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Historic Triangle Book Circles

Join TNCC faculty, staff, students and community members in a discussion of current literary works. To participate sign up at room 207-J, then read one or more of the following books and come to the circle discussions on Friday, April 20, 2012 at 1:00 pm in room 316. Contact Professor Diana Martin at martind@tncc.edu or 253-4759 for more information.

Participation in the Book Circles counts towards the President’s Cultural scholarship and SVD 100. Reserve copies of each of the titles are available for checkout in the Library. The books for the Spring 2012 semester are:

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
–Randy Pausch.

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave–”Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”–wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

 

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.
“This is a remarkable historical novel, a book which brings to light a disturbing and deliberately hidden aspect of French behavior towards Jews during World War II.  Like Sophie’s Choice, it’s a book that impresses itself upon one’s heart and soul forever.”  –Naomi Ragen, author of The Saturday Wife and The Covenant

To read about previous book circle selections, click here.

 

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