Suggestions for our next books:
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life
and
Tiger in the Smoke
Let's leave the poll open till Monday 5pm.....if Holly's back by then.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Winter Break
For those of us who can't get away to some tropical island, let's try escaping with a book. Please choose one of these for our April 9 meeting. Polls close Monday at 5pm.
At the Jim Bridger by Ron Carlson
Momma and the Meaning of Life by Irvin Yalom
At the Jim Bridger by Ron Carlson
Momma and the Meaning of Life by Irvin Yalom
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Jeanette Wells stroll down memory lane includes a few tales some readers may find difficult to believe - 3-year-olds burning themselves while cooking their own dinner; 5-year-olds falling out of a moving vehicle and left for several hours; 7-year-olds precocious enough to talk themselves out of many a sticky situation - and it also consists of stories you would think would land people in jail or at the very least children into a foster home - a father pimping out his daughter; a mother letting her children starve while she hordes chocolate bars - and yet somehow, she manages to tell it (unlike this run-on, clearly grammatically challenged review) in a simple, non-plussed manner, at times humorous, at times heartfelt and gracious. An enjoyable read, if of a not so enjoyable upbringing.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Books for Nice Quiet Winter Evenings by the Fire
We've got 2 suggestions for our next read:
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Since I'm late posting, let's leave the polls open till Wednesday, 3pm.
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Since I'm late posting, let's leave the polls open till Wednesday, 3pm.
Everything Is Illuminated
I could write something, but why bother when this review from Salon says it perfectly:
"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer
Apr 26, 2002 | There are two stories wound together in this first novel, and as is often the case, one is more engaging than the other. The first describes a visit to Ukraine by a 20-year-old American named Jonathan Safran Foer. (You just have to ignore the fact that the device of putting a character with the author's name in a novel outlived its freshness before Foer was born, in 1977.) This part of the book is told by Alexander Perchov, a Ukrainian, also 20, who gets shanghaied into acting as Foer's tour guide and semi-competent translator when Foer visits the country. Like many Jews of his generation, Foer wants to touch the pulse of his roots, to see the village of Trachimbrod, where his grandfather was born and raised, and to meet the woman whose family saved him from the Nazis. The two young men are trading manuscripts, and so the narrative alternates excerpts from Alex's account of Foer's visit and his letters to Jonathan with installments of Jonathan's own novel.
At first, Alex's version of English resembles an out-of-control garden hose turned on full-force and allowed to thrash away on a summer lawn. He's got a thesaurus and he'll be damned if he's not going to use it. After bragging about the number of girls who "want to be carnal" with him, and his propensity for "performing so many things that can spleen a mother," he explains his love for American-style culture: "I dig Negroes, particularly Michael Jackson. I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa." His youth and his mangled English at first make him seem simply naive, but that hides a native apprehension that, uninhibited by oversophisticated politesse, can be startling. "There were parts of it I did not understand," he writes of Jonathan's novel. "But I conjecture that this is because they were very Jewish, and only a Jewish person could understand something so Jewish. Is that why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?"
If only the fictional Jonathan's novel were really that esoteric. The manuscript he sends to Alex is a tiresomely familiar thing, a folklorical saga of life in the shtetl of Trachimbrod, full of lusty villagers and their quasi-magical adventures. The Alex sections of the book feel utterly alive and teeter invigoratingly between hilarity and a terrible, creeping dread. By contrast, the Trachimbrod sections only remind the reader of other works -- rehashed Chagall and dime-store Garcia Marquez. There are some pretty passages here, but even these have a framed, almost twee quality. (And, in what seems to be an effort at earthiness, the story also strays into the simply gross, as when a male character with a withered arm uses it as a dildo to console all the widows in town.)
Ordinarily, this caveat would make "Everything is Illuminated" unrecommendable, but the Alex portions of the novel are so good that in the final calculation they far outbalance the book's weaknesses. (Plus you can skim the Trachimbrod sections without missing that much.) With Alex's grandfather (who keeps claiming he's blind and insists on bringing along a "seeing-eye bitch" obtained from "the home for forgetful dogs") as their driver, the two youths head into the Ukrainian countryside and the darkness of the past. Their burgeoning friendship and the way that history and chance keep the balance of power between them -- and their capacity to know each other -- in constant flux, make this feel like a story that, astonishingly enough, has never really been told before.
Foer exquisitely executes the book's best jokes: the way that Jonathan's minor flaws -- his vanity, his American cluelessness, his tendency to patronize -- filter through Alex's admiring portrait of the young man he calls his "most premium friend" and "the hero." As the novel shades inexorably into the tragic mode, and as Alex comes to be a much better writer than Jonathan, with both a finer sense of truth and a more urgent understanding of the need for happy endings, his stumbling English incandesces into eloquence. And that alone is worth the price of admission.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Holiday Read, the Sequel
I think this time we've got some promising suggestions. They are, in the order they arrived:
Everything is Illuminated
Snow Crash
Slowness
Good News: A Novel by Edward Abbey
Looking for something to load on the i-pod for the long holiday flight? Check out the RadioLab podcast....a quirky science show that often features interviews with Oliver Sacks and Robert Sapolsky. The shows on the brain are terrific.
