Books and the City!

Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson

2011-09-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

I'll come right out and say it, I didn't like the book. But I think it's not because the book is badly written or because of the subject matter, rather I think it's because I just didn't get it. To me the book seemed disjointed, repetitive, and boring. And yet I feel that it's me that's the problem and not the book.

Looking at online reviews, I am struck by one that says, "The 'payoff', if it can be called that, is not a gratification of the reader's curiousity, but an impressionistic portrait of the sum total of a life." There. That's it. That's the problem. I dislike movies and books that are portraits of anything or anyone. I like a story, I want something to happen. Ideally, something where the bad guy is punished and the good guy rides off into the sunset to live happily ever after. I don't get coming of age stories, or ones that depict a certain epoch. I find them boring because nothing happens. I don't care about the characters and I don't care what happens to them.

I also think that not knowing Norway's history hurt my understanding of the book. I kept waiting for something about the Germans or the Holocaust to come up in the book. And other than a reference to some Germans guarding a bridge, there was nothing about the war or any part of it. I can't say that if I knew more about Norway's and Germany's interactions during the Holocaust I would like this book, but it couldn't hurt. I kept reading this book and feeling like I was missing something. Like the author was trying to say something subtly by the comings and goings of Trond's father in his youth and how the family moved around some, but I was left in the dark. And I just remembered that it was a translation, that may also have influenced how I felt. I did feel like I was missing something probably lost in translation.

I also read the book in fits and starts on the subway to and from work. I wonder if that contributed to the book feeling disjointed. I read that way all the time and usually can pick up where I left off, but I had a hard time remembering what happened in this book and a lot of the memories seemed similar and thus repetitive. And then that twin shot the other one. After the twin shot his brother. And then when the twin accidentally shot the other twin. It was hard to find my place time after time. I came away from the book feeling like I'd visited an old man who told me the story. The book seemed to take forever to read even though it was a short book.

How did you ladies feel about the book? What was discussed? I feel that I am being too harsh on the book. I wish I had more story/character-specific questions but I don't remember the book very well anymore and I feel that there wasn't a whole lot of questions from the story for me to ask.

Miral by Rula Jebreal - Bookclub Book

2011-03-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

For the month of March, we read Miral by Rula Jebreal. Since we weren't able to meet up in person to discuss the book, we'll be leaving our thoughts on the blog. Here are some discussion questions to help the dialog along:

On page 8, Hind reminisces about the opening of the school and "how bare the spot had been before the school was established." What role does the school play in the story? What does it symbolize?
Do you fault Nadia for fleeing from her family and new stepfather? Did she make the right decision to leave her sisters? Did she have a choice?
The novel is divided into sections centered on a particular character. What effect do you think the structure has on the story?
Jerusalem is "a city divided in two" (19), "rooted in soil drenched with innocent blood" (9) but with "minarets and steeples jutting into the sky" (9). Consider the contrasts in the novel—the images of terror combined with the images of hope. What do you make of the contrast between the Old City and West Jerusalem? Do the characters in the novel believe they can coexist? Do you?
Compare and contrast Hind and Miral. How are the two alike? How are they different? Does Miral's rebellious nature and desire for justice seem similar to or different from Hind's? Are they fighting for the same cause?
Discuss the idea of solitude in the novel; how does solitude shape the lives of the characters? Consider Hind, Nadia, Jamal, Hani, and Miral's different lives.
What is Hani's influence on Miral's life?
While living at Dar El-Tifel, Miral loses a pair of classmates to the violent struggle, Aziza and Sahar. She reveals on page 118 "her sense that the world outside was a horrible place." How do these two stories inform the novel? How did they affect Miral's personal decisions in their aftermath?
What did you make of Samer and Lisa's relationship? What did Miral seem to take away from seeing the two of them together?
Revisit the torture scene on page 226. Did the brutality surprise you? What moment was most memorable in this scene? How did this experience affect Miral?
When Miral sees Hani for the last time, he shares his vision for the future and his ideas about peace with her. "This road is too bloody, it has no exit… we can't go on fighting forever" (288). Considering Miral's decision at the end of the novel, and the events that have taken place in Palestine and Israel since the Oslo Accords, what do you take away from the novel?

