Monday, September 19, 2011
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
New Books Suggested to Read
From NYT Book Review:
Room by Emma Donoghue. About a boy and his mother in an 11 by 11 foot room.
Room by Emma Donoghue. About a boy and his mother in an 11 by 11 foot room.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Book Group Dates
5 dates. 4 books, so be thinking of the last book. Other possibilities will be on the blog:
1. Feb 28 Sunday 1:00PM
Book: Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.
At: Elizabeth Jarvis, 146 E 44TH ST. (283-3028) Directions: 44th runs between Pennsylvania and
Washington Streets only – Elizabeth’s house is one in from the corner of Washington on the North side
of the street.) Leader: Elizabeth Jarvis.
Booklist. Although Tammet is only 27, his autobiography is as fascinating as Benjamin Franklin's and John Stuart Mill's, both of which are, like his, about the growth of a mind. Not that Tammet is a scientist-statesman or philosopher. He is an autistic savant who can perform hefty arithmetical calculations at lightning speed and acquire speaking competency in a previously unknown language in mere days (the latter capability he used to create the Web-based language-learning systems with which he supports himself). More socially competent and independent than the autistic savant famously played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tammet shares his peers' strong preferences for routine, peace and quiet, private space, and literalness, as well as aversion to chance occurrences, aural and informational noise, and figurative language (despite his arithmetical gift, he can't do algebra; he reads a lot but never fiction). He learned fellowship very gradually and says he couldn't really acknowledge his eight siblings until he grew up. He also writes some of the clearest prose this side of Hemingway; he tells his story with such concentration, precision, and simplicity that his familial poverty, schooling as a "mainstreamed" student, self- realization as gay, and embracing of Christianity prove as enthralling as they are, ultimately, normal. Ray Olson: Copyright © American Library Association.
2. April 25, Sunday at 1:00
Book: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
At: Judith Lieberman, 5868 Carrollton Avenue (257-9615) (Directions forthcoming) Leader, Roz Webb
Booklist. “Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone,” says Olive Kitteridge, redoubtable seventh-grade math teacher in Crosby, Maine. Anyone who gets in Olive’s way had better watch out, for she crashes unapologetically through life like an emotional storm trooper. She forces her husband, Henry, the town pharmacist, into tactical retreat; and she drives her beloved son, Christopher, across the country and into therapy. But appalling though Olive can be, Strout manages to make her deeply human and even sympathetic, as are all of the characters in this “novel in stories.” Covering a period of 30-odd years, most of the stories (several of which were previously published in the New Yorker and other magazines) feature Olive as their focus, but in some she is bit player or even a footnote while other characters take center stage to sort through their own fears and insecurities. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty. Strout is also the author of the well-received Amy and Isabelle (1999) and Abide with Me (2006). --Mary Ellen Quinn
3. June 27, Sunday at 7:00PM.
Book: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.
At Margaret Wiley, 8940 Sassafras Court, (872-3494) Leader, Polly Spiegel
Publishers Weekly. In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro- society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni. In Nawabdin Electrician, Harounis indispensable electrician, Nawab, excels at his work and at home, raising 12 daughters and one son by virtue of his cunning and ingenuity—qualities that allow him to triumph over entrenched poverty and outlive a robber bent on stealing his livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable without the protection of family and marriage ties, as the protagonist of Saleema learns: a maid in the Harouni mansion who cultivates a love affair with an older servant, Saleema is left with a baby and without recourse when he must honor his first family and renounce her. Similarly, the women who become lovers of powerful men, as in the title story and in Provide, Provide, fall into disgrace and poverty with the death of their patrons. An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience. You can watch Mueenuddin read a selection at http://inotherrooms.com/
4. September 19 Sunday, at 7:00PM
Book: Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
At Roz Webb, (873-6480) 11558 Weeping Willow Drive Zionsville IN 46077. Leader: Margaret Wiley
Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later. You might find yourself paused, considering the universe of lives one city contains in any slice of time, each of us a singular world, sometimes passing close enough to touch or collide, to birth a new generation or kill it, sending out ripples, leaving residue, an imprint, marking each other, our city, the very air--compassionately or callously, unable to see all the damage we do or heal. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful. But then someone does something extraordinary, like dancing on a cable strung 110 stories in the air, or imagining a magnificent novel that lifts us up for a sky-scraping, dizzy glimpse of something greater: the sordid grandeur of this whirling world, "bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants." --Mari Malcolm.
