We've Moved

I will no longer be updating this blog. I have moved our book club information to Book Movement. All future club information will be updated there.

February 17 Selection

Lisa has selected The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure as our first selection for 2014.

About the Author from Amazon


Charles Belfoure is an author and architect who lives in Westminster, Maryland. A graduate of the Pratt Institute and Columbia University, his practice is in historic preservation working as both an architect and historic preservation consultant with a a specialty in historic tax credit consulting. He has written architectural histories including being the co-author of The Baltimore Rowhouse and Niernsee & Neilson, Architects of Baltimore, the author of Monuments to Money: The Architecture of American Banks, and Edmund Lind, Anglo-American Architect of Baltimore and the South. He was the recipient of a grant from the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation and the Graham Foundation. His books have won awards from the Maryland Historical Trust. The Paris Architect is his first novel.

About the Book from Powell's Books

In 1942 Paris, gifted architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him a great deal of money — and maybe get him killed. But if he's clever enough, he'll avoid any trouble. All he has to do is design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined German officer won't find it. He sorely needs the money, and outwitting the Nazis who have occupied his beloved city is a challenge he can't resist. But when one of his hiding spaces fails horribly, and the problem of where to hide a Jew becomes terribly personal, Lucien can no longer ignore what's at stake. The Paris Architect asks us to consider what we owe each other, and just how far we'll go to make things right.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Book Snobs will gather at Lisa's home on Monday, February 17. 

November Selection

Deanna selected And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini as her hostess choice selection for November.

About the Author

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. His novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns were international bestsellers, published in thirty-four countries. The graphic novel of The Kite Runner was published in 2011. In 2006 he was named a US Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency. He lives in northern California. Bloomsbury has sold over six million copies of Khaled Hosseini's novels.

About the Book from Penguin Publishing

Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globefrom Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Book Snobs met at Deanna's home for dinner and discussion on Monday, December 2.

October Selection

Sandra selected The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage by Roxana Shiraz.

About the Book from Harper Collins

The Last Living Slut is the salaciously literary and sexually liberated account of one young woman’s transition from traditionally-raised Iranian to rock and roll groupie for Guns N Roses, Motley Crew, and many others. Paired with a powerful introduction by New York Times bestselling authors Neil Strauss and Anthony Bozza, Roxana Shirazi’s The Last Living Slut is a passionate tale of jilted love, brutal revenge, and backstage encounters that make Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With The Band read like the diary of a nun.

About the Author from Harper Collins

Born in Iran, with full-blood Persian playing host to my salacious flesh, I was sent to England at the age of 10 during the war. An English family took me in and I learned to speak English…and found out what Paki meant…and also learned what menstruation did to my bod. Here, at the age of 13 I had one of my first squirters to Axl Rose. I wrote my first book at the age of 14 about the street kids of Sao Paulo. I don’t know how I did it…I just did. Since then, I have written articles, poetry, and political prose. I speak at international women's conferences about gender theory and globalization. Love and passion and sex and kissing have inhabited me since I was a child when I made out with my boy and girl neighbors, although I lost my virginity at 24. James Douglas Morrison has forever been my god. I worship daily at the beauty of his words.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Book Snobs gathered at Sandra's house on Monday, October 28, for dinner and discussion.

August & September Selection

Vicki has selected The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough for our September discussion. The genre is historical fiction/epic/saga.


About the Author from Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Colleen McCullough was born in Australia. A neurophysiologist, she established the department of neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, then worked as a researcher and teacher at Yale Medical School for ten years. Her writing career began with Tim, followed by The Thorn Birds, a record-breaking international best-seller. The author of nine other novels, McCullough has also written lyrics for musical theater. She lives on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific with her husband, Ric Robinson.

About the Book from Barnes and Noble

Now, 25 years after it first took the world by storm, Colleen McCullough's sweeping family saga of dreams, titanic struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback returns to enthrall a new generation. As powerful, moving, and unforgettable as when it originally appeared, it remains a monumental literary achievement—a landmark novel to be read . . . and read again!

Family secrets, forbidden love, and the struggles of working in a hard new land intertwine in Colleen McCullough's bestselling romantic family saga, now in a 25th anniversary edition. This is the story of the Cleary family, who moved to Australia in the early 1900s to work Drogheda, a vast sheep station. Employing on a large canvas that encompasses two world wars and the Great Depression, McCullough lets the main characters take turns telling the story from 1915 to 1969. But the heart of the book is the forbidden love between Meggie -- Fee and Paddy Cleary's only daughter -- and Ralph de Bricassart, the handsome parish priest. It is a love with tremendous consequences for the future. When published, this novel received rave reviews; it holds up just as well for new and returning readers. - Ginger Curwen

 The Book Snobs gathered at Vicki's house on Monday, September 30.

July Selection

Marta has selected Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill for our July discussion. The genre is fantasy/fable/fairy tale.

From the publisher's web site:

The publication of Joe Hill’s beautifully textured, deliciously scary debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was greeted with the sort of overwhelming critical acclaim that is rare for a work of skin-crawling supernatural terror. It was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Atlanta magazine, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Village Voice, to name but a few. Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Neil Gaiman of The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and Anansi Boys fame calls Joe Hill’s story of a jaded rock star haunted by a ghost he purchased on the internet, “relentless, gripping, powerful.” Open this Heart-Shaped Box from two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Hill if you dare and see what all the well-deserved hoopla is about. 

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest purchase, an item he discovered on the Internet: I will sell my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder . . . For a thousand dollars, Jude has become the owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. Suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored Mustang . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one hand . . .

The Book Snobs gathered at Marta's house on Monday, July 29. Marta served home made Mexican food that was outstanding.

June Selection

Becky has chosen Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans for The Book Snobs June discussion. The genre is science fiction.

From Richard Paul Evans' web site:

To everyone at Meridian High School, Michael Vey seems like an ordinary 14-year-old–he likes waffles and video games, hates homework and gets bullied at school. But Michael is anything but ordinary. He was born with special electrical powers.

When Michael’s best friends, Ostin Liss and cheerleader Taylor Ridley, make an accidental discovery, the trio learns that there are other children with electric powers–and that someone, or some thing, is hunting them.

After Michael’s mother is kidnapped, Michael will have to rely on his wits, powers and friends to combat the powerful Elgen and free his mother.

Michael Vey, The Prisoner of Cell 25 is the first book in a seven-book series by #1 bestselling author Richard Paul Evans. At a time when the YA (Young Adult) genre is flooded with increasingly darker and hostile themes, Michael Vey is an adventure story about hope, loyalty, courage and a son’s love for his mother. With strong, likeable characters, genuinely realistic and frightening villains and “high energy” tension, Michael Vey is a series that will resonate with youths and adults alike.

The Book Snobs Gathering:

The Snobs will gather at Becky's home on Thursday, June 20, at 6:30 p.m.