Compare and Contrast: The Blue Sweater and The 10 Women You'll Be Before You're 35

2010-12-24T06:59:00.000-08:00

It seems like we've taken a break from blogging (although admittedly, I'm usually a bit delinquent), but I figured I would start it back up since I will miss our next meeting when we discuss The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz. I really enjoyed The Blue Sweater. I admire Novogratz's work and sincere ambition to change the world. My one challenge with the book was that at times, Novogratz made it seem too easy--that anyone could go from international banking to the Rockefeller Foundation to beginning one's own nonprofit. Clearly, Novogratz had unusually amazing opportunities--and to her credit acknowledges them as such--but for those if us without those opportunities, is giving to Kiva enough?

I also recently read a book that I would categorize as Self-Help-Chick Lit: The 10 Women You'll Be Before You're 35 by Alison James. Boy, did these two books contrast! On one hand Novogratz is out truly changing the world in her 20s and early 30s, and James is writing about the party girl, the body conscious babe and the crisis chick. In her book, James describes stereotypes of women that we will be at some point in our 20s and 30s. And while my personality or lifestyle never encompassed any individual stereotype, I certainly relate to elements of almost every "woman that I will be" described by James.

Unlike me, Novogratz does not seem to share many of the qualities described by James. She seems to be above it all. I am not sure if she is really above it all or if that is just the perception I get from the book. (And I am leaning toward the latter.) Although Novogratz does not deny her weaknesses in The Blue Sweater, at times, she seems a little too good to be true.

What do you think? Can we all aspire to be like Novogratz and change the world? How do we balance our desire to do good with our real life idiosyncrasies?

Tragedy on Mt. Everest

2010-08-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

"Four hundred vertical feet above, where the summit was still washed in bright sunlight under an immaculate cobalt sky, my compadres dallied to memorialize their arrival at the apex of the planet, unfurling flags and snapping photos, using up precious ticks of the clock. None of them imagined that a horrible ordeal was drawing nigh. Nobody suspected that by the end of that long day, every minute would matter." Chapter One, p. 9

Because famed mountaineer/filmmaker David Breashears was exhibiting his photos at Asia Society in July, I became intrigued with this small detail in his biography concerning the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. So I hunted down a copy of Jon Krakauer's account of the events, his gripping novel, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1996).

All I can say is, this book was very hard to put down once I started reading. Krakauer is such a great writer, the events are nail-biting and filled with a horrific suspense, even when you know from the beginning the outcome and deaths that happened.

Krakauer was part of the team that experienced the most loss of human lives. His mission in joining Adventure Consultants expedition team was to write about the commercialization of climbing expeditions to Everest. What he experiences is more than he originally signed up for. The disastrous outcome deeply scars him, and the book is in part a memoir of the events that remind us all of just how dangerous mountaineering, and Mt. Everest, can be. Krakauer weaves into the tragedy the history of climbing on Mt. Everest and other important storylines that all shed light on the 1996 disaster- the lives and culture of the Sherpas, the evolution of climbing culture and equipment on Everest, high-altitude effects on the human body, and the personalities that have survived, or perished, in the May 1996 climbing season.

I hope you will also get a chance to check out David's photos of Mt. Everest online: http://sites.asiasociety.org/riversofice/

An Education by Lynn Barber

2010-08-20T10:02:00.001-07:00

I recently finished An Education, a memoir by the British journalist Lynn Barber. A chapter from the book inspired the film of the same name, which was released last year and nominated for an Oscar for "Best Picture." Lynn recounts her childhood growing up in the suburbs of London, bored by her conventional surroundings and itching for a bigger, brighter life. She has her eyes set on Oxford University until, when she turns sixteen, she meets a mysterious, worldly older man, Simon, who introduces her to a life-style that seems far more interesting than college. Simon takes her to expensive restaurants, gallery auctions, weekend trips to Europe - he even charms her parents and gets their seal of their approval to date their young daughter.

Lynn and Simon soon get engaged and Lynn ditches her plans to attend Oxford. But it turns out that Simon isn't who he says he is (he's something of a conman, which the movie does a great job of depicting), and they break their engagement. Luckily, Lynn is able to take the necessary exams for Oxford and is accepted to the college. The remainder of her memoir recounts her experiences at Oxford where she spends most of her time "studying men" (she claims to have slept with fifty of them during her second year), working as an editor at Penthouse, becoming a "sex expert" (writing a book called How to Improve your Man in Bed), and becoming an esteemed newspaper journalist. Best of all, and most moving, is the section where Lynn details her husband's battle with myelofibrosis and cancer and its effect on their thirty year marriage.

