Book Club

We formed a family book club in April of this year. Before we started travelling we read a number of books, from classics like Where the Red Fern Grows to more recent titles like Al Capone Does My Shirts. The goal is to read quality books with a range of vocabulary (The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a challenge), reading levels, and content (Long Walk to Water triggered an animated discussion).

One challenge is to navigate between the interests of two adults, a twelve-year-old, and two nine-year-olds. So we are reading other books as well in parallel--Katie finished the Little Women series, I'm working on Nana, and so on.

I'll update this post with books that we read while on the road.

Completed

• Old Yeller.
• Sounder.
• Where the Red Fern Grows.
• White Fang, Jack London.
• Round the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne.
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, R. L. Stevenson.
• Long Walk to Water. Interesting mostly-true story dealing with the war in South Sudan and the Lost Boys of the 1980s and 1990s.
• Al Capone Does My Shirts.
• Al Capone Shines My Shoes.

Fall Semester

• Al Capone Does My Homework.
• Al Capone Throws Me A Curve.
• A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver. E. L. Konigsburg. Historical biographical fiction of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This is a very engaging book that fit well with our visits in Wales to Edward I's castles, as Edward was Eleanor's great-grandson. It also served as an introduction to Magna Carta and to the Crusades for the kids.
• Churchill's address to Parliament, 13 May 1940: the "Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat" speech.
• Catherine, called Birdy. Karen Cushman. Historical fiction about a young girl in 13th century England.
• "Declaration of Independence", Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
• "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen", National Constituent Assembly of France, 1789.
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle. (Only Chapters 1-10 for Alex/Luke).
• The Second Mrs. Gioconda. E. L. Konigsburg. Historical fiction about an assistant to Leonardo da Vinci, with the stories behind the Last Supper and the Monna Lisa.
• Excerpts from Sidereus Nuncius. Galileo's book, in translation, describing his initial astronomical observations using his new "spyglass." The sections on his observations of the "Medicean" planets revolving around Jupiter are fantastic.
• DaVinci's Cat, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Engaging tale of two eleven-year-olds and time travel between modern New Jersey and the Vatican in 1510.
• Letters from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, describing the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
• "Inferno" from The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, in a prose translation by Gerald Davis. We are on hold for Purgatory and Paradise but may get back to those later.
• Kidnapped, classic story by R. L. Stevenson, taking place after the Jacobite rebellion, in 1751 Scotland.
• Anna of Byzantium, middle-grade historical novel outlining the life of a Byzantine princess in the 11th century.
• The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, classic translation of 75 quatrains in iambic pentameter by Edward FitzGerald.
• "Casey at the Bat," classic poem in iambic heptameter by Ernest Lawrence Thayer.
• Ayesha Dean: The Istanbul Intrigue. Present-day elementary-level novel about an Australian Muslim girl solving a mystery in Istanbul. It is a mediocre book but the story follows almost exactly our plan for visiting Istanbul's sights.
• Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen. A complex book about character and anger, justice and redemption. 
• Shadow of a Bull, Maia Wajciechowska, about a 12-year-old boy in Andalusia expected to live up to the memory of the bull-fighting father he never knew.
• The Button Box. Time-travel elementary-aged novel about two American cousins (one Jewish and one Muslim) who assist an ancestor trying to help Abd al-Rahman escape from North Africa to Spain.
• Selections from The Holy Qur'an.
• The King's Fifth. By Scott O'Dell, this historical novel takes place in the Spanish Empire.
• Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley classic describing Creation and how it all might go wrong. (Or something.)

