Book Swap Tonight at Urban Standard!

Sorry for the late post. I've been out of town. So lets have our book swap at Urban Standard tonight at 7:30. Bring a wrapped book to swap in a Dirty Santa game. Can't wait to hang out with y'all and share some new books!

December-January Books and A Book Club Christmas Party

Hey girls. Sorry it has taken me a minute to get these up. I'm excited about them though. Let's talk about doing our book swap in December and meeting to discuss this book in January. I'd be happy to host both, but if anyone wants to host the book swap, go for it! Just let us know. How does December 12th sound for the swap?

And without further ado, the books:

Book Summary

A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh must step out of her comfort zone when she is sent into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years — a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.

Review Excerpt:

It's not often that a novel leaves me (temporarily) speechless. But Ann Patchett's new novel isn't called State of Wonder for nothing, because that's exactly the state I've been in ever since I first opened it. The numbness has worn off by now, but for days, all I could say to friends who asked me about it was the one-word review "Wow."

NPR Summary

Tea Obreht's debut novel takes place in an unnamed Balkan country similar to the former Yugoslavia. Natalia, a young medical student, is on her way to an orphanage in enemy territory when she learns that her beloved grandfather has died. As his confidante, Natalia was not only aware of his cancer; she was also privy to his many incredible adventures, the two most fantastic being his stories of the Deathless Man and the Tiger's Wife.

Review Excerpt:

In The White Album, Joan Didion writes that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live." Though many of today's stories may be limited to 140 character tweets, Tea Obreht, in her novel, The Tiger's Wife, shows how shared mythology (where history meets speculation) is essential, particularly in times of war and loss.

Review/Summary: This year's National Book Critic's Circle Fiction award winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad, doesn't fit neatly into any genre. Jennifer Egan is playing with the idea of the novel; the result is a swirling time trip that is both fun and emotionally satisfying. The two characters who appear and disappear with the greatest frequency are Sasha, a young woman who has a compulsive urge to steal, and her boss, Bennie, a record company executive who was once a member of a punk rock band in San Francisco. The book travels back and forth in time with these characters and many of the people who have touched their lives. One of the most effective and affecting stories comes in the form of a PowerPoint presentation narrated by a 12-year-old girl. That feat in itself is a testament to Egan's powers as a writer. Each of the stories stands alone, with a distinct style and narrative voice — until the jumble of pieces comes together to create a vivid picture of a fully realized world.

Meeting Tomorrow! 11/3/11

Come to my house tomorrow (Thursday) night around 7pm. We'll have some goodies and fun conversation. Can't wait!

2815 10th Avenue South

Apartment 6

B'ham 35205

Call if you get lost! (615)812-0131

Greatest Generation!

So happy this book won! I don't see Elaine's post, but she told me that was her vote as well. So no one responded to my last post, but are we meeting twice over 6 weeks to talk about the book? If this is correct how about meeting on Monday October 17? We can meet at my aptartment at around 7:30? Yay!

Here Comes Fall!

Hey all. I would like to recommit myself to our little (but growing!) book club. Since there has been a bit of silence, I decided to go ahead and post a few books to choose from for the month of October. Hope that's alright...Eades gave me the go ahead. Also, I missed out on the latest update to group meetings. Am I correct in that we now meet twice per book over the course of 6 weeks?

You should be warned that my recent honeymoon to Austria has me further interested in the period of world history spanning from 1938-1945...thus you'll notice that the influence of WWII has slightly manifested itself in my book choices. Enjoy. :)

Home

by Marilynne Robinson

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

The Greatest Generation

by Tom Brokaw

One of NBC's most famous anchormen celebrates the greatest generation in history. — Americans born in the 1920s who came of age during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, and went on to build America.

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters

by Dick Winters, Cole C. Kingseed

They were called Easy Company-but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered 150% casualties while liberating Europe-an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters was their commander-"the best combat leader in World War II" to his men. This is his story-told in his own words for the first time.

On D-Day, Dick Winters parachuted into France and assumed leadership of the Band of Brothers when their commander was killed. He led them through the Battle of the Bulge and into Germany, by which time each member had been wounded. They liberated an S.S. death camp from the horrors of the Holocaust and captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat. After briefly serving during the Korean War, Winters was a highly successful businessman. Made famous by Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers--and the subsequent award-winning HBO miniseries--he is the object of worldwide adulation.

Beyond Band of Brothers is Winters's memoir-based on his wartime diary-but it also includes his comrades' untold stories. Virtually all this material is being released for the first time. Only Winters was present from the activation of Easy Company until the war's end. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, only he could pen this moving tribute to the human spirit.

disregard the last post...

we're actually going to cancel book club for tomorrow.  sorry about that!  who's turn is it for the next book?  :)

book club tomorrow!

we were planning on having book club tomorrow, monday, sept. 12 at 7pm.  let me know if you are still able to come!

tomorrow!

Let's go ahead and meet tomorrow for whoever can, and then we'll meet to discuss the book more on sept 12.  see you guys tomorrow!

america!

so, how's monday, september 12 look for you guys?  that is 6 weeks from now, and if you'd want, we can meet in three weeks (august 22) to encourage each other to keep reading :) and to hang out because, you know, i miss you guys a ton.