Lynn was a headstrong, sexually liberated woman at a time when this was frowned upon. Her memoir offers an insightful and often humorous view on how she broke free of conventional views and became an interesting, dynamic woman in her own right.

Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

2010-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

I recently read Commencement as part of another book club I'm in. As the bn.com website says: "This radiant debut novel from J. Courtney Sullivan examines the deep bonds of friendship and the complex landscape facing today's young women. Celia, Bree, Sally, and April arrive at Smith College as four very different people. But the years bring them closer together, so once they graduate and face the real world, they realize they need each other more than ever."

It was an interesting read for me on many levels. One, it's set at Smith College in Northampton, MA which is a college that I had been to during summers in high school for field hockey camp, so I was extremely familiar with the area and the college. Two, it's a really interesting look at the relationships between women and the idea that while we can rely on each other for advice, encouragement, and even sometimes discouragement, there's also a level of competition that's not always discussed.

I didn't go to an all girls high school or college, but I can see why some women choose them. There's a certain comfort level that you assume you'll have where you know that they are all going through the same experience with you and can certainly relate on that level more than a man would. If you're heterosexual, there's also the fact that most people feel that not having men around would lessen your distractions and therefore, there would be more of a focus on their academic studies. And when you graduate, there's a camaraderie that it built in. But then again, I went to a mixed high school and college and don't think that I have any less camaraderie with my girl friends or any less of a lasting bond.

What do you think about all girl colleges? Are you for or against them?

Zeitoun

2010-07-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

I recently finished up Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Unlike What is the What, another Egger's novel, which is based on a true story, Zeitoun is the actual story of the Zeitoun family. Zeitoun tells the story of a Muslim family living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Eggers uses a day-by-day approach to tracking the story and the subsequent events that impact the family.

The book provides an accurate account of the historical events associated with Hurricane Katrina, while shedding light on the experience of those who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the storm. I was shocked to read about the discrimination and profiling that took place during Katrina. I was unaware that the National Guard set up a make shift prison in a New Orleans bus station and that the police were imprisoning residents of the city without cause.

This is the second book I've read about Katrina (the first was for school--Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security), and I really appreciated the personal lens of Zeitoun.

Spider Eaters: Memories of the Cultural Revolution

2010-07-23T07:35:00.001-07:00

The title of Rae Yang's memoir derives from a saying by Chinese writer Lu Xun:
Some of our ancestors must have bravely attempted to eat crabs so that we would learn they were edible. Trials with spiders were not so enjoyable. Our ancestors suffered their bitter taste and spared us their poison.

Rae Yang herself was a spider eater, when she became a Red Guard and joined the full fury that was the Cultural Revolution at the age of fifteen.

Yang's memoir is a careful balance between her recorded thoughts and memories of her younger self with her feelings and reflections of the author at present. Easy to read, the book describes Yang's life in Beijing growing up during the 1950s and through the tumultuous 60's, blending together dreams, first hand experiences and stories, real and imagined, spoken to her by relatives and friends.

Particulary interesting are the chapters describing her re-education on the pig farm in northeast China. If you read this book and are unfamiliar with Chinese history/society, it is important to note how the hukou system works. The hukou system, meaning household registration, registers citizens within China to the village, town, or city into which they are born/have residence. It limited the migration of rural immigrants into the city, thus keeping a large supply of cheap labor for state-owned companies under China's old command system. This is still partially true today. Although Yang was a Beijing resident, her move to the northeast caused her hukou to be sent there. She was in danger of remaining a peasant with no way of transferring her hukou back to Beijing. I would equate this to if you decided to go out to Kansas to become a farmer for a few years. Here in the US you can always decide that farming is not for you and return to New York City, or move to a completely new city or state for that matter. In China, you would have to apply to leave the farm, and that was very difficult. (I may have over-simplified or incorrectly stated this, but that is my understanding of it so far.)

My questions: How truthful and factual do you find memoirs to be? If written many years after the event/experience took place, do you think the added time sheds more light on the truth of the events, or erases essential pieces?

NYTimes recently published this article about preserving the history of the Cultural Revolution.

At Home in the Woods: Reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods

2010-07-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

In May, I came home to New York after almost two years abroad on the other side of the world. Thrust back among once familiar sights and sounds, immersed again in the English language, awashed in American culture and media, I felt extremely lost. I had always heard about the culture shock one experiences when living in a foreign country. It was mentioned during a Fulbright conference that actually it was the re-culture shock that was far worse than the initial culture shock. I didn’t realize until I moved back home just how right this was.

