Saturday, June 30, 2012

Choose your own Adventure - July book edition


 At the June meeting, there were too many ideas that we decided to take it to the Internet and let all of you that weren't able to make this meeting decide for July. Here are the contenders (all summaries have been pulled from Amazon). Please respond to the poll at the end.


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.
 

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.


Wonder Boys: A Novel by Michael Chabon
A modern classic, now in a welcome new edition, Wonder Boys firmly established Michael Chabon as a force to be reckoned with in American fiction. At once a deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, this novel introduces two unforgettable characters: Grady Tripp, a former publishing prodigy now lost in a fog of pot and passion and stalled in the midst of his endless second book, and Grady’s student, James Leer, a budding writer obsessed with Hollywood self-destruction and struggling with his own searching heart. All those who love Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will find the same elegant imagination, bold humor, and undeniable warmth at work in Wonder Boys.


Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore
In July 1890, Vincent van Gogh went into a cornfield and shot himself. Or did he? Why would an artist at the height of his creative powers attempt to take his own life . . . and then walk a mile to a doctor's house for help? Who was the crooked little "color man" Vincent had claimed was stalking him across France? And why had the painter recently become deathly afraid of a certain shade of blue?
These are just a few of the questions confronting Vincent's friends—baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard and bon vivant Henri Toulouse-Lautrec—who vow to discover the truth about van Gogh's untimely death. Their quest will lead them on a surreal odyssey and brothel-crawl deep into the art world of late nineteenth-century Paris.
Oh lÀ lÀ, quelle surprise, and zut alors! A delectable confection of intrigue, passion, and art history—with cancan girls, baguettes, and fine French cognac thrown in for good measure—SacrÉ Bleu is another masterpiece of wit and wonder from the one, the only, Christopher Moore.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator’s elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself “with a distant eye” for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat’s Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir by Nick Flynn
  In 2007, during the months before Nick Flynn’s daughter’s birth, his growing outrage and obsession with torture, exacerbated by the Abu Ghraib photographs, led him to Istanbul to meet some of the Iraqi men depicted in those photos. Haunted by a history of addiction, a relationship with his unsteady father, and a longing to connect with his mother who committed suicide, Flynn artfully interweaves in this memoir passages from his childhood, his relationships with women, and his growing obsession—a questioning of terror, torture, and the political crimes we can neither see nor understand in post-9/11 American life. The time bomb of the title becomes an unlikely metaphor and vehicle for exploring the fears and joys of becoming a father. Here is a memoir of profound self-discovery—of being lost and found, of painful family memories and losses, of the need to run from love, and of the ability to embrace it again.

First Comes Love by Marion Winik
When Marion Winik fell in love with Tony Heubach during a wild Mardi Gras in New Orleans, her friends shook their heads.  For starters, she was straight and he was gay.  But Marion and Tony's impossible love turned out to be true enough to produce a marriage and two beautiful sons, true enough to weather drug addiction, sexual betrayal, and the AIDS that would kill Tony at the age of thirty-seven, twelve years after they met.
In a memoir heartbreaking and hilarious by turns, Marion Winik tells a story that is all more powerful for the way in which it defies easy judgments.  As it charts the trajectory of a marriage so impossible that it became inevitable, First Comes Love reminds us—poignantly indelibly—that every story is a special case.

In One Person: A Novel by John Irving
A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp.
His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

Please vote here ( http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NGDKMP6 ) for your July book! 

Recap: Open City by Teju Cole






We had a small group meet up at Alewife today for the discussion of Open City by Teju Cole. We had a very rich discussion about the book, characters, and literary devices that Cole employs (as well as delicious food & beer!).



Please note that this post may include spoilers, and please be aware of that as you continue to read.

Open City definitely disarmed the group of us, as it is a much "heavier" read than one would expect for 259 pages. The book is written from the perspective of Julian, the main character, and is made up of mostly inner dialogue. The outside dialogue and interaction that does take place is written as Julian perceives it, and therefore prompts the question of the credibility of these stories. Historically, during wartime, an open city was one that, instead of fighting and defending themselves, laid their weapons down and conceded to occupation in order to avoid further violence and bombing. The idea of an open city (in this historical sense, and even in the literal definition of the words), provides an apt notion for what is to come in the novel.

Stephanie made a great point in the beginning of our discussion that most people in our society are reading for a linear storyline, which this novel doesn't provide upfront. This book is more of a read for "aimless wandering." Once the reader feels this, the book is a much more welcoming read. The writing is also something to overcome. The writing itself is beautiful and poetic. There are many instances, as Sadie pointed out, that the language can pull you in ("I lay in bed, too tired to release myself from wakefulness," p. 6). However, as the character progresses throughout the novel, the reader feels pushed away because of the overwhelming pretension, whether or not it is intended that way by Cole.

Julian is a character that the readers feel both an affinity for, and disgusted by (and everything in between).  Julian, a Nigerian psychiatrist living in New York City, seems to be depressed and socially removed. Stephanie pointed out that it doesn't seem like he participates in his own life. This is shown numerous times throughout the novel, both during a positive experience that he seems to turn sour, and bad experiences that he dissociates from. In the beginning of the novel, Julian is depressed and wandering--literally throughout NYC and figuratively through his own life--to find out where he fits in. As the book progresses, so does apathy toward Julius. He becomes increasingly audacious and, as Rebecca notes, speaks so highly of his own intellect that he alienates the reader.

As the story progresses, Julian becomes less credible, and we learn that he hasn't always been as popular or heroic as he would like us to think. When we learn about the sexual assault on Moji, there was a lot of confusion and anger from the book club. Some of us were trying to understand why he acted (and years later, reacted) in the ways that he did, and some of us were very much upset with him. Our overall perception and feeling of the main character really seemed to shape the way that we feel about the book in general. This begs the question of whether there is any distance between the main character and the author. This is a fictional piece, but because it was written in first-person, it is difficult to differentiate.

The theme of being an "other," as well as maintaining space -- even if this means isolation -- came up a lot in our talk. Julian is an outsider in all aspects of his life: in New York, as an African, and as an intellectual. His vocabulary choices and allusions almost force the reader to treat him as an outsider as well. This suggests that  the isolation is Julian's doing (whether consciously or unconsciously). Julian sums it up the best: "the stranger remains strange."


Thank you to all who made it out to the meeting this month, and I look forward to next month (stay tuned for upcoming blog post about July). You are all welcome to post and react on your own to the book. I'd love to keep the conversation moving online as well. Cheers!