If you like to read and discuss books, join the BJUMC Book Group. It meets monthly, usually on the 2nd Thursday of the month from September-November and January-May at 7:00 p.m. in classroom 3 /4, or sometimes at alternate locations. Members suggest which books are discussed- all types and genres are considered. New members are welcome! Below are our selections for January-March. The pre-discussion dinners have resumed! If you want to join the pre-discussion dinner at The Ridge restaurant at 5:30 p.m., please RSVP to Carol Lutes at (908-672-4600) or carollutes@gmail.com. Please contact Janet Kaefer at jbkaefer@optonline.net for additional information, or to be added to the email contact list.

 

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March 9, 2023: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (led by Janet Kaefer) A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. “A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." ―David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.

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April 13, 2023: In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park (led by Barbara Kleinert)

“I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park
"One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring." - The Bookseller
“Park's remarkable and inspiring story shines a light on a country whose inhabitants live in misery beyond comprehension. Park's important memoir showcases the strength of the human spirit and one young woman's incredible determination to never be hungry again.” —Publishers Weekly

In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea— and to freedom.

Park confronts her past with a startling resilience. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park’s testimony is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11, 2023: Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition by Nisid Hajari (led by Art Martin)

Named one of the best books of 2015 by NPR, Amazon, Seattle Times, and Shelf Awareness
A few bloody months in South Asia during the summer of 1947 explain the world that troubles us today. Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody — it was supposed to be an

answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand. But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in street-gang fighting. A cycle of riots — targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spiraled out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached, all three groups were heavily armed and on edge, and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide between India and Pakistan

that remains a root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today.

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