5. November 7, Sunday at 1:00
Book and place and leader to be decided - look for suggestions on previous post and add your own!
5 dates. 4 books, so be thinking of the last book. Other possibilities will be on the blog:
1. Feb 28 Sunday 1:00PM
Book: Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.
At: Elizabeth Jarvis, 146 E 44TH ST. (283-3028) Directions: 44th runs between Pennsylvania and
Washington Streets only – Elizabeth’s house is one in from the corner of Washington on the North side
of the street.) Leader: Elizabeth Jarvis.
Booklist. Although Tammet is only 27, his autobiography is as fascinating as Benjamin Franklin's and John Stuart Mill's, both of which are, like his, about the growth of a mind. Not that Tammet is a scientist-statesman or philosopher. He is an autistic savant who can perform hefty arithmetical calculations at lightning speed and acquire speaking competency in a previously unknown language in mere days (the latter capability he used to create the Web-based language-learning systems with which he supports himself). More socially competent and independent than the autistic savant famously played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tammet shares his peers' strong preferences for routine, peace and quiet, private space, and literalness, as well as aversion to chance occurrences, aural and informational noise, and figurative language (despite his arithmetical gift, he can't do algebra; he reads a lot but never fiction). He learned fellowship very gradually and says he couldn't really acknowledge his eight siblings until he grew up. He also writes some of the clearest prose this side of Hemingway; he tells his story with such concentration, precision, and simplicity that his familial poverty, schooling as a "mainstreamed" student, self- realization as gay, and embracing of Christianity prove as enthralling as they are, ultimately, normal. Ray Olson: Copyright © American Library Association.
2. April 25, Sunday at 1:00
Book: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
At: Judith Lieberman, 5868 Carrollton Avenue (257-9615) (Directions forthcoming) Leader, Roz Webb
Booklist. “Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone,” says Olive Kitteridge, redoubtable seventh-grade math teacher in Crosby, Maine. Anyone who gets in Olive’s way had better watch out, for she crashes unapologetically through life like an emotional storm trooper. She forces her husband, Henry, the town pharmacist, into tactical retreat; and she drives her beloved son, Christopher, across the country and into therapy. But appalling though Olive can be, Strout manages to make her deeply human and even sympathetic, as are all of the characters in this “novel in stories.” Covering a period of 30-odd years, most of the stories (several of which were previously published in the New Yorker and other magazines) feature Olive as their focus, but in some she is bit player or even a footnote while other characters take center stage to sort through their own fears and insecurities. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty. Strout is also the author of the well-received Amy and Isabelle (1999) and Abide with Me (2006). --Mary Ellen Quinn
3. June 27, Sunday at 7:00PM.
Book: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.
At Margaret Wiley, 8940 Sassafras Court, (872-3494) Leader, Polly Spiegel
Publishers Weekly. In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro- society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni. In Nawabdin Electrician, Harounis indispensable electrician, Nawab, excels at his work and at home, raising 12 daughters and one son by virtue of his cunning and ingenuity—qualities that allow him to triumph over entrenched poverty and outlive a robber bent on stealing his livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable without the protection of family and marriage ties, as the protagonist of Saleema learns: a maid in the Harouni mansion who cultivates a love affair with an older servant, Saleema is left with a baby and without recourse when he must honor his first family and renounce her. Similarly, the women who become lovers of powerful men, as in the title story and in Provide, Provide, fall into disgrace and poverty with the death of their patrons. An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience. You can watch Mueenuddin read a selection at http://inotherrooms.com/
4. September 19 Sunday, at 7:00PM
Book: Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
At Roz Webb, (873-6480) 11558 Weeping Willow Drive Zionsville IN 46077. Leader: Margaret Wiley
Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later. You might find yourself paused, considering the universe of lives one city contains in any slice of time, each of us a singular world, sometimes passing close enough to touch or collide, to birth a new generation or kill it, sending out ripples, leaving residue, an imprint, marking each other, our city, the very air--compassionately or callously, unable to see all the damage we do or heal. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful. But then someone does something extraordinary, like dancing on a cable strung 110 stories in the air, or imagining a magnificent novel that lifts us up for a sky-scraping, dizzy glimpse of something greater: the sordid grandeur of this whirling world, "bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants." --Mari Malcolm.
