July 2008

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 1st at 6:30 p.m.
(first Tuesday of each month)

Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. In Meg Rosoff's Just In Case, David Case never questions his ordinary suburban life—until one fateful day, a brush with death brings him face to face with his own mortality. Amanda Craig said in the London Times, "What shimmers in Rosoff's novels is a very unusual and courageous confrontation with nihilism, which, like Beckett, she makes funny, rather than futile...It is a modern Catcher in the Rye. To my mind, Rosoff's is the better book." and Publishers Weekly wrote, "Intriguing...with a philosophical bent and an appreciation of irony, the novel shows...the gifts fate has to offer: namely, survival, love, and friendship."

GLOBAL ISSUES & ETHICS BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 8th at 6:30 p.m.
(second Tuesday of each month)

Our Global Issues & Ethics Book Group is devoted to discussing books that cover the most relevant topics of our everyday lives. This month's selection is Endangered Species: How We Can Avoid Mass Destruction and Build a Lasting Peace by Stephen M. Younger. Younger is the former Head of Nuclear Weapons Research and Development at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and as such has an intimate understanding of weapons of mass destruction. In his book, he doesn't just identify the dangers but offers a pragmatic plan for ending mass violence. The Rocky Mountain News called the book, "...A tour de force of history, science, philosophy, and politics."

SPECULATIONS-SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, July 15th at 6:30 p.m.
(third Tuesday of each month)

As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our selection this month is The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson. Young Octavian is being raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers. After he opens a forbidden door he learns the hideous nature of their experiments and his own chilling role in them. Set in Revolutionary Boston, M.T. Anderson's mesmerizing novel takes place at a time when Patriots battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their own lives for a freedom they would never claim. This deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.

STAGES - ELLIOTT BAY DRAMA BOOK CLUB
Tuesday, July 22nd at 6:30 p.m.
(fourth Tuesday of each month)

Elliott Bay's Drama Book Group, Stages, meets once a month to read, enjoy and discuss great plays and dramatic works, contemporary and classic, from the U.S. and around the world. Our selection this month is Defiance by John Patrick Shanley. The second in a planned trilogy of plays which he started with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt...Defiance is set in 1971 at a military base where a lieutenant colonel and his reluctant protegé, a young African-American captain, clash over issues of race and authority within the Marine Corps, as the civil rights movement and Vienam divide the world outside. "Defiance is a tightly woven parable. It is a very rich and satisfying piece." - Village Voice. Please join us for this thoughtful discussion of Shanley's new play which will premiere in Seattle later this September at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre.

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