

The author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e.m the Orient (to include Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East). These cultural representations usually depict the 'Orient' as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to the westerner or native informant, and hence, 'enlightenment' can only occur when "traditional" and "reactionary" values are replaced by "contemporary" and "progressive" ideas that are either western or western-influenced.

NOTE: Zoom link will be available the night before the event.
Nominated by Tracy. Wendy S., Co-organizer and meeting who will present a brief background about the book and author, provide discussion questions, and lead the discussion.

Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

NOTE: Zoom link will be available the night before the event.
Nominated by Pam Norton, who will present a brief background about the book and author, provide discussion questions, and lead the discussion.
Pam Norton, Organizer and meeting host

Khalidi points to the resistance of Palestinians in the face of the heaviest of odds and offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that has continued for 100 years.

NOTE: Zoom link will be available the night before the event.
Nominated by Tracy, who will present a brief background about the book and author, provide discussion questions, and lead the discussion.
Kristin H., Co-organizer and meeting host

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.