The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on a Korean island, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working with their village's all-female diving collective. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook's differences are impossible to ignore. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.
The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn't become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
Peoria Reads Book Discussion
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye, debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, was published in 1970. Set in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio, in 1940–41, the novel tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl from an abusive home. Eleven-year-old Pecola equates beauty and social acceptance with whiteness; she therefore longs to have “the bluest eye.” Although largely ignored upon publication, The Bluest Eye is now considered an American classic and an essential account of the African American experience after the Great Depression. It is one of the top 10 most challenged books of 2021. Roberta Koscielski will lead a book discussion at Nu’s March 6, 2023 Meeting.
Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021 Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin Frequently Banned Classics To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Color Purple by Alice Walker 1984 by George Orwell Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Native Son by Richard Wright Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut A Separate Peace by John Knowles The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Favorite or Suggested Books - Nu Chapter meeting on October 5th A Different Kind of Christmas, Haley All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr At the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Ford Bean Tree, Kingsolver Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Richardson Cold Sassy Tree, Burns Finding Freedom, French German Wife, Rimmer Goldfinch, Tartt Great American Bathroom Book, Anderson Harlem Shuffle, Whitehead Hawaii, Michener Jane Eyre, Bronte Molokai, Brennert Nickel Boys, Whitehead Nightingale, Hannah Still Life (and all other books), Penny To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee Underground Railroad, Whitehead Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens