Book Club

The Book Circle will meet on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 3 p.m. to talk about The World and All That It Contains by Aleksandar Hemon.

Opening in Sarajevo as WWI is triggered, this globe-trotting century-spanning novel mingles fact with fiction, taking readers on a journey through years and lives that span continents. Find here falling empires, storied cities, wars galore, loves, losses, dreams, delusions, allusions, and the occasional rude joke.

According to book reviewer Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the novel is immense, not because it is long — it isn’t — but because it contains almost as much as its title promises.

It is “as emotionally compelling as it is clever,” she said, noting “I’ll be surprised if I enjoy a novel more this year.

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at 3:30 p.m., on Zoom to discuss Jean Strouse’s A Family Romance.

          The story captures the drama, mystery and intrigue surrounding John Singer Sargent’s 12 portraits of the Wertheimer family. Asher Wertheimer, an eminent London art dealer bequeathed the portraits to the National Gallery in London, a controversial gift that would see a family of Jews appearing alongside the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats painted by earlier masters.

For more information about the Book Circle and its selection, email ctigreenport.org and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 3 p.m., in the shul’s community room to discuss Joshua Cohen’s novel, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.

          In this story, Ruben Blum is co-opted onto a college’s hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar. Benzion Netanyahu shows up. The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy that blends identity with politics, mixing fiction with nonfiction, and a campus novel with a lecture — all with amusing results.

For more information about the Book Circle and its selection, email ctigreenport.org and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich.