The 15-Minute Book Club

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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Week 35: All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel follows a young German soldier named Paul who is sent to the frontline during WWI in Germany’s fight against France. This is one of the most important novels about WWI, not just because of how incredibly well written it is, but because it was one of the first texts to show the true face of  WWI, away from the romanticisation of war and patriotism. It’s a true anti-war novel that reflects the brutal realities of trench warfare.
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Week 34: Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel follows a young Nigerian woman named Ifemelu who, at the age of 19, moves to America from Nigeria for her education. As she tries to navigate the complexities of life as a Black African immigrant, she becomes aware of race and her own blackness more soberly than she ever had before in her life.
 
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg&t=568s 
 
Book mentioned:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Week 33: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini's novel is set in Afghanistan and opens in the early 1970s. The story takes place over a 30 year period and follows two main characters, Mariam and Laila, co-wives to an extremely abusive man named Rasheed. This is a beautifully written novel that reflects the reality of a life lived in the shadow of shame. 
 
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Books mentioned:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini