[MD-Sligo] Announcing the next group of books for the Sligo Creek book club!

[Jeff Baer]

Dear all Sligo Creek members and all Sligo Creek book club members,
I'm wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I'm also writing today to announce that at last weekend's book club meeting the members chose the following new slate of books which we will read and discuss together. If anyone in Sligo Creek wishes to join the book club at any time, even for just one particular book, just reach out to me and I'll happily add you to the recipients list of the book club Zoom links.
The list of upcoming books is below! Each book also has its synopsis provided at the very bottom of this e-mail.

Summary list of upcoming Sligo Creek Book Club selections:

The December discussion will take place at 2:30pm on Sunday, December 15. The book is "Defiant Dreams: The journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything for education" by Sola Mahfouz, Malaina Kapoor, BARD DB# 118484 audiobook Duration = 9 hours and 4 minutes. Synopsis for this and all the newly selected books are further below.
 January 2025's book: (discussion date and time to be determined): "One Jump at a Time, my Story" by Nathan Chen DB #111530 Duration = 5 hours and 33 minutes
February, 2025: "Some Kind of Hate", by Sarah Darer Litman, DB# 113015 Duration = 8 hours and 45 minutes
March, 2025: "Chasing History - a Kid in the Newsroom" by Carl Bernstein DB# 106783 Duration = 13 hours and 59 minutes
April, 2025: " Becoming" by Michelle Obama DB 92627 Duration = 19 hours and 5 minutes
May, 2025: "Vision, a memoir of blindness and justice" by David Tatel  DB #122023 Duration = 10 hours and 22 minutes
June, 2025: "The betrayal of Ann Frank, a cold case investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan DB 107221 Duration: 10 hours and 44 minutes. ( Note - Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929, so she would have been turning 96 years old when we discuss this book about her life and death)

Book descriptions are below!  Please let me know if you would like help accessing any of these books for free via the lending system of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS), part of the Library of Congress.

Sincerely,
-Jeff Baer
Cell phone:(410) 499-0143
E-mail: jabaer811 at outlook.com

Book Synopsis list:

This December's book. The discussion will take place at 2:30pm on Sunday, December 15. "Defiant Dreams: The journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything for education" by Sola Mahfouz, Malaina Kapoor,   BARD DB# 118484  Duration = 9 hours and 4 minutes
Good Reads Synopisis:
"Sola Mahfouz was born in Afghanistan in 1996. That same year, the Taliban took over her country for the first time. They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backwards on women's rights, practically imprisoning women within their own homes and forcing them to wear all-concealing burqas. At age eleven, Sola was forced to stop attending school after a group of men threatened to throw acid in her face if she continued. After that she was confined to her home, required to cook and clean and prepare for an arranged marriage. She saw the outside world only a handful of times each year. As time passed, Sola began to understand that she was condemned to the same existence as millions of women in Afghanistan. Her future was empty. The rest of her life would be controlled entirely by men, fathers and husbands and sons who would never allow her to study, to earn money, or even to dream.

Driven by this devastating realization, Sola began a years-long fight to change the trajectory of her life. She decided that education would be her way out. At age sixteen, without even a basic ability to add or subtract, she began secretly to teach herself math and English. She progressed rapidly, and within just two years she was already studying topics such as philosophy and physics. Faced with obstacles at every turn, Sola still managed to sneak into Pakistan to take the SAT. In 2016, she escaped to the United States, where she is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University.

An engrossing, dramatic memoir, co-written with young Indian American human rights activist Malaina Kapoor, Defiant Dreams is the story of one girl, but it's also the untold story of a generation of women brimming with potential and longing for freedom."

