Book Club Extraordinaire Nov/Dec book pick is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. Characters abound in this book so I will begin my list so I can keep track of who's who.
Children:
The Boys:
Tom Wellswood- age 13 dark gold hair; looked younger than he was; large dark eyes, soft mouth
Julian Cain - age 15; neither tall nor short, slightly built with a sharp face and a sallow complexion.
Phillip Warren- does Indian rope trick and disappears; hay haired, shaggy and filthy; living in the basement of the museum; in the Russian crypt. The shrine of an old dead saint, where the bones used to be on a stone bed.

The Girls:
Dorothy- oldest daughter
Phyllis- vegetarian
Hedda- age 5, vegetarian; little demon; clever; cannot keep still
Florian- age 3; bashful
Robin- age 1

Adults:
Major Cain- Julian's father; Special Keeper of Precious Metals at the South Kensington Museum
Humphrey Wellswood- Olive's husband, Tom, Dorothy, Phyllis, Hedda, Robin,Florian's father, tall, thin man, with a fox-red beard, neatly trimmed, pale blue eyes and a dark brown velvet jacket; works at the Bank of England and was an active member of the Fabian Society.He tells tales to his family of secret naughtiness amongst the bank clerks.
Olive Wellswood- Tom, Dorothy, Phyllis, Hedda, Florian's mother; vegetarian; author of magical tales; bold, pleasant face, high coloured, eager, firm-mouthed, with wide-set huge dark eyes, like the poopy centres, around 35; moves a little to freely, impuslsivel, fine flesh, fine ankles; authority on British Fairy Lore
Violet Grimwith, Olive's sister, short dark-haired woman in a loose mulberry-coloured dress, vegetarian
Ada - Wellswood's cook
Cathy- young servant

From Reading Group Choices find conversation starters for book clubs. Here is one for The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway: "What effect does the constant confrontation of war and occupation have on each narrator? Does suffering, violence and loss ever become normalized for them? What is it like to live in this kind of anarchy—especially when symbols of peace and power have been extinguished (the eternal flame from WWII, the Kosovo Olympic stadium now used as a burial ground)? And what does it mean to have the color, beauty, and vibrancy of music and flowers (left behind for the cellist) introduced?"

CaribousMom- reading a good book with a furchild by her side, writes a good review on The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. She writes: "The Siege of Sarajevo began April 5, 1992 and lasted almost four years. Approximately 10,000 people were killed, and 56,000 wounded – most were civilians. Embedded in these numbers are thousands of personal stories. One of those stories includes Vedran Smailovic, a musician who witnessed 22 of his friends and neighbors killed by a mortar shell while they were waiting to buy bread in May 1992." Read more..
If you haven't checked out Goodreads website, now is a good time. Goodreads readers give The Cellist of Sarajevo a 3.95 out of 5 stars with 3,974 raters. One reader writes: "The Cellist of Sarajevo made me cry."

BookBrowse gave The Cellist of Sarajevo a Favorite Book badge.Since 2000, BookBrowse has reached out to its readers to vote on their favorite books of the year. After this rigorous voting process, the BookBrowse Favorite Book Award winners are selected.  Click the link and see if you agree.
BookBrowse  writes "This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst..."

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, the first-year student's required reading, will be interpreted in dance.  The dance will be set to Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor,” which was famously played by Smailovic and was an inspiration for Galloway as he wrote his book. A modern dance work inspired by the image of Smailovic playing the cello amidst Sarajevo’s ruins will be performed in early December by the Washington University Dance Theatre.

From the Student Record at Washington University in St. Louis.

When the Calgary Public Library announced the book selection for the second annual One Book, One Calgary series, they did it in style. They invited Philharmonic cellist Olena Kilchyk to entertained during the event to announce "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway.

The One Book, One Calgary program is an annual citywide initiative designed to initiate dialogue within the community through the shared experience of everyone reading the same book.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Cellist+Sarajevo+library+Book+selection/5406016/story.html#ixzz1ZS9IAiex

Washington University in St. Louis ran a First-Year Reading Program contest for students to create their own chapter to the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. Juliet Kinder, the Grand prize winner tells the story from the point of view of Arrow, a gifted female sniper who protects the cellist from a hidden shooter as he plays a memorial to the twenty-two people killed in his neighborhood waiting in a bread line.

Recently, Liz saw the article (first link) in the Record talking about a contest that was held during orientation week.

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/22705.aspx

The winning chapters are posted on their website (second link).  There is a lot of info here which may be of interest to you, but to access the chapters click on "Contest".  At the bottom of the page click on "Read more..."

http://frp.wustl.edu/students/   

John Gever, Senior Editor for Med Page Today writes about the "obesity epidemic." An action point from his article,  Half of Americans Projected to Be Obese in 2030, states that by using modeling, the current data predicts that by 2030, 8.5 million additional cases of diabetes, 7.3 million more cases of cardiovascular disease and stroke. The burden of the increased health care costs associated with caring for these patients will be substantial.