Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

by Vendela Vida

About the book

Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission

by Richard L. Harris

Moon Palace by Paul Auster

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Summary of the book

Character information

Symbols and Motifs

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

From the Jacket:
In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima--and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now the son of one of the flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different men who came together in a moment that will live forever.

To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of his Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island--an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo--three were killed during the battle--were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

Few books have ever captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

Discussion questions:

1. Discussion the meaning of patriotism. What is the relationship between duty and patriotism?

2. Private Tex Stanton, Second Platoon, Easy Company said, “Life was never regular again. We were changed from the day we put our feet in that sand.” (p. 69) How did the Battle of Iwo Jima change the men who fought there? Discuss how each of the six flag raisers were changed.

3. Discuss the qualities of a hero. Jack Bradley never viewed himself as a hero and felt that the real heroes of the Battle of Iwo Jima were the men who gave their lives. What role did the media play in making the six flag raisers heroes? How might these six men be considered symbols of all the heroic men who fought at Iwo Jima? In the book, James Bradley discusses the difference between a hero and a celebrity. How did President Roosevelt turn these heroes into celebrities?

4. Discuss the meaning of the inscription “Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue” that is on the face of the bronze statue of the six flag raisers that was unveiled at Arlington National Cemetery on November 10, 1954. The three surviving flag raisers attended the unveiling ceremony. James Bradley states that after that day, “Never again would they meet, never again would they serve the photograph.” (p. 178) How had these men “served the photograph”? Discuss whether new generations who visit the bronze statue can fully understand the impact the photograph had on the American people when it was first published.

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

Booklist Review: A hakawati is a storyteller in the Arab world, and so opulent and picaresque is Alameddine's novel, it can serve as a great fake book for aspiring Scheherazades. In this grand saga of a Beirut family with Armenian, English, and Druze roots, Alameddine, the author of three previous works of fiction, constructs stories within stories that encompass the world of the jinni,àthe tales of Abraham and Hagar, the legendary pigeon wars of Urfa, Lebanon's brutal civil war, and post-9/11 Beirut and L.A. At the center of this matrix is Osama al-Kharrat (his last name means exaggerator), grandson of a hakawati and son of a wealthy car dealer and a glamorous, sharp-tongued mother, one of many resplendently witty and wily women characters. After living in L.A. for 26 years, Osama has finally returned to Beirut in 2003 because his father is dying. His arrival sets off a cascade of memories and launchesà1,001 stories. The most thrilling involve the legendary Fatima, the hero Baybars, Osama's bon vivant uncle Jihad, and the hakawati himself, not to neglect the many diverting parables. Alameddine, himself a brilliant hakawati, exuberantly reclaims and celebrates the art and wisdom of the war-torn Middle East in this stupendous, ameliorating, many-chambered palace of a novel. -- Seaman, Donna (Reviewed 03-15-2008) (Booklist, vol 104, number 14, p27)

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Booklist Review: Its tough enough to be an orphan and a ward of the state, let alone a so-called half-breed. Heck, being 15 years old is no freaking picnic, especially if your face is so badly marred by acne your nickname is Zits. Add to that a devastating history of abuse, and no wonder Zits, a gun in each hand, is about to exact revenge on strangers in a bank. Has Alexie, a high-profile writer known for provocative, inventive, in-your-face fiction about Native American life, written a classic troubled youth-turned-killer tale? Of course not. This is a time-travel fable about the legacy of prejudice and pain. Zits is inexplicably catapulted back to 1975, where he inhabits the body of a white FBI agent confronting radical Indian activists, the first episode in an out-of-body odyssey. Smart, funny, and resilient, Zits is profoundly transformed, as the hero in a tale of ordeals is supposed to be, by his shape-shifting experiences as an Indian boy at Little Big Horn, an Indian tracker, a homeless Indian drunk, and a pilot in unnerving proximity to a Muslim terrorist. Alexies concentrated and mesmerizing novel of instructive confrontations is structured around provocative variations on the meanings and implications of flight as it asserts that people of all backgrounds are equally capable of good and evil. -- Donna Seaman (Reviewed 03-01-2007) (Booklist, vol 103, number 13, p37)

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all the moments in between repeatedly and out of order. The novel is framed by Chapters One and Ten, in which Vonnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel and the effects of Dresden on his own life. In between, Billy Pilgrim's life is given to us out of order and in small fragments.

