The Yearly Fraction -- A quarterly book club

I know, for me, reading is one of my greatest pleasures - However, as a busy Mum, it is always on the bottom of my list of things to do.

I have decided I don't read enough and I have decided I need to prioritise reading more. Hence, I have come to the conclusion that a book club is in order.

Hopefully it will be an external motivator for me to read and broaden my horizons through literature.

Each quarter I hope to choose four books from the categories: Classic, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Spiritual.

If you would like to join in I will be posting the titles before the quarter begins and hosting a book club get together at the end of each quarter.

Read one, read all. For me - it is a chance to do something I love and invite the people I love to join in with me.

If you don't live in the same state as me and you aren't able to come to the book club at the end of each quarter I'll be sure to post about each title here on the blog.

Classic

East of Eden
John Steinbeck

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America's most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called "East of Eden" "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, "East of Eden" is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah's Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.

Fiction

All the Birds, Singing

Evie Wyld

Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wanted it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is also Jake's past—hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present. With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.

Non-Fiction

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks, as HeLa, is known to present-day scientists for her cells from cervical cancer. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells were taken without her knowledge and still live decades after her death. Cells descended from her may weigh more than 50M metric tons.

HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks was buried in an unmarked grave.

The journey starts in the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s, her small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo. Today are stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, East Baltimore children and grandchildren live in obscurity, see no profits, and feel violated. The dark history of experimentation on African Americans helped lead to the birth of bioethics, and legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Spiritual

All these things Shall Give Thee Experience 

Neil A. Maxwell

In the midst of deep affliction, the Prophet Joseph Smith was told, “All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” The world at that moment was shown anew that God is aware of man's suffering, and that pain is not without purpose. Such concepts are not always easy to accept, but, as Elder Maxwell observes, “the hardness is usually not in their complexity, but in the deep demands these doctrines make on us.”

All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience focuses on some of the “hard doctrines” that members of the Church must grapple with in the latter days. This book will help the Saints prepare for the trials ahead, while assuring them that the power of God's love is constantly available to the faithful.