To re-acquaint myself with my old American life, I decided one day to go for a walk in Harriman State Park near my house in New York. The woods felt comforting and familiar, a place I had walked through since I was as child. With vivid, bright, new spring greens enveloping me, I felt once again grounded, a connection between a place strongly anchored to my sense of “home,” and an activity I did frequently in Hong Kong, China and the US: hiking.

Along the trail, I found a signpost jabbed into the ground stating that I was actually walking along the Appalachian Trail. The “AT” is that famous trail which runs an unimaginable 2175+ miles, give or take, from Maine to Georgia. It was amazing to think that if I stayed on this trail, I could end up in either of those states. Then I began imagining actually trying to hike the whole trail, and how I would do it. How much food would I have to bring? How would I ever carry enough stuff for this exponentially long hiking trip?

In June, while helping to clean out old books at my father’s house for a yard sale, I found the copy of Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods, a travel memoir of the author’s experience along the AT. I had bought the book for Dad a few Christmases ago (although he presumably never read it), and I decided to re-gift it back to myself and find answers to all my AT questions.

Bryson had the crazy idea to hike the entire AT after a day hike on the portion of the AT trail that ran near his house in Hanover, NH. Bryson too had just returned to the US after having spent 20 years in England. He was going to hike the trail to re-discover the country of his birth.

The book got me laughing from the start.

"So I decided to do it [hike the AT]. More rashly, I announced my intention - told friends and neighbors, confidently informed my publisher, made it common knowledge among those who knew me. Then I bought some books... It required only a little light reading in adventure books and almost no imagination to envision circumstances in which I would find myself caught in a tightening circle of hunger-emboldened wolves, staggering and shredding clothes under an onslaught of pincered fire ants, or dumbly transfixed by the sight of enlivened undergrowth advancing towards me, like a torpedo through water, before being bowled backwards by a sofa-sized boar with cold beady eyes, a piercing squeal, and slaverous, chopping appetite for pink, plump, city-softened flesh."

It also brought back memories of my grizzly bear encounter in Yellowstone Park in May too.

"My particular dread--the vivid possibility that left me staring at tree shadows on the bedroom ceiling night after night--was having to lie in a small tent, alone in an inky wilderness, listening to a foraging bear outside and wondering what its intentions were. I was especially riveted by an amateur photograph in Herrero's book, taken late at night by a camper with a flash at a campground out West. The photograph caught four black bears as they puzzled over a suspended food bag. The bears were clearly startled but not remotely alarmed by the flash. It was not the size or demeanor of the bears that troubled me--they looked almost comically nonaggressive, like four guys who had gotten a Frisbee caught up a tree--but their numbers. Up to that moment it had not occurred to me that bears might prowl in parties. What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag."

Bryson also balances his personal narratives with interesting side-stories and history abou the Appalachian Trail. I learned many interesting things about America I never knew.

Did you know....?

1. What happened to the American chestnut tree?

2. What is largest job the US Forest Service undertakes?

3. What do you do if you see a bear?

The best part about the book for me was that Bryson, like myself, is not an extreme hiker or mountaineer. He is a simple every-day man, attuned and accustomed to the convenience of modern day life, in all its fast-food, shopping mall, parking lot filled glory. The second best part of the book is his equally hilarious companion, Katz.

I read the book on my commute between New Jersey and New York City. While rather ugly industrial landscapes, land flat as the eye could see, and suburban sprawl in 360 degrees rolled by the bus window, I was transported to one of my favorite places to be: lost among the trees of a New England forest.

Just this past weekend, inspired by the book, I took to the woods once again. Armed with an old hiking book with trail maps (circa 1971) I also found in my Dad’s collection, I set out on a four and a half hour hike through Bear Mountain. I walked the Appalachian Trail for a few hours, and thought about how Bryson described it. Hiking alone was a new adventure ( I admit I was slightly worried about getting murdered), but I also at once felt calm and peaceful, despite the sounds of gunfire practice from West Point and the rip-roaring bursts of noisy motorcycles that broke the silence. I spotted a pair of wild turkey, saw wild raspberries, a bright orange shelf-like tree mushroom (Laetiporus), and a wasp nest. Sweaty and tired, I was a hiker again, and I was at home.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

2010-07-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s been on my reading list ever since I read glowing reviews of it from the New York Times and various blogs last year. It’s set in New York City in 1974 and centers around the day Philip Petite walked across a wire set between the World Trade Center towers (Man on Wire, a great documentary that came out a couple years ago details how Petite planned and executed his extraordinary walk).