 

discuss...and vote.

*all descriptions taken from amazon

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison. Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.
The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely.

 

Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book. The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed.
The poetry of her prose, along with an uncanny ability to embody two completely original characters, is what makes Krauss an expert at her craft. But in the end, it's the absolute belief in the uninteruption of love that makes this novel a pleasure, and a wonder to behold.

Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). Employed by the American imagination, is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.

Monday night!

Just a little reminder that book club is Monday night! I still have a bit of reading to do (im sure im not alone) so lets get it done this weekend and plan on meeting up at my house on monday night at 7 p.m. this is the perfect excuse to try out the latest cupcake place in the area - gigi's - so i'll have some tasty treats on hand. Address is 4080 river walk lane 35216. let me know if you can't come so we can reschedule if we have to. look forward to seeing everyone monday night!

Fannie Flag it is!

Go out and get those books! How's
Monday the 25th for everyone?

July book options - now available!

Option #1 Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, by Liz Murray

From runaway to Harvard student, Murray tells an engaging, powerfully motivational story about turning her life around after growing up the neglected child of drug addicts. When Murray was born in 1980, her former beatnik father was in jail for illegally trafficking in prescription painkillers, and her mother, a cokehead since age 13, had just barely missed losing custody of their year-old daughter, Lisa. Murray and her sister grew up in a Bronx apartment that gradually went to seed, living off government programs and whatever was left after the parents indulged their drug binges; Murray writes that drugs were the "wrecking ball" that destroyed her family-- prompting her mother's frequent institutionalization for drug-induced mental illness and leading to her parents inviting in sexual molesters. By age 15, with the help of her best friend Sam and an elusive hustler, Carlos, she took permanently to the streets, relying on friends, sadly, for shelter. With the death of her mother, her runaway world came to an end, and she began her step-by-step plan to attend an alternative high school, which eventually led to a New York Times scholarship and acceptance to Harvard. In this incredible story of true grit, Murray went from feeling like "the world was filled with people who were repulsed by me" to learning to receive the bountiful generosity of strangers who truly cared.




Option #2 Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett



In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.



Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.

With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world, Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love.





Option #3 I Still Dream About You, by Fannie Flagg

From Southern Living Magazine: Fannie Flagg’s new book, I Still Dream About You, is set in a place she knows better than any other, her hometown. Birmingham is not just the setting—it’s a supporting character, with the city’s glamorous past and sometimes complicated present helping to shape a group of women who share a strong bond of friendship. Maggie Fortenberry, Fannie’s latest protagonist, longs for Birmingham’s glory days, with its beautiful train station, grand theaters, and bustling downtown streets. A 60-year-old former Miss Alabama, Maggie is beautiful and sweet, loved and admired—and so out of sorts with the way her life has turned out that she’s busy with a suicide plan involving an egg timer, the Warrior River, and some mighty powerful glue. Classic Fannie.

Millions of readers have been lured by her quirky, dead-on Southern characters and hilarious plot twists, only to get a serious tug at the heartstrings when they least expect it. Whether her setting is Birmingham or Whistle Stop, what Fannie writes about, time and again, are the touching, terrifying, heartbreaking, hysterical, extraordinary, everyday things that make us human, the things that make us seek friendship and love and compassion and community.





So there are the options - get to voting and let me know if Monday, July 25th works for everyone!

Liz Lemon wins!

Let's just be honest- it was totally the cover that won us over. So everybody run out and get your copy of bossypants because the hold list at the Birmingham libraries is a mile long and there's no way you're going to get it in time if you go that route. I already ordered my copy off amazon - hardcover for only $15 bucks so i recommend it if you're looking to stay on the cheap side (paperback hasnt released yet).

So what date works for everybody - June 13 or June 20?

Laura's Up!

Hey there lovely ladies! I was very sorry to miss bookclub a few nights ago. Please forgive me. But I was super excited to hear that it was my turn to pick our options for June! As you know, I love to pick themes for our selections. This month's theme is:

A Woman's Memoirs

So, you can vote for whichever one of the following strikes your fancy:

1. My Life in France, by Julia Child

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef.

Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia’s unforgettable story – struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took them across the globe – unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years.

2. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

3. Bossypants, by Tina Fey

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

So there they are! Let's take a vote and then we can decide when to meet. Thanks girls!

Monday Night

If you're still in for Monday Night bookclub say aye. I'll plan on having you next Monday at 7:15. Come one, come all!

I'm Going For It

I feel like a lost puppy without a book to read between book clubs, so if it's alright with others, I'm going to post three options and just proceed. My vote is to aim to have a book chosen by the end of this week and to have the next meeting sometime mid-endish May. I'll just throw out May 23rd for now. Respond away!

From my friend, Annie: Every Last One

I am a notorious book crier; I won’t apologize for it, either. I’ve seen people who sob at movies, and no one bats an eye. So, if I seem a little melancholy to you, it’s probably because I just finished a really good book, as was the case with Every Last One. A disclaimer: I think Anna Quindlen can do no wrong. Love her. This book, though, was like a punch in the gut. That’s what I told Jordan after I finished, and months later, I still feel that way. Let’s just say it took me a while to get over. My only regret is that I checked it out from the library instead of buying my own copy. It’s just that good.

