The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

Availability

Libraries seem to have copies available, but there are some pretty cheap ones through Amazon if you'd rather go that route. Just a reminder that there are links to the right for the closest library systems and to a few online booksellers.

Any who have read it and want to get the conversation started post your questions and comments below!

From the Author's Website:  

The Samurai's Garden 
"On the eve of the Second World War, a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. He will rest, swim in the salubrious sea, and paint in the brilliant shoreside light. It will be quiet and solitary. But he meets four local residents - a lovely young Japanese girl and three older people. What then ensues is a tale that readers will find at once classical yet utterly unique. Young Stephen has his own adventure, but it is the unfolding story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo that seizes your attention and will stay with you forever. Tsukiyama, with lines as clean, simple, telling, and dazzling as the best of Oriental art, has created an exquisite little masterpiece."


Gail Tsukiyama
Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.  Most of her college work was focused on poetry, and she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award.  A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been apart-time lecturer in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, as well as a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle.  

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

For July we are discussing Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This is a novel based very much on the author's life, a story of the life-long friendship between two couples.

KUED did a documentary on Wallace Stegner, which unfortunately is not available online, but the site for it does have photos and and also transcripts of interviews they did for the documentary.

Here are a few discussion questions to get you thinking before we meet.  Feel free (especially if you can't come) to post your thoughts here.  

1. Given the difference between their upbringings (social class), what is the basis of friendship between these two couples? What does each couple gain from the friendship? Is it an equal or unequal relationship?

2. Have you ever had friends as generous as Sid and Charity Lang? How did Stegner write the pairs of characters so that we would believe Larry and Sally could accept the Langs repeated gifts without inducing shame and guilt?

3. Talk about the nature of the two marriages, how they differ. The Langs' marriage seems to be the one most under the microscope here, the most complicated of the two marriages.

4. Discuss the role of wives in the book. Have wives, especially faculty wives, changed since the 1930s?

5. Larry ruminates on the basis of their friendship with the Langs when they flatter him on his writing, asking on page 18: "Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?" and "Can I think of anyone in my hole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?" How do you respond to Larry's questions?

6. In the end, do you feel Charity should have thought more about others, or did she have the right to do things her way?

July-December 2012

Sorry all, this is no more than the email I sent out already, but I thought I'd post it here so it would be easily accessible.  I know I usually put in pictures and links and such but this all I can manage at the moment.  Hope it helps.  (Wondering how I managed that Ray Bradbury post and couldn't doctor this up?  Well, I wrote that weeks ago, just after his death,+ and had thought I'd get back to it and write more, but that didn't happen either so I just added a sentence or two and posted.)

July 

Hostess: Brooke 

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.  341pages

It's 341 pages so hunt up a copy quick and get started.  Kelly was talking about this one at the last book group for those of you who were there.  It's about 2 couples and their friendship through life.  It's a very well-written and touching story and I'll stop rambling about it and move on . . .

August  

Hostess:  Julie 

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiayama.   224 pages

Julie says this is a happy book and a quick read but with lots of interesting stuff in it as well.  224 pages

September 

 Hostess:  Amanda

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.   447pages

This is the story of the Chicago's World Fair and a serial murderer from that time.  Written in novel form, but it is non-fiction.

This one is a bit longer too so be sure to allot enough time to read it before school starts.

October  

Hostess: Chelsea

Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan 187 pages

True story of a woman reporter going on a walk about with an Aboriginal tribe in Australia and how it changes her.

November 

Hostess: Mary Anne

Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale

This is the sequel to The Princess Academy, so you may want to read or reread that in anticipation.  It comes out in August sometime, so hopefully we'll have time to get copies and read it.

December 

Hostess:  Heather

The Greatest Salesman in the World  by Og Mandino 128 pages

I didn't quite gather what this book is all about so here's a snippet of a review off of amazon

"A parable set in the time just prior to Christianity, The Greatest Salesman in the World weaves mythology with spirituality into a much needed message of inspiration in this culture of self-promotion. Mandino believes that to be a good salesperson, you must believe in yourself and the work you are doing. It is a simple but profound spiritual philosophy about how to succeed in the world's marketplace, easily understood and easy to take to heart"

Hostesses:  FYI Eva and Lisa F. volunteered to host but all the slots were filled so if you need a back up you might try one of them.  

Ray Bradbury-thoughts on his death

How odd that the very night Ray Bradbury had died I found myself in a discussion about him, only to discover his demise the next day.  Somehow I feel as though I've lost a relative, an old friend I'd lost touch with but still loved dearly.  His writing was always about people, which is why he's one of a very few science fiction/fantasy authors that I love.  So many get wrapped up in describing the world or the gadgets or the plot that comes out of the crazy world, but Ray Bradbury never forgot that people are people whether here or on Mars, whether adults or children.  And he was excellent at imagining what they might do in what many found, unimaginable situations.

I haven't read as many of his works as you would think, considering I'm such a fan.  I have read Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine a few times each.  I've read the Illustrated Man, Farewell Summer and most of Green Shadows, White Whale.  I started the Martian Chronicles this week.  

Dandelion Wine feels like it could have been about my own small hometown and in the era of my parents childhood.  Ray is only 12 years older than my father.  He must've been about the age of Becky Walton who grew up next door to my mother (yup she grew up next to a family of Waltons--so did I).  So hearing of his own childhood sounded so familiar because it was very similar to the lives of my parents growing up in the neighboring state (although they were on the southern end of Indiana and he on the northern end of Illinois).  So I feel as though I've lost my Uncle Eli all over again.  Uncle Eli was the one that had a handful of stories that were well-polished and well-loved; every family seems to have one.  I feel as though I've lost all over again the small town itself.  English Indiana was prone to flooding so the old sandstone library, the old barber shop, the old marble bank and the old post office and the old Denbo funeral home where I'd attended more funerals than I can keep track of,  were all torn down when the town literally moved away (only about 2 miles though).   The new town is fairly devoid of personality, but when John and I moved back in the spring of 1999 I brought the librarian to tears when I signed my full name, which included my mother's maiden name and my own.  The librarian remembered both my grandmothers.  People would stop my sisters in the grocery store and say, "You must be Opal's girl".  When they did the plant exchange at the Home Ec Club the retired librarian (who had given my very first library card) brought a cactus runner that was from a plant that she'd originally gotten from my grandfather who by this time had been dead almost 20 years.  When John and I were on our honeymoon my dad took us on a cemetery tour of the county and told us how we were related to what seemed like, everyone in the county.  We're also related to everyone in the county to north of us, but we thought we'd save that tour for another day.  I guess what I'm saying is my sisters and I are from a place where our roots run deep.  A world where people were people and they were the focus of our lives, and a world that felt as though Ray Bradbury were a member of the family.  Ray is even the most common name in my family.  A lost world that Ray Bradbury did an excellent job of capturing so it wasn't really lost after all.  He was brilliant, and always so hopeful about the world, which considering the seriousness of so much of his writing and all the social ills they addressed, he was always hopeful that those people would wake up and remember they were people and start making the world a better place and jump off the bandwagon of self-destruction so many seem to be on.

Here are a couple links:
Ray Bradbury's website
NPR All Things Considered
NPR Fresh Air Interview November 2000
NPR Talk of the Nation
NPR news break, includes audio of him talking about writing Farhenheit 451.
NPR snippets