Now, to the voting. Polls close Monday, 5pm.
Everything is Illuminated
Snow Crash
Slowness
Good News: A Novel by Edward Abbey
Looking for something to load on the i-pod for the long holiday flight? Check out the RadioLab podcast....a quirky science show that often features interviews with Oliver Sacks and Robert Sapolsky. The shows on the brain are terrific.
Now, to the voting. Polls close Monday, 5pm.
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I think I’m having a mid-life crisis. Could I be having a mid-life crisis? Do women have mid life crises? What are the symptoms? A flashy new sports car? No, I love my boxy old Volvo too much. A fabulous new wardrobe? Really, when would I have the time to go shopping? And where would I wear it? A daring new hair cut? The last time I had my hair cut, I was so allergic to the shampoo, my eyes swelled shut. I’m afraid to go back.
No, I’m afraid of my own mortality. Last week, I officially put 40 even farther behind me. My husband, who has cancer, just turned 50. We have reached, if not passed, mid life.
Perhaps that was why I was drawn to The Diving Bell and the Buttery, the “uplifting” and “inspirational” autobiography of Jean-Dominique Bauby. In his early 40’s Bauby suffered a stroke which caused paralysis of all but one eye. He dictated his memoirs letter by letter by blinking to indicate his choice of letters as someone read an alphabet out loud. He tells of longing to once again tousle his son’s hair, of reliving favourite meals he could no longer chew, and the horror of seeing his own “scarecrow” face in the mirror. He relates these stories, of trip to the beach, of visits to Lourdes, with self-mockery not self pity.
But is it uplifting? No. It is terrifying. Someday that will be me. Age or disease will one day leave me unable to move. Will I be able to communicate? Will I too scare small children? Will my family and friends, like Bauby’s, find me horrible to visit?
I’ve made those visits to the hospital. My grandfather was a business owner and, to hear the ladies tell it, a handsome, well-dressed gentleman. By the time I was born, a series of accidents has cost him the full use of his legs. His legs hurt, his pride hurt, and he became increasingly cantankerous. A quadriplegic in his last decade, he was largely unable or unwilling to communicate. It broke my heart to visit him in the hospital. Where was the man I loved? Could he tell how uncomfortable I was, how anxious I was to leave? Now it breaks my heart that I didn’t spend more time with him, when for that one week a year I was in driving distance.
When I suggested we read The Diving Bell, I listed its chief selling points as being short and a medical freak show. While reading it, I told others that it was not inspirational. In retrospect, it is. Not in a Lifetime movie “Look-at-me-I’m-Lance-Armstong-I-Can-Overcome-Cancer-and-Win-Four-Tours-de-France” sort of way. It is a sincere celebration of the life he lived, a savouring of his favourite memories. If forces me to wonder if I will have his grace and humour as I face my inevitable decline or will I become bitter as my grandfather.
No, I’m afraid of my own mortality. Last week, I officially put 40 even farther behind me. My husband, who has cancer, just turned 50. We have reached, if not passed, mid life.
Perhaps that was why I was drawn to The Diving Bell and the Buttery, the “uplifting” and “inspirational” autobiography of Jean-Dominique Bauby. In his early 40’s Bauby suffered a stroke which caused paralysis of all but one eye. He dictated his memoirs letter by letter by blinking to indicate his choice of letters as someone read an alphabet out loud. He tells of longing to once again tousle his son’s hair, of reliving favourite meals he could no longer chew, and the horror of seeing his own “scarecrow” face in the mirror. He relates these stories, of trip to the beach, of visits to Lourdes, with self-mockery not self pity.
But is it uplifting? No. It is terrifying. Someday that will be me. Age or disease will one day leave me unable to move. Will I be able to communicate? Will I too scare small children? Will my family and friends, like Bauby’s, find me horrible to visit?
I’ve made those visits to the hospital. My grandfather was a business owner and, to hear the ladies tell it, a handsome, well-dressed gentleman. By the time I was born, a series of accidents has cost him the full use of his legs. His legs hurt, his pride hurt, and he became increasingly cantankerous. A quadriplegic in his last decade, he was largely unable or unwilling to communicate. It broke my heart to visit him in the hospital. Where was the man I loved? Could he tell how uncomfortable I was, how anxious I was to leave? Now it breaks my heart that I didn’t spend more time with him, when for that one week a year I was in driving distance.
When I suggested we read The Diving Bell, I listed its chief selling points as being short and a medical freak show. While reading it, I told others that it was not inspirational. In retrospect, it is. Not in a Lifetime movie “Look-at-me-I’m-Lance-Armstong-I-Can-Overcome-Cancer-and-Win-Four-Tours-de-France” sort of way. It is a sincere celebration of the life he lived, a savouring of his favourite memories. If forces me to wonder if I will have his grace and humour as I face my inevitable decline or will I become bitter as my grandfather.
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