The novel follows a set of characters whose lives intersect on that day and in the months and years that follow. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character – a young Irish monk, a prostitute, a wealthy Upper East Side housewife, a judge, a hippie painter, etc. They all come from very different walks of life, and it’s interesting to watch their lives intertwine with one another. I loved the descriptions of New York City, how different and kind of dangerous it was back then. The novel also touches upon 9/11 in a subtle way, I think. It shows a day that could have turned out tragic (i.e. what if Philip Petite had fallen or been knocked down) but turned out to be uplifting (his walk brought thousands of people on the streets of the city, cheering) unlike what happened decades later. I highly recommend this book; it's a really great read.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

2010-06-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

I just finished "A Reliable Wife" recently and liked it so much, I thought I should post about it. The novel is by Robert Goolrick and has been on the Top 10 NY Times Bestsellers list for weeks now.

The story is set in 1907 Wisconsin and begins with a man (Ralph Truitt) posting an ad in the paper for a "reliable wife". A mysterious woman (Catherine Land) replies and we are immediately told that she has no interest in falling in love with this man, but instead plans on leaving him once she has secured his fortunes. However, both people share secrets that the other is not aware of and those secrets begin to soon surface and changes the course of both of their lives.

I don't want to say anything more because I'm recommending that you read this, but I do have to say that this novel is one sweeping drama that takes you on a very fun ride. Read it!

To Kill A Mockingbird - Novel to Film #4

2010-06-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

We read "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee a few months ago, but since no one has posted about it yet, I thought I should start the conversation. I feel like everyone who goes to school in America ends up coming across this novel at some point in their academic history, so that alone separates this novel from others. It's a classic, a "must read". And while I had read it a very long time ago, it was nice to read it again and refresh my memory of the characters. I also re-watched the film that starred Gregory Peck (which one him an Oscar) and while there are a few things that are omitted from the novel, I think it stays true to what the core of the novel is about.

I love that the novel is centered around the two children, Scout and Jem. You see things so much simpler through their eyes and they question things is such an honest way. They are children, but they are able to see right and wrong better than the adults because they aren't jaded or influenced by life's lessons yet.

I also appreciated how the novel deals with race relations in such a tender, yet firm hand and there's never any ambiguity that choosing to treat others differently based on the color of their skin is acceptable or fair. But it's presented in such a way that says that although things are the way they are now, that doesn't mean that they'll be that way forever and you shouldn't be discouraged against your belief in the good of people. I will definitely be adding this to my children's bookshelf for them to read when they are old enough.

What did everyone else think of the novel? Did anyone else see the film? What were your thoughts?

The Help

2010-05-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

After many recommendations from family and friends, I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett and really enjoyed it. The book takes place in Jackson, Mississippi and chronicles a few years in the lives of a group of friends and their "help," their maids. The novel takes place in the 1960s, and race relations is a major theme throughout.

Having only visited Jackson once (and that was in the 1990s), it was informative to read about segregation from the perspectives of both the white housewives and their black maids. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the main characters. I don't want to give anything away about the plot, but I do wonder how authentic the various voices are. Stockett has received some criticism as a white woman writing in the voices of black women--that even in a fiction book, she would not be able to capture the maids' experiences.

What do you think? Does one owns experience impact one's ability to tell the story of an other's experience?

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

2010-05-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Water for Elephants is a historical novel by Sara Gruen. The novel centers on Jacob Jankowski and his experiences in a travelling circus called The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. This one had been on my "to read" list for a while now since it was on the NY Times Bestsellers List, but once I heard that it was going to be turned into a film, it quickly rose to the top. Hehe.

The novel is told through Jacob's perspective when he is an old man living in a nursing home reminiscing about his time working in the circus in his early 20s. The dynamic that develops between Jacob, the dysfunctional foreman, and his beautiful wife is the main cause of drama in the novel and had me turning the pages quickly to find out what was going to happen. I don't want to give too much away because I would definitely recommend this for you ladies to read. The film will star Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, and Reese Witherspoon, so as I was reading the novel, I visualized them as the characters and I think it made the story come more alive for me.

