Author Archive
The First Monday Book Club took a bit of a hiatus this summer. We decided not to read specific books and skipped our June meeting, but a group of us got together recently to sip wine at Davis-Kidd and catch up on what’s on everyone’s nightstand.
We thought we’d choose the best books from the summer as the basis of our book list when we officially get back together next month; each person chooses their favorite book and leads the discussion when the time comes.
In the past, we’ve mostly looked at a few summaries from online sources and tried to agree on something that sounded good. We’ve mixed in a classic (need to do more of those), some books that were getting a lot of buzz, and several books I’d already read so I could keep participating during an especially demanding grad class. It was time to change it up a bit.
I’ve heard all kinds of ways in which book clubs choose their titles: drawing titles out of hat, taking turns, voting. My co-blogger Bill Frazier (read his posts on American history here) recently gave me a few copies of Bookmarks magazine. In one, a club describes choosing books by “walking the plank” — walking down a book aisle, closing your eyes, reaching out to touch a spine and reading the book you touched. Might be a good way to find a hidden or forgotten gem.
How does your book club choose its selections?
So, I was dawdling in the book aisle at Target this weekend while my kids were salivating in Electronics, and I noticed that every other book cover in the Bestsellers section had a photograph of a woman or child with her (I think they were all of the female persuasion) back to camera.
Is this some new trend? Do people identify more with a character in a novel if they can’t see her face? Just wondering.
And now, like an annoying song your co-worker sings that you can’t get out of your head, you’re going to be noticing this trend every time you look at a display of popular books…
Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” has won the Best of the Booker.
The 1981 winner of the Man Booker Prize was the front-runner going into this one-off competition celebrating 40 years of the award. It had won the Booker of Bookers during the 25th anniversary celebration.
This time, though, the readers had a choice, kind of. A panel of literary-minded folks chosen by the Booker people narrowed the field to six books deemed worthy of the big prize and allowed the masses to choose the ultimate winner. Before the six were announced, reader polls showed Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” in first place. It didn’t make the short list.
The also-rans are: “The Ghost Road” by Pat Barker, “Oscar and Lucinda” by Peter Carey, “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee, “The Siege of Krishnapur” by J.G. Farrell and “The Conservationist” by Nadine Gordimer.
A while back I wrote this post about the Man Booker Prize folks holding a contest for the “Best of the Booker” — the prizewinner of prizewinners — to draw attention to the Booker’s 40-year anniversary.
Instead of trusting the public to choose from among all of the selections, a panel of judges would select six finalists and only then would the undiscriminating populace be allowed to vote to determine the winner.
At first I was offended with the idea that the Booker folks thought we needed training wheels, but after seeing how independent polls were running (and recalling a brief stint on jury duty years ago), maybe they had the right idea. “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel grabbed the lead in an AbeBooks poll, whose Top 10 resembled more of a specialized NYT Best Sellers list than a critical comparison of the past Booker winners.
I’ve stayed away from the blog the last several weeks, trying to be a good grad student. But now that my papers are done and my house has been returned to some acceptable level of organization, I can get back to reading some good stuff.
Summer reading is the best. Long road trips, two weeks at the beach, no required textbook reading. I confess that during the time set aside for writing the final papers for my Comm Law class, my mind would wander, followed by my feet, to the wall of books at the south end of my sun room. Squeezing in 12 books over the summer months seemed doable, so I’d choose a dozen and put them in two horizontal stacks in front of the properly shelved paperbacks. An hour or so later, I’d be back, rearranging them.
I have a pretty good mix of old, new, fiction, non, YA and a collection of short stories. I’ve already knocked out “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusack (trip to Arkansas over the long weekend), and had intended to start “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson, but I got an unexpected gift-loan of “Lush Life” by Richard Price (Thanks, Scooter!), which I’ve so been wanting to read that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to wait for the paperback. I’ll start it this weekend, after I let “The Book Thief” marinate a bit — never been able to pick up something new right after finishing something else.
And even though there’s a shameful mountain of books on my TBR shelf, I’d happily make room if “The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao” mysteriously appeared at my desk…
What’s on your summer reading list?
The book blog on nytimes.com reports that in the May 11th issue of The New York Times Book Review, the Best-Sellers list will not carry a Harry Potter title for the first time in almost 10 years. Wow.
J.K. Rowling’s books, which changed children’s literature forever, also created changes in the publishing world. Harry Potter was so ubiquitous on the list at one point that the Book Review editor decided to create a separate list for children’s books so other authors could have a chance to get on the fiction list. And then a separate list was created for children’s series because the individual HP books were crowding the kids’ list.
