Arcadia Study Abroad Book Club

• Arcadia Study Abroad Book Club is an opportunity for students to understand their host country in a whole new way!
  
  
• Books are read and discussed both online and in person with fellow students and Arcadia staff over the course of the semester.
  
  
• Visits to sites of importance to the books under study are also part of the Club's mission. See previous books enjoyed by club members.
  
  
• Guides will moderate the discussion group and provide ideas and suggestions.
  
  
• To join, reply to the email invitation from your program manager, which you will receive after you are accepted. Once registered, you can comment and interact with fellow Book Club members! 

Spring 2010 Book Clubs

• England

  • The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir

    “She had discovered that the most important thing to her in life was freedom: the freedom to come and go as she pleased, to make her own choices, and not constantly to have to submit to the will of others. Such freedoms did not come with marriage – indeed, any close entanglements with the opposite sex… What she loved was being admired, being wanted, being pursued – but she did not think she wanted ever to be caught.”
    
    The Lady Elizabeth is a fictionalized biography of Queen Elizabeth I from her early childhood to her accession to the throne. The rich tapestry of Tudor England serves as the backdrop to the story of a young girl forced to navigate the dangerous halls of power and politics from a very young age. Loved by her father, resented by her sister, and carrying the legacy of her infamous mother Elizabeth learns to rely on her intelligence, her charisma, and her independent spirit in order to survive the perils of court intrigue.
    
    The Lady Elizabeth provides a gripping insight into the life and personality of one of the most powerful and enigmatic women in the history of England. Anyone who is interested history, politics, religion, and culture will like this book, as will anyone who simply enjoys a good read!
    
    I chose The Lady Elizabeth for the Great Britain Book Club this semester for several reasons. I have always been fascinated by history in general, and love nothing better than a good historical novel. I am especially drawn to the history of the UK, and Elizabeth I was, in my opinion, one of the rare rulers who defined an age through the sheer force of her own personality.
    
    Reading this book gave me a wonderful insight into this incomparable and formidable woman, and I wanted to share this fascinating tale with our students. I have also read several books by Alison Weir, and have always been impressed with the clarity of her writing and the depth of her historical knowledge. She has the unique ability to help the reader relate to people who lived long ago. I hope that reading The Lady Elizabeth provides our students with a new insight into a person who was so formative in the development of modern England, and gives them a fuller perspective on the history of their adopted home.
    
    -Katharine Reinhart, Program Manager

• Italy

  • Eating Up Italy by Matthew Fort

    “But, for all its social, linguistic and culinary diversity, Italy, it seemed to me, is indeed united, perhaps more than it recognizes. It is united not by notional politics or culture or language, or even by prosciutto, pizza or pasta. It is the passion to grow things to eat, the casual, commonplace, everyday passion displayed in cooking and eating them, that forms the true, common individual and social currency that fuses the country together.” 
    
    I think most people would agree that Italian food is delicious…and even more delicious when you are in Italy.  What I don’t think most people realize is the profound connection that Italian citizens have with their national and regional cuisine and with their culinary traditions.  I hope that this travelogue will not only humor you with Matthew Fort’s whirlwind journey through Italy, but also start to scratch the surface of the relationship Italians have with their food. 
    
    Eating Up Italy follows Fort, a British food writer and critic, as he travels 3,000 miles across Italy on a Vespa in order to examine Italy through its cuisine.  He highlights the regional differences within Italy by taking the reader into the restaurants, the homes and the farms and workshops of Italians.  I also chose this book because at the end of each chapter, Fort gives the reader a few recipes that were highlighted in the chapter. 
    
    These are recipes that he found along the way while visiting restaurants, farms and families throughout Italy.  My hope is that you’ll pick out a few recipes and try them on your own…once you read them, I know you won’t be able to resist!
    
    -Jaclyn Daddona, Program  Manager

• Scotland

  • The Crow Road by Iain Banks

    “It was the day my grandmother exploded.  I sat in a crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.” 
    
    The Crow Road is a funny, sometimes raunchy, and completely honest story about Prentice McHoan, a college student trying to negotiate his academic responsibilities, social life, and love life, while also reconciling his entanglement with his family, the complex push-pull of “home,” and the purgatory that exists between being a child and being an adult.  As Prentice struggles with his own hang-ups regarding religion, what happens after death, and the success of his brother, Banks creates a truly tangible sense of his context on the west coast of Scotland and within the McHoan family as a whole. The book continually interchanges the family’s stories from the past and present, and woven in with all of this, there is even some mystery and scandal surrounding Prentice’s missing uncle.
    
    I chose The Crow Road as my Great Britain Book Club selection simply because I feel that it is a really rich, interesting, and relatable story by a prolific Scottish writer, Iain Banks (who is also known for his science fiction writing as Iain M. Banks). 
    
    I tend to gravitate towards books that are brutally realistic, modern, and gritty, and while I would never characterize The Crow Road as “gritty,” I do feel that it is honest, uncensored, and firmly grounded in the present. 
    
    I love that it is set on the west coast of Scotland, which provides a backdrop scenically and culturally that cannot be replicated elsewhere, and I think that it just offers some good laughs and an all-too-familiar look at how complicated and messy families and budding independence can be. 
    
    I hope that The Crow Road will give students insight into contemporary Scotland and expose them to a best-selling modern Scottish writer who continues to produce important works.
    
    -Traci Chupik, Senior Program Manager