From Contemporary Authors 49:
The main character, Billy Pilgrim, ... is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.'

Discussion questions:

To what extent is Billy Pilgrim a Christ figure?

What is the significance of the Tralfamadore narrative?

What role does Kilgore Trout play? Other secondary characters?

In what ways is this novel an anti-war narrative? Is it also anti-American in certain ways? How does the novel compare with other war narratives?

How is warfare presented in the novel? How, in particular, is the bombing of Dresden presented?
Where and why does Kurt Vonnegut insert himself into the text? Are we supposed to view this presence as the "real" Kurt Vonnegut? Does Kurt Vonnegut appear to sympathize with particular views and characters?

How does Vonnegut handle traditional narrative elements, such as time, plot, point of view, and characterization?

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

from the book jacket:

In the midseventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away."

Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and orginality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times-the era free of love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Upis a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.

Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza

Book Description
From one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era comes a memoir that redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll
He was born in England but reared in L.A., surrounded by the leading artists of the day amidst the vibrant hotbed of music and culture that was the early seventies. Slash spent his adolescence on the streets of Hollywood, discovering drugs, drinking, rock music, and girls, all while achieving notable status as a BMX rider. But everything changed in his world the day he first held the beat-up one-string guitar his grandmother had discarded in a closet.
The instrument became his voice and it triggered a lifelong passion that made everything else irrelevant. As soon as he could string chords and a solo together, Slash wanted to be in a band and sought out friends with similar interests. His closest friend, Steven Adler, proved to be a conspirator for the long haul. As hairmetal bands exploded onto the L.A. scene and topped the charts, Slash sought his niche and a band that suited his raw and gritty sensibility.
He found salvation in the form of four young men of equal mind: Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, and Duff McKagan. Together they became Guns N' Roses, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time. Dirty, volatile, and as authentic as the streets that weaned them, they fought their way to the top with groundbreaking albums such as the iconic Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.
Here, for the first time ever, Slash tells the tale that has yet to be told from the inside: how the band came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart. This is a window onto the world of the notoriously private guitarist and a seat on the roller-coaster ride that was one of history's greatest rock 'n' roll machines, always on the edge of self-destruction, even at the pinnacle of its success. This is a candid recollection and reflection of Slash's friendships past and present, from easygoing Izzy to ever-steady Duff to wild-child Steven and complicated Axl.
It is also an intensely personal account of struggle and triumph: as Guns N' Roses journeyed to the top, Slash battled his demons, escaping the overwhelming reality with women, heroin, coke, crack, vodka, and whatever else came along.
He survived it all: lawsuits, rehab, riots, notoriety, debauchery, and destruction, and ultimately found his creative evolution. From Slash's Snakepit to his current band, the massively successful Velvet Revolver, Slash found an even keel by sticking to his guns.
Slash is everything the man, the myth, the legend, inspires: it's funny, honest, inspiring, jaw-dropping . . . and, in a word, excessive.

Sweet Serendipity: Delightful Desserts and Devilish Dish by Stephen Bruce

Serendipity 3 is New York's legendary dessert restaurant and boutique. On it's 50th anniversary, this book was published to give the world an amazing but simple collection of dessert recipes enjoyed by anyone who has ever dined there. Treat yourself to a Strawberry Fields Sundae or a Frozen Hot Chocolate, a favorite of stars ranging from the Kennedy family to Cher! Let these desserts help you capture the heart of your sweetie this February.

Questions for discussion:

Have you ever been to Serendipity 3?

Have you tried any of the recipes from the book?