October 2007 Selection
A Thousand Splendid Suns

By Khalded Hosseini

Book Club Date:Tuesday October 9, 2007
In Media Center 4:00 pm

Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny:"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten" is endorsed by custom and law.

September 2007 Selection
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

By J. K. Rowling

Book Club Date: September 6, 2007
In Media Center
4:00 - 6:00
(Prior to Curriculum Night)

A spectacular finish to a phenomenal series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a bittersweet read . The journey is hard, filled with events both tragic and triumphant, the battlefield littered with the bodies of the dearest and despised, but the final chapter is as brilliant and blinding as a phoenix's flame, and fans and skeptics alike will emerge from the confines of the story with full but heavy hearts, giddy and grateful for the experience.