Our Book to be discussed in May

With war raging in Europe, the only way Marie can be with Felix is to join the Allied forces. However, as Marie parachutes into France to Join the Resistance, she not only lands into the arms of her fiancé, but also drops into the hands of the enemy.

Major Rolf Schulmann has been struggling between personal convictions and his duty to the German Fatherland. Now he must decide what to do with the captured fiancé of the man who gave him a new chance at life — a man he once loved as a brother. The Gestapo will do whatever it takes to dispose of Marie. If Rolf helps her escape he will have enemies on all sides. Is it a sacrifice he is willing to make? Can Marie possibly trust her life to a man torn between two masters?

Join acclaimed suspense writer Sandra Grey on a journey of unexpected twists and turns through the trenches of love, suspicion, and faith.

Here are our answers to the question "Why do I consider myself lucky?" If you click on the photo it will open up large enough to be read more easily.

The Same Kind of Different as Me

This is the book we chose to discuss in April. On this page you can find a link to the first two chapters of the book.

The following a review from Publisher's Weekly.
An international art dealer and a modern-day slave from Louisiana become friends after the art dealer is roped into volunteering at a homeless shelter by his saintly wife. Sounds like it's got to be fiction, but that's the true story told in Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore (W Publishing, June). Co-author Hall, the art dealer of the pair, spoke to RBL from Miami, where he had just arrived after a week's vacation on his boat, saying, "Now that I have lived it for so long, it doesn't seem quite so out of the ordinary."
By contrast, Moore spent almost the first 30 years of his life on Louisiana cotton plantations, where he and his family grew and picked cotton and were never paid cash for their work, but given credit. The vicissitudes of his life, including a stint in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison, eventually brought him to a homeless shelter in Fort Worth, where Hall's wife Deborah, a volunteer, prompted by faith, love and persistence to become increasingly involved in the shelter, singles out Moore. She maneuvers the suspicious Moore and her Suburban-driving, Starbucks-drinking husband into a friendship that grows once "Mr. Tuesday" - the day the Halls volunteer at the shelter - realizes the man he has been calling Dallas is actually named Denver. With hesitations over social differences and revelations of human similarities, the story of intertwining lives knots decisively when Deborah develops colon cancer and dies.

Moore suggested the two write a book, which began as a therapeutic exercise for Hall. "I really wrote the book to honor my wife and honor Denver, who both deserved a place in history," Hall explained. Moore told his half, and Hall wrote it and his half, rewriting the manuscript 14 times before he got up the nerve to take it to agent Lee Hough at Alive Communications. Co-writer Lynn Vincent was brought in to help craft the story and also to vet the events of the true story. The controversy over author James Frey's embellished memoir cast a long shadow over the book during its preparation. "It made us be much more rigorous than we otherwise would have been," said Greg Daniel, v-p and associate publisher at W. "It looks like we're as clean as we can possibly be."
The once homeless man now lives with his art dealer buddy, who owns residences in Dallas and New York and a ranch near Fort Worth. Moore has recovered from an aneurysm and stroke and is pursuing a new career as a painter. "He's doing some interesting self-portraits," the art dealer says. The authors' profits from the book will go to the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, which now includes the Deborah L. Hall Memorial Chapel.
- Marcia Z. Nelson, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 5/31/2006

2008 photos

Photos from book club at DeeAnn's 11-2008

Book to be Discussed in March

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Watch this video clip about the book.

Review from Amazon.com

"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."