5. November 7, Sunday at 1:00
Book and place and leader to be decided - look for suggestions on previous post and add your own!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Other Books Suggested - updates from Maribeth Fisher
Man's Fate by Andre Malraux
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamson (a winner in 1920 of the Nobel Prize in literature. It is a novel about persons in a farming community in Norway and their struggles.)
What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen--gripping, frank and difficult memoir of a late-in-life pregnancy by a supposedly infertile woman who is a DES daughter and is diagnosed wrongly as menopausal but turns out to be six months pregnant. Many readers report devouring the book in one sitting, and it is not particularly long. This might be a good choice for a book club for a month when you need a short but still worthwhile book to discuss. I don't know whether this appeals to anyone, but I heard an NPR interview of the author. She is a well known (but not to me!) playwright who does a lot of first person, one woman show-type of writing for the stage, so writing this sort of memoir was right up her alley, apparently. It would seem to be a good source of discussion about the twists and turns life takes when you finally THINK you have gotten into a comfortable situation. More importantly, how do you respond to these situations--a death, an illness, caring for an aged parent, a marriage, an accident, even the possibility of a birth and all the attendant uncertainties.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamson (a winner in 1920 of the Nobel Prize in literature. It is a novel about persons in a farming community in Norway and their struggles.)
What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen--gripping, frank and difficult memoir of a late-in-life pregnancy by a supposedly infertile woman who is a DES daughter and is diagnosed wrongly as menopausal but turns out to be six months pregnant. Many readers report devouring the book in one sitting, and it is not particularly long. This might be a good choice for a book club for a month when you need a short but still worthwhile book to discuss. I don't know whether this appeals to anyone, but I heard an NPR interview of the author. She is a well known (but not to me!) playwright who does a lot of first person, one woman show-type of writing for the stage, so writing this sort of memoir was right up her alley, apparently. It would seem to be a good source of discussion about the twists and turns life takes when you finally THINK you have gotten into a comfortable situation. More importantly, how do you respond to these situations--a death, an illness, caring for an aged parent, a marriage, an accident, even the possibility of a birth and all the attendant uncertainties.
Another possibility is a work by Edmund White, two possibilities named below:
Forgetting Elena, A Boy's Own Story--two books among many by Edmund White, the first is his first novel (a satire or allegory with the plot device of being a secret amnesiac where you have to define yourself and your status by those around you) and the second is a coming of age tale of a young homosexual (a novel but loosely autobiographical which has been called a bildungsroman where one experiences first hand the psychological development of a young character) which was very popular; he is a prolific writer and a biographer of Marcel Proust; homosexuality is central in much of his work, living as he did during the time of the Stonewall Riots and the emergence of gay culture more into the mainstream--or at least into the open. These books are supposedly classics which have relevance beyond gay culture. I am a little leery about that, since it looks like most of his writing involves gay culture and biographies exclusively of famous gay authors. Nevertheless, the various comments by readers make me inclined to at least try something by Edmund White. He is said to be a very literary writer, but a few find him to be self consciously so. I probably heard something about him on NPR, too...seems to be where I get most of my reading tips.
Edmund White has more recently written a play about his imaginings of the prison conversation between Gore Vidal and Timothy McVeigh called Terre Haute after our federal prison which holds the prisoners condemned to death.
Lastly, I am presently reading The Necklace, another short work, easily read in a day or two. This is not a literary work (is that required?). It was recommended to me by a friend as her book club read it and had great discussions. A woman who is not generally into luxury goods, has an inspiration to purchase a $36,000 diamond necklace (don't worry they drive a harder bargain) beyond her reach by recruiting 12 additional woman, some of whom she knows and some of whom she doesn't to join in the purchase. They own and wear it according to plans they develop during routine get-togethers. It ends up being a social experiment which has surprising impacts on their lives, but I don't want to spoil the surprises. It may sound like a Desperate Housewives plot, but though I had a lot of reservations and am not yet finished with it, I can promise it has more depth than appears on the surface.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Book Group Photos 1-9-10
These are the photos taken at our latest meeting to choose books.
Here are our star choosers.
Judith Lieberman and Trudy Gredy
Roz Webb and Margaret Wiley
Laura Lucas
Trudy Gredy
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Partly selections
We are a book group. If you have something to say about a book you are reading, publish here.
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