January 2025's book:

 "One Jump at a Time" by Nathan Chen DB #111530 Duration = 5 hours and 33 minutes

Partial GoodReads Description:

"In this exhilarating memoir, three-time World Champion and Olympic gold-medalist Nathan Chen tells the story of his remarkable journey to success, reflecting on his life as a Chinese American figure skater and the joys and challenges he has experienced—including the tremendous sacrifices he and his family made, and the physical and emotional pain he endured. When three-year-old Nathan Chen tried on his first pair of figure skates, magic happened. But the odds of this young boy—one of five children born to Chinese immigrants—competing and making it into the top echelons of figure skating were daunting. Chen’s family didn’t have the resources or access to pay for expensive coaches, rink time, and equipment. But Nathan’s mother, Hetty Wang, refused to fail her child. Recognizing his tremendous talent and passion, she stepped up as his coach, making enormous sacrifices to give Nathan the opportunity to compete in this exclusive world. That dedication eventually paid off at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, where Chen—reverently known as the “Quad King”—won gold, becoming the first Asian-American man to stand at the highest podium in figure skating. In this moving and inspiring memoir Chen opens up for the first time, chronicling everything it took to pursue his dreams. Bolstered by his unwavering passion and his family’s unconditional support, Chen reveals the most difficult times he endured, and how he overcame each obstacle–from his disappointment at the 2018 Olympic Games, to competing during a global pandemic, to the extreme physical and mental toll the sport demands. Pulling back the curtain on the figure skating world and the Olympics, Chen reveals what it was really like at the Beijing Games and competing on the US team in the same city his parents had left—and his grandmother still lived. Poignant and unfiltered, told in his own words..."

February's book:
"Some Kind of Hate", by Sarah Darer Litman, DB113015 Duration = 8 hours and 45 minutes
Partial GoodReads description: "Declan Taylor is furious at the world. After winning state as a freshman starting pitcher, he accidentally messes up his throwing arm. Despite painful surgery and brutal physical therapy, he might never pitch again. And instead of spending the summer with his friends, Declan is forced to get a job to help his family out. On top of that, it seems like his best friend, Jake Lehrer, is flirting with Declan’s crush and always ditching him to hang out with the team or his friends from synagogue. So Declan ends up playing a lot of Imperialist Empires online and making new friends. It’s there he realizes he’s been playing with Finn, a kid from his class. Finn is the first person who might be just as angry as Declan--he gets it. As the two spend more time together, Finn also introduces Declan to others who understand what it’s like when the world is working against you, no matter how much you try...."

March's book:

Chasing History - a Kid in the Newsroom" by Carl Bernstein DB106783 Duration = 13 hours and 59 minutes

Partial GoodReads description:  "In this triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation’s capital―a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam. In 1960, Bernstein was just a sixteen-year-old at considerable risk of failing to graduate high school. Inquisitive, self-taught―and, yes, truant―Bernstein landed a job as a copyboy at the Evening Star, the afternoon paper in Washington. By nineteen, he was a reporter there. In Chasing History, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. He spins a buoyant, frenetic account of educating himself in what Bob Woodward describes as “the genius of perpetual engagement.”

April's book:
 "Becoming" by Michelle Obama DB 92627 Duration = 19 hours and 5 minutes
Partial GoodReads Description: "In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address... inspires us to do the same."

May's book:
"Vision, a memoir of blindness and justice" by David Tatel  DB #122023 Duration = 10 hours and 22 minutes
 GoodReads description: "A memoir by one of America’s most accomplished public servants and legal thinkers—who spent years denying and working around his blindness, before finally embracing it as an essential part of his identity. David Tatel has served nearly 30 years on America’s second highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where many of our most crucial cases are resolved—or teed up for the Supreme Court. He has championed equal justice for his entire adult life; decided landmark environmental and voting cases; and embodied the ideal of what a great judge should be. Yet he has been blind for the past 50 of his 80-plus years. Initially, he depended upon aides to read texts to him, and more recently, a suite of hi-tech solutions has allowed him to listen to reams of documents at high speeds. At first, he tried to hide his deteriorating vision, and for years, he denied that it had any impact on his career. Only recently, partly thanks to his first-ever guide dog, Vixen, has he come to fully accept his blindness and the role it's played in his personal and professional lives. His story of fighting for justice over many decades, with and without eyesight, is an inspiration to us all."

June's book:
 "The betrayal of Ann Frank, a cold case investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan DB 107221 Duration: 10 hours and 44 minutes
Partial Good Reads Description:
"Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept...

Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international team—led by an obsessed retired FBI agent—has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents—some never before seen—and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest—and came to a shocking conclusion.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust."

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