The International Book Club is on hiatus for the summer, but you can get a head start on what we'll be reading this fall.  On Thursday October 21 at 7:00 pm, we are excited to welcome local author  Twesigye Jackson Kaguri as he talks about his new book The Price of Stones.  This story of Kaguri's experiences building a school in his home village in Uganda has been compared to Three Cups of Tea.  We have copies of the title on audiotape and in book form. There will also be a copy available later this summer as a downloadable e-book.  The author has been interviewed in local and national media, including Time.  You can also see a video about the book here. 

In November, date to be announced, we will be discussing the book
Beyond the Sky and the Earth : A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa. Come learn about this beautiful country and its people through the author's eyes.  We are working on getting some special guests to help us discuss and understand the book.

Travel around the world this summer with a good book!

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey, a highly regarded writer on Indian food.

Guest speaker: Veena Mandrekar, plus food from Mumbai's.

The votes are in! BookBrowse.com has announced the 2009 BookBrowse Favorite Awards.  Over 4,000 votes were submitted, and the winners are...

• Overall Winner: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Funny in Farsi: a Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, by Firoozeh Dumas.  Chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family. 

Find out more about ELPL's International Book Group here.

Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared, by Christopher Robbins.  Members of the Kazakh Club at MSU will join us to talk about the book and share pictures and food.

We had a great discussion about Joan Silber's book, The Size of the World.  A special thanks to Sam Singh for coming and giving us his perspectives on the book and some great stories about his trip.  Here is Sam's web page if you'd like to read more about his travels.

I think everyone liked the book.  You can find other books by Joan Silber here

We are so fortunate to live in East Lansing, which has such a large international population, thanks to Michigan State University.  I have been touched by this quote from  librarian Kathleen T. Isaacs: " I believe the more you know about other people and other ways of living and  thinking and being, the less likely you are to see them as strangers, others, perhaps even as lesser beings whose welfare need not concern you - people you can ignore, enslave, or go to war against... "

With this in mind,  ELHS student Samri Tessema and  I started an "international book discussion" for adults at the library, where we read books about other cultures and countries, and then bring in someone from that country or culture to discuss them with us.  Did they feel the book was accurate?  Did they ever experience something described in the book?  So far we have read about and had guests from Haiti, Ethiopia, Iran, Mali, Korea and many other places.