What do you think about reading novels that already have a film adaptation or one in production? Does it help you get a clearer image of the characters or would you rather be able to come up with your own visual of the characters?

PREP

2010-05-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

I read PREP after AMERICAN WIFE (completely randomly) which is a story about a girl who moves from her hometown in the Mid West to attend a swanky boarding school on the East Coast. The chapters are divided into semesters of the year and you see the main character as she attempts to make friends in the first year among her very privileged peers, endure boy crushes and family embarrassment, all the while just trying to fit in. It was a really interesting read, especially since it was almost like they were going off to college instead of high school. College is normally the first time that you are really away from your parents and able to make most of your own decisions. There's no parental guidance, but the teachers and headmaster are there to make sure you follow the rules.

I actually enjoyed the book. Did any of you read it?

Did any of you go to a boarding school? What were your experiences like there?

And the Band Played On

2010-04-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

It's take me almost a month, but I finally finished And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. Originally published in 1987, And the Band Played On is a non-fiction account of the founding of AIDS and the HIV virus. Shlits, who reported for the San Francisco Chronicle, tells the story of the discovery of AIDS through people infected by the disease. He intersperses the individual narratives with the politics and science involved in the founding of AIDS. (If you've read/watched any movies about Harvey Milk, many of the characters in the book will be familiar. For example, Bill Kraus and Cleve Jones, both very involved with San Francisco politics, are characters.)

As the Band Played On is an incredibly informative read and very interesting. It's dense at times, although Shilts does a good job at explaining the political jargon. Having not yet been born when AIDS was discovered, I was surprised to read how little media coverage AIDS received. I also realized how little I know about the gay liberation movement of the '70s. Today, discrimination against gays comes in the form of banning same-sex marriage or in issues related to adoption. In the late '70s and early '80s, discrimination against gays came in the form of ignoring a disease that was killing people!

It's truly amazing how far we've come in fighting AIDS. I'm going to try to find a book that chronicles the progression of AIDS research through the late '80s and '90s. With the book ending in 1987, it seems like there is so much of this story to tell.

Have any of your read And the Band Played On or seen the movie? What did you think?

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

2010-04-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'd like to recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. The book covers major moments in American history starting from 1492 (Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, The First and Second World Wars, Vietnam, etc). The version I read ends in the 1970s, but there's an updated version that goes through the 1990s. Zinn writes about hisorical events from the perspective of how they affected everyday people. For example, when he writes about Columbus, he focuses more on the Native Americans, showing how they struggled and failed to hold to their land. He also argues that it's the American people who've shaped the laws of the country rather than political leaders. He shows how working-class people played a pivitol role in ensuring that the government passed Civil Rights, Women's Rights and Worker's laws amongst a host of other important legislation. I like Zinn's writing style a lot; it's clear and simple, not stuffy at all. Really enjoyed the book and discovering new things I was unaware of in our history.

AMERICAN WIFE

2010-03-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

I recently read American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a "fictional" account of a woman's life from childhood to adulthood where she ends up marrying a man who eventually becomes president. Anyone who reads this book can't help but see the parallels between the book's protagonist and Laura Bush's life. She was a teacher. She married a man who came from a very wealthy family. He had a drinking problem. He recovered and became governor and then president.

With all of these similarities, it was hard to know what was true and what wasn't true, but that didn't stop me from really enjoying the book. I felt like even though it wasn't a biography of the First Lady, I felt like I identified with her and respected her more than ever. This may be a false sense of those things since I don't know what's true and what's not true. But if it is true, then Laura Bush is a strong lady who had been through a lot in her life, even before George Bush ever came in the picture. And then dealing with all of his issues and the pressures of being in the public eye while still keeping her own identity in tact--wow. She just seems so inspiring as a woman who really tried to keep all of her priorities in perspective.

But it did bother me that there are parts to the story that aren't real and therefore I really shouldn't be taking all of it so seriously. I was surprised that Laura Bush didn't sue Sittenfeld for changing her story so much, but I'm also not sure what the law is for public figures who have things written about them.

Does anyone know how that works?

Has anyone else read this book? Have you read Sittenfeld's other book Prep?

Got Faith?

2010-03-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

I remember reading Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom when I was 16. Even as a teenager, I found Albom's portrayal of his teacher and mentor Morrie and his life lessons meaningful and inspiring. I found Have a Little Faith: A True Story, Albom's most recent novel, to be equally as inspiring.