Spring Semester

• Conquistador, by Buddy Levy. Eminently readable account of Cortez, Montezuma, and the conquest of the Aztecs.
• The Dawn of Everything, Chapter 9 only, regarding the history of Teotihuacan and Cortes alliance with Tlaxcala against the Aztecs.
• Esperanza Rising. Excellent late-elementary-aged novel about a young Mexican girl with a depression-era farmworker family in California.
• The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, Gold Rush-era coming-of-age novel.
• Excepts from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.
• Carlota, historical novel taking place in Mexican California.
• The Bridge to Terabithia, classic kids novel by Katherine Paterson.
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about the consequences to a sailor from killing an albatross for no reason.
• Dragonwings, Laurence Yep, about the Chinese immigrant experience in California.
• The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, by David Quammen. An easy-to-read account of Darwin and his struggle to describe and publish his discoveries around the transmutation of species and its causes.
• Secret of the Andes, by Ann Nolan Clark. Newbery winner (defeated Charlotte's Web) about a young Incan boy learning secrets of his ancestors.
• The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank.
• Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry. Historical fiction about the experience of Jews in Denmark during World War II.
• The Last Mapmaker.
• Fever 1793, Historical fiction about the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793.
• I, Juan de Pareja. Newbery winner about an assistant to Velazquez who becomes a renowned painter in his own right. While a slave.
• The Big Wave. Pearl S. Buck short novel involving a tsunami in a medieval Japanese fishing village.
• A Brief History of Japan. Non-fiction introduction to various periods in Japanese history. We read excerpts of the book, as it was not an easy read for the kids.
• Heart of a Samurai. Excellent retelling of the story of Manjiro, a Japanese fisherman who was rescued from shipwreck by an American whaling boat and found his way to Massachusetts and the California Gold Rush before returning to Meiji-era Japan.
• Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Classic tale of a young Japanese girl from Hiroshima who dies from leukemia in the 1950s.
• The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Newbery-winning fantasy story (that somewhat defies description, but is excellent).
• A Single Shard, Newbery-winning medieval historical fiction set in Korea; another Linda Sue Park book (Long Walk To Water).

In Progress

• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, retelling of Chinese folk tales, by Grace Lin. 
• The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck.
• All Creatures Great and Small. James Herriott. Semi-autobiographical story of a 1930s veterinarian in Yorkshire. Currently ON HOLD at Chapter 20.

Planned

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne.
• Samurai and the Long-Nosed Devils.
• Robinson Crusoe, the original realistic fictional travel novel by Daniel Defoe.
• Selections from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792. (Cancelled, too hard).

Non-book club books

We have read various other books outside of the book club, but usually only by individuals in the group.

• Under the Hawthorn Tree. Marita Conlon-McKenna. Historical fiction of a family in 19th century Ireland (Scott).
• Nana, Emile Zola (Scott).
• Little Women, Little Men, & Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott (Katie).
• The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone (Becca).
• The Black Count (Scott & Becca). Excellent biography of Alex Dumas, the novelist's father.
• The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow (Scott, excerpted for others).
• Countless Big Nate books (Alex & Luke).
• Countless Warriors books (Alex & Luke).
• The Storm Runner, J. C. Cervantes, tale weaving Mayan mythology with modern kids (Luke).
• Tales from the Alhambra, Washington Irving. The American author spent time living at the Alhambra while ambassador to Spain, and researched the history of the area while writing the book. Part travel essay and part history. Excellent. (Scott & Becca).
• The Gold Eaters. Historical fiction about Pizarro's conquest of the Inca empire (Scott).
• The Covenant of Water. (Becca)
• Lord of the Flies. Classic what-if novel by William Golding (Scott, Becca, Katie).
• A Study in Scarlet, first Sherlock Holmes mystery (Scott, Katie).
• Candide, classic satirical novel by Voltaire (Scott).
• Catriona, sequel to R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped (Scott).
• Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver (Becca).
• The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCulley (Scott).
• Masterminds; Masterminds: Criminal Destiny; Masterminds: Payback, by Gordon Korman (Alex & Luke & Scott).
• Shogun, epic novel by James Clavell set in medieval Japan (Scott & Becca).
• Anne of Green Gables, classic series of eight books by L. M. Montgomery (Katie).

Film & TV

• Victoria, PBS from BBC, three seasons. Excellent introduction to the Victorian era, with appearances by the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and Lord Palmerston.
• The Durrells in Corfu. Adaptation of books about a British family who moved to Corfu in the 1930s.
• Belfast, Branagh semi-auto-biographical film about the start of the Troubles in N. Ireland.
• Titanic. James Cameron film.
• Ms. Marvel. A Pakistani-American girl discovers she has superpowers.
• Magellan's Crossing, PBS documentary about the voyage of Magellan and Elcano.
• Raising the Dinosaur Giant. PBS Nature documentary about a Patagonian dinosaur dig.
• Zorro, the 2024 Amazon series filmed in Spanish.
• Evita. Madonna's film version of the musical may not be all that historically accurate, but it makes an easily accessible intro to the mid-century Argentine icon.
• The Transcontinental Railroad, PBS documentary on the building of the railroad in the 1860s.
• Panama Canal. PBS documentary on the building of the Panama Canal.
• German guy visits North Korea. From YouTube.
• Apartment 404, a Korean variety show taking place across Seoul.
• Princess Mononoke, the 1997 Hayao Miyazaki film that explores environmentalism through a Shinto lens.
• The Last Emperor, the 1987 award-winning biographic film about the last Chinese emperor, Henry Puyi.