Brown Club of DC

The Brown Book Club will meet on Sunday, October 13 in Bethesda to discuss Happiness: A Novel, by Aminatta Forna (fiction, 368 pp, 2007). We’ll begin at 6PM with dinner, then go on to discussion. Please RSVP by Friday, October 11 by contacting the event organizer, who will provide location information. Mention any food allergies, and bring $6 – $8 for the meal.

“A fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge in London. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide―Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech. From this chance encounter, Aminatta Forna’s unerring powers of observation show how, in the midst of the rush of a great city, lie numerous moments of connection.  Attila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma, as he has done many times before; and to contact the daughter of friends, his “niece” who hasn’t called home in a while. Ama has been swept up in an immigration crackdown, and now her young son Tano is missing.  When, by chance, Attila runs into Jean again, she mobilizes the network of rubbish men she uses as volunteer fox spotters. Security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens―mainly West African immigrants who work the myriad streets of London―come together to help. As the search for Tano continues, a deepening friendship between Attila and Jean unfolds.

Meanwhile a consulting case causes Attila to question the impact of his own ideas on trauma, the values of the society he finds himself in, and a grief of his own. In this delicate tale of love and loss, of cruelty and kindness, Forna asks us to consider the interconnectedness of lives, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness.” – Amazon Book Reviews

RESCHEDULED FROM SPRING 2019. The Brown Book Club will meet on Sunday, November 10 in McLean, VA to discuss Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain (nonfiction, 312 pp, 2000). We’ll begin at 6PM with dinner, then go on to discussion. Please RSVP by Friday, November 8 by contacting the event organizer, who will provide location information. Mention any food allergies, and bring $6 – $8 for the meal.

“Utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and precise ear for kitchen patois.” (New York Magazine)

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry…you’re gonna love it.” (Denver Post)

“The kind of book you read in one sitting, then rush about annoying your coworkers by declaiming whole passages.” (USA Today)

Bourdain captures the world of restaurants and professionally cooked food in all its theatrical, demented glory. (USA Today)

“A gonzo memoir of whats really going on behind those swinging doors…. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is unique.” (Newsweek)

“Bourdain’s prose is utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and a precise ear for kitchen patois.” (New York magazine)

“Hysterical…. Bourdain gleefully rips through the scenery to reveal private backstage horrors.” (New York Times Book Review)

The Brown Book Club will meet on Sunday, December 8 in Springfield, VA to discuss Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (fiction, 303 pp, 1996). We’ll begin at 6PM with dinner, then go on to discussion. Please RSVP by Friday, December 6 by contacting the event organizer, who will provide location information. Mention any food allergies, and bring $6 – $8 for the meal.

“Abandoned by her husband, stoic Pearl raised her three children on her own. Now grown, the siblings are inextricably linked by their memories—some painful–which hold them together despite their differences. Hardened by life’s disappointments, wealthy, charismatic Cody has turned cruel and envious. Thrice-married Jenny is errant and passionate. And Ezra, the flawed saint of the family, who stayed at home to look after his mother, runs a restaurant where he cooks what other people are homesick for, stubbornly yearning for the perfect family he never had. Now gathered during a time of loss, they will reluctantly unlock the shared secrets of their past and discover if what binds them together is stronger than what tears them apart. This portrait of a family is vintage Tyler–soulful and redemptive, full of heartbreak and hope.” – Amazon Book Reviews