After being asked to write and deliver the eulogy for his childhood rabbi "Reb" (Reb makes this request himself of Albom), Albom spends eight years learning about Reb and the meaning of faith. In his recounting of his meetings with Reb, Albom intertwines the story of a Detroit Pastor, Henry. Much like Morrie, Have a Little Faith is full of life lessons. And although the main characters in the novel are a rabbi and a pastor, it is not about religion--it is about faith and what it means to have faith. Albom does not describe himself as religious before his meetings with Reb, and I'm not sure he would describe himself as religious after those meetings.

What do you think about faith? Is it something intricately tied into religion, or is it something that you have have even without religious beliefs?

Lord Carew's Bride

2010-02-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'm excited to be putting up my first Books and the City! blog post.

I remember when I first saw Beauty and the Beast as I kid. It wasn't my favorite of the Disney fairy tales (I believe the honor fell to Snow White at the time) but it was a hauntingly beautiful story. After seeing it though, a question stuck in my mind: "How could Beauty love the Beast?" Now, as an adult who has seen some life (barely :)), the question that comes to mind is "How could Beauty not love the Beast?" He was potrayed as a man of substance, and isn't a man's substance more important than his trappings? When it comes to true love, shouldn't what's beneath the surface matter more than what is the surface?

Well, my attraction to stories about people who fall in like and then love for "what's beneath the surface" led me to buy Mary Balogh's newly re-released book, Lord Carew's Bride, a week ago. And when the 300-page book was delivered a few days ago, I sat down with it and devoured it within five hours. I've always found Ms. Balogh to be an engaging author and, with Lord Carew's Bride, she has outdone herself again.

Lord Carew's Bride is a modern day (nay Regency Age) Beauty and the Beast. It's about a beauty nursing a broken heart, the disabled gardener she finds solace with and the special companionship they develop. Throw in the scoundrel who broke the beauty's heart and the fact that the gardener is a marquess in disguise and you've got a delicious romp of a love triangle. I really enjoyed this story and I recommend it.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan News!

2010-02-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hugh Jackman Joins 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'

February 3, 2010
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By: Leonard Jacobs
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Call it a leading role, call it an unbilled cameo. Either way, one thing is clear: Wolverine is headed to China.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hugh Jackman has joined the cast of 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,' helmed by Chinese-American director Wayne Wang.

Set during the 19th century, the story follows Snow Flower and Lily, two friends who struggle with the social and cultural norms of the time.

Given the storyline, it is unclear how large Jackman's role will be. The Reporter quoted local Chinese media as characterizing his role as the male lead; however, Jackman's publicist is insisting that the star is doing an "unbilled cameo."

Jackman is said to begin filming at the end of the month.

In the meantime, Jackman joins the project following the exit of its female lead, Zhang Ziyi. According to the report, Ziyi's exit was due to scheduling conflicts with Wong Kar-wai's 'The Grand Master.' Replacing her will be actress Li Bingbing.

'Snow Flower' also stars South Korean actress Jeon Ji-Hyun.

Just Kids

2010-02-20T22:42:00.000-08:00

I recently finished Just Kids, a memoir by the rock singer and poet Patti Smith and really enjoyed it. In her memoir, Smith recounts moving from New Jersey to New York City when she was 19 in the late 60s with a dream of becoming an artist. She is unsure of what type of artist she wants to be, but desires to make a name for herself in art. She ends up meeting a cute boy named Robert Mapplethorpe, who also wants to be an artist, and the book charts their rise into the art and music world. Smith struggled quite a bit during her first few yeas in the city; she had little money and found herself sleeping in Central Park for a few nights. Somehow, she held on to her dream and, since then, she has developed a successful career. I think her music's pretty great.

I loved how Smith describes New York City in the 60s - chockfull of so much creative energy. People seemed really energized to create art, music and be involved in politics. Smith also describes other artists she encounters during that time: she meets Jimi Hendrix in front of his recording studio in the East Village, parties with Janis Joplin in a hotel room, hooks up with the playwright Sam Shepard at a concert. Smith wasn't famous at the time, but she was still able to talk to and hang out with pretty famous people. I don't imagine she'd have the same access to such people today. There seemed to be less of a divide between famous and non-famous people in those days.

I don't read memoirs often, but I liked this one so much I'd like to read more. Are there any memoirs you'd recommend reading?