Some friends at The CA persuaded me to read the books after the third one came out. I like to read books my kids might want to read, so I borrowed a copy of “The Sorcerer’s Stone” and jumped in. About halfway through, I became a fan. I zipped through the first three — marveling at Rowling’s creativity and the ability to weave multiple layers together – and then suffered withdrawal until the fourth came out. When a new title hit the bookstores, my family knew they’d be eating pizza and leftovers, and the house would go uncleaned, until I finished the last page.
The HP phenomenon isn’t over, though. “The Half-Blood Prince” — my favorite in the series — will likely make another showing on the Best-Sellers list when the film version comes out this fall. And there’ll be another bump when the final book is set to film in two parts a couple of years from now.
What was your favorite book? Do you think HP will be as popular with the next generation of young readers? Part of the fun was trying to figure out what happens next. Now that we know, will the interest still be there?
The 50 States of Literature series jumps from Georgia to Colorado this week, landing in the stark and simple plains with Kent Haruf’s “Plainsong.”
The 1999 novel tells the stories of three families in the small fictional prarie town of Holt. Each family is coping with its own issues — a depressed mother who abandons her young sons and husband, a pregnant teenager shunned by her parents, a couple of old bachelor brothers who were never quite socialized. A new teacher comes to town and orchestrates the intersection of their lives.
Holt’s simple writing reflects the name of the novel, devoid even of quotation marks, similar to the style of Cormac McCarthy, whom Haruf admires. The Colorado native has earned several writing awards, and “Plainsong” was a finalist for the National Book Award.
I can’t think of many other novels set wholly in Colorado, except of course for James Michener’s popular epic “Centennial.” Maybe that was too obvious a choice? It seems Colorado may be a place you pass through on your way to somewhere else, like in “The Grapes of Wrath,” which is curious, since people are always talking about how beautiful the state is.
Do you think “Plainsong” is a good choice for a literary trip to Colorado? What book would you have chosen?
OK, I haven’t read this one, don’t even remember if I heard of it, so I’m of little help here. But I bet some of you had different ideas about what book best represents Georgia…
The 50 States of Literature series sidles up to the ATL with “Leaving Atlanta” by Tayari Jones. The debut novel is set in the late ’70s-early ’80s during the Atlanta child murders (29 would be found dead) and is told from the perspectives of three fifth-graders in a community living in fear.
It got some great reviews when it was published in 2003, and Jones was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize, but I don’t think I can read this one. Being a mom, I just have a hard time reading books about things like this…
Any other suggestions for a book representing Georgia?
Award-winning author Ann Tyler’s 14th book, “A Patchwork Planet,” gets the nod from the Columbian Spectator to represent Maryland in the 50 States of Literature series.
Unlike last week’s pick for Louisiana, we can live with this.
It actually seems like a pretty good choice. Ann Tyler lives in Baltmore, and most of her novels are set in Maryland. She’s got gravitas, winning the Pulitzer for “Breathing Lessons,” and making the finalist list two other times — with “Accidental Tourist” and “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.” And incidentally, she went to grad school at Columbia.
I’ve read a couple of Tyler’s books, but haven’t read “A Patchwork Planet.” Here’s a description from the Columbian Spectator.
Anyone out there read it? Is it a good choice for Maryland?
First sentence: When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her.
The First Monday Book Club met on the second Monday this month so the Tigers fans among us could watch the championship game last week. (And here it is Thursday already! I’ve been crazy-busy!) That extra week seemed to help, because we had a good group of folks and everyone had finished “Bel Canto,” which was a good thing, because we talked about the ending first.
In short: We hated the epilogue, but we loved the book.
Ann Patchett has crafted a wondrous novel of art and guns, with so many unlikely pairings and subtle, sometimes humorous, insights into the characters’ personalities that you are quickly enamored, even if a little anxious.
Based loosely on a months-long hostage ordeal in Lima, Peru, the story begins at the vice president’s mansion in a South American country that is trying to woo a Japanese businessman with a party in honor of his birthday. Katsumi Hosokawa, who has an obsession for opera and no plans whatsoever to build a factory in this country, is lured to the party by the carrot they’ve dangled before him: His favorite opera singer, Roxane Coss, has been secured to sing. The elegant party, filled with diplomats and other important people from many countries, is interrupted by terrorists bent on kidnapping the country’s president, only he’s not there, having bowed out at the last minute to watch a pivotal episode of his favorite soap opera. Unprepared for this development, the terrorists take all 191 guests hostage.
The terrorists soon release the women and children, the ill, and the lesser-known of the diplomats and businessmen, leaving a house full of powerful men in expensive tuxedos and the famous American opera singer as bargaining chips. In the months that follow, unlikely friendships and even love develop between the hostages and the terrorists, two of whom are soon revealed to be young women. It helps that the captives and the captors are now looking at life with the certain clarity one has when faced with one’s own mortality. They find beauty in everything.
