The 15-Minute Book Club

Week 45: The Little Prince

Antoine De Saint-Exupery's literary classic, published in 1943 and translated into over 500 languages, is about a pilot who crash lands in the Sahara Desert and meets The Little Prince who tells him all about his adventures visiting different planets. Although this is officially classified as a children’s book, it’s widely considered to be a kind of philosophical fable for adult readers as well. 
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Week 44: Minor Detail

Adania Shibli's groundbreaking novel is divided into two parts. The first half is narrated in the third person from the perspective of an Israeli soldier, and is set in the summer of 1949 in the Negev desert. The second half takes place in the present day, and is narrated in the first person from the perspective of a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah. The novel draws a chilling parallel between past and present, showing that the violence of 1949 is not just a “minor detail” of history—it continues to define Palestinian existence even today.
 
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Adania Shibli at the 2024 Hay Festival:
https://www.hayfestival.com/p-21834-hisham-matar-elif-shafak-and-adania-shibli-talk-to-philippe-sands.aspx
https://www.hayfestival.com/p-21761-adania-shibli-talks-to-hisham-matar.aspx 
Book mentioned:
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Week 43: The Tyranny of Merit

Michael J. Sandel examines our current political polarisation, which in many ways is the result of our general attitude towards success and failure, especially in a time of rising inequality. The book looks at the fallacy of being self-made, he argues that there is no such thing as a self-made individual. 
 
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Studio B, Unscripted: With Ken Loach and Edouard Louis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J89RTrx1_eM 
Week 19: The End of Eddy:https://salmaintb.podbean.com/e/week-19-the-end-of-eddy/ 

Week 42: Freak the Mighty

Rodman Philbrick's wholesome young adult novel is about two young boys in the seventh grade named Kevin and Max. Max is super tall and strong but can barely read. Kevin on the other hand is extremely intelligent, a kind of child prodigy genius with a physical disability where his organs grow faster than his bones. Both of them are bullied and outcast at school for different reasons. This is a wholesome story about their unlikely friendship.
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Week 41: The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel is narrated from the perspective of Nick Carraway. Nick looks back at the summer of 1922 when he met Jay Gatsby, a man with an extraordinary gift for hope. Gatsby is in love with Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to the wealthy and arrogant Tom Buchanan. At its heart, this novel is a love story. But one that explores the role that economic and social class divide plays in love and marriage.
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Week 40: Amphibious Soul

Craig Foster's book is a kind of call for us to go back to what he considers to be our true home, the wild. He recounts many remarkable encounters he’s had with animals in the wild. Craig believes that there is a wild creature in all of us, and in the book he looks at practical ways in which we can let that part out to thrive. He examines the way we’ve become domesticated as a species, and how this abandonment of the wild in many ways goes against our inherent nature. At its heart, the book is not only a call for us to go back to nature, but to rebuild and take care of what he refers to as the Mother of Mothers, our biological ecosystem.
 
Documentary mentioned: 
My Octopus Teacher 
Nonprofit Environmental Storytelling Organisation:
www.seachangeproject.com
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Week 39: Orbital

Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, Samantha Harvey's novel follows six astronauts onboard a spacecraft that's orbiting the Earth. This is a beautifully written book that puts its readers face-to-face with the obscurity of our existence. 
 
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Week 38: Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier's classic novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who marries Maxim De Winter and becomes the new mistress of Manderley. We follow her as she tries to navigate living in his first wife, Rebecca’s, shadow, and ultimately uncovering the mystery of her tragic death.
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Week 37: Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte's epic novel is set among the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th and early 19th century. Kathy and Heathcliff, two sadistic and unhinged individuals, are madly in love but could never be together in life.
"My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it."
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Books mentioned:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Week 36: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde's only published novel and one of my favourite books of all time.
“"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"”
 
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