From Amazon: An Object of Beauty

Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale. Lacey Yeager is an ambitious young art dealer who uses everything at her disposal to advance in the world of the high-end art trade in New York City. After cutting her teeth at Sotheby's, she manipulates her way up through Barton Talley's gallery of "Very Expensive Paintings," sleeping with patrons, and dodging and indulging in questionable deals, possible felonies, and general skeeviness until she opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Narrated by Lacey's journalist friend, Daniel Franks, whose droll voice is a remarkable stand-in for Martin's own, the world is ordered and knowable, blindly barreling onward until 9/11. And while Lacey and the art she peddles survive, the wealth and prestige garnered by greed do not. Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world. If Shopgirl was about the absence of purpose, this book is about the absence of a moral compass, not just in the life of an adventuress but for an entire era.

Highly recommended by a friend: Her Fearful Cemetery

(publisher's description) Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls' aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.

Up next?

Say gang,

I'm sorry that this month's meeting was deterred by some crummy weather. Do we want to try and reschedule or shall we just move on? Who's up next? Elaine's birthday is in April. Any May babies?

April 4th

Hello friends! Are we all set for April 4th? I've been enjoying the book, so I can't wait to discuss it with you! If Monday doesn't work for you, let me know soon so we can reschedule. And a special shout out to Laura and little Rhodes!!

March Books

Hello Ladies,

I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to post. These last few weeks have been crazy. But here they are. Does April 4th work for y'all?

The summaries are from goodreads. I found these on npr books, and you can read excerpts there.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russel 
A triumphant debut novel and follow-up to Karen Russell’s universally acclaimed short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline—think Buddenbrooksset in the Florida Everglades—and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamp landia!’s legendary headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.

Selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, Karen Russell is an irrepressible new voice in contemporary fiction.

The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas  

An elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel set in a mystical, exotic world, in which a gifted young girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire's history

Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth.

Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy.

When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life—the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul—a city at the crossroads of the world—intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles?

The Oracle of Stamboul is a marvelously evocative, magical historical novel that will transport readers to another time and place—romantic, exotic, yet remarkably similar to our own.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.
Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

if you need a good book to read...

i highly recommend "the glass castle".  jeannette walls, a successful New Yorkan and (former?) MSNBC columnist writes this memoir about her surprising past she's kept hidden until this book.
it is so good. 

ps.  see you next monday!!!

i'm calling it

the coal tattoo on february, 28 at 7:15-7:30pm at my apt. 

happy reading!

february book lovin'

are you guys good for monday, feb. 28 at 7 or 7:30??

*all descriptions taken from amazon

Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). Employed by the American imagination, is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.

A gritty western couched in the easy storytelling style of a folk ballad (think 3:10 to Yuma as sung by the Kingston Trio), Leif Enger's highly anticipated second novel (his first was Peace Like a River) tells the story of outlaw Glendon Hale's quest to right his past, as seen through the eyes of his unlikely companion Monte Becket. So Brave, Young, and Handsome begins with Becket, a struggling novelist bewildered by the success of his first book, who has pledged to his wife, son, and publisher to "write one thousand words a day until another book is finished." Four years and six unfinished novels later, Becket sits on the porch of his Minnesota farmhouse about to give up on number seven, when he spies a man standing up in his boat "rowing upstream through the ropy mists of the Cannon River." Eager to set aside his waning tale about handsome ranch hand Dan Roscoe, Becket calls out to the mysterious white-haired boatman and his life changes forever. At turns merry and wistful, romantic and tragic, So Brave, Young, and Handsome is as absorbing as a campfire tale, full of winking outlaws and relentless villains--the sort of story to keep you on the edge of your seat with hope in your heart.

The talented House continues his long love letter to Kentucky in this starkly beautiful, overtly literary third novel, following Clay's Quilt (2000) and A Parchment of Leaves (2002). Restless 16-year-old Anneth is running wild, drawn to nightclubs, liquor, and music, while her steadfast sister, Easter, is a devout Pentecostal. Despite their differences, the two sisters have an unbreakable bond, forged in the aftermath of their father's death in a coal-mining accident and their mother's suicide. Anneth elopes with a musician to the big city of Nashville, where she becomes so homesick for the water and greenery of her Appalachian hometown of Free Creek, Kentucky, she comes racing back. Easter faces the pain of a miscarriage, which severely tests her faith. Whether describing the sight of dozens of redbirds or the taste of moonshine, House does so in prose that is both lovely and cadenced. Rural Kentucky is so vividly rendered, it's no surprise native son House has been showered with regional awards. In addition, his work on National Public Radio should garner extra attention for this title.

1, 2, 3 go! (and don't forget to let me know if the date is good, too!)

just a thought

i would like to start book club back up, if you're into it.  anyone still want to?  i was thinking maybe going ahead and putting thursday, february 17 on the calender as a possible meeting date.  what do you guys think?