Another Lisa See: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

2010-02-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

From my post last month about Shanghai Girls, it is clear that I am thoroughly enamored with Lisa See. I finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan this week--another informative read. Like Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and the Secret Fans is a sorrowful read.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan takes place in the 1800s and centers around the relationship of two loatong, "old-sames." Snow Flower and Lily signed their laotong contract at the age of seven basically agreeing to be best friends for life. Having a laotong raised one's status and marriageability and enabled Lily and Snow Flower to have a friendship that went beyond their childhood "daughter days" into their adolescent "hair-pinning days" into their married "rice and salt days." Most women's friendships ended when they got married and moved to a new village, but laotong, like Snow Flower and Lily, communicated through letters using nu shu--phonetic writing exclusive to women.

In addition to following the joyous, sorrowful and surprising moments of Lily and Snow Flower's friendship, the book also gave graphic and fascinating accounts of foot binding and a picture of the women's realm in 19th century China. While men where (and are?) clearly favored in Chinese society, the women had a unique culture all their own.

Have you ever heard of nu shu? Does anyone know when both Chinese women and men began to use the same alphabet?

The Witches of Eastwick - Novel to Film #3

2010-02-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

As our 3rd choice in our "novel to film" round, we read "The Witches of Eastwick" by John Updike. As we discussed at brunch today, this film definitely deviated from the film in enough ways to make it noticeable and I think that I preferred the version on film as opposed to the version in the novel.

For one, the women in the novel are not sympathetic characters at all. They sleep with everyone in their neighborhood (single or married) and constantly neglect their children. They only use their powers to enact petty revenge on those who they are annoyed by. I felt like Updike was purposely making these women so vile that no one could identify with them. As though this was a snapshot of the evilness of women in general. Perhaps Updike had some serious issues with women. What do you think?

They definitely made the women more identifiable in the film and certainly more likable. I mean, who couldn't like Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, or Susan Sarandon? And they also added a bit of humor, which I appreciated over the dryness of the novel. Did anyone else feel like the novel was dry?

What are your other thoughts on the novel?

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

2010-02-02T04:10:00.000-08:00

Last month, I finished reading The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, which I loved.

The story takes place in Mexico in the 1930s in a town where Catholic priests are being persecuted by anti-religious town officials. The priests are asked to give up preaching and giving confessions or risk losing their lives (the officials believe the priests are tainting the townspeople's minds with religious lies). One priest, however, continues to do his vocation and, in turn, is given a death verdict. Essentially, he has to run away from the town and hide from the town officials. There is an overzealous police lieutenant who will do anything (including murder innocent townspeople) to catch him.

The priest is a wonderful character. He is not what you would consider a "holy" person. He is an alcoholic (he drinks so much that he's called "whisky" priest) and has a child out-of-wedlock. He often questions his faith; he bristles at people who are too eager to show they have good faith; he is attracted to wayward people, lost souls. His spiritual beliefs, though complex, are true and pure. As he travels around the country, he is able to affect the various people he encounters with his words and actions.

The novel explores religion in a very interesting way and asks some tough questions. What does it mean to be a spiritual person or a so -called "good" person? Are religious people (i.e priests) quacks or do they have the potential to change people's lives? I might be making the novel sound more serious than it is. More than anything, it is an entertaining read, a real page turner. Greene was an avid moviegover, and his novels were greatly influenced by film. The Power and the Glory, in particular, reads like a first-rate thriller, a road movie and western all rolled into one. It's an enchanting book that also enlightened me.

Twenties Girl

2010-02-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

After reading "The Witches of Eastwick", I was looking for something super light that I didn't have to use too many brain cells on and "Twenties Girl" by Sophie Kinsella (of "Shopoholic" fame) was a perfect fit. I have to admit, I wasn't sure that I would like it all that much, but I had it on my shelf from when I got the book from a gift bag and just figured I'd give it a try.

I haven't read the "Shopoholic" series, but I did see the film which I did enjoy (even though it came out at the height of the recession madness). Did anyone else see it?

Anyway, the story is set in London and is about this girl named Lara who has just started a new business with her best friend, consulting for big corporations looking for executives. Unfortunately for Lara, her friend (who is the one who actually has the experience in the field) has up a left her suddenly to go on vacation with a new boyfriend and has no immediately plans to return.

At the same time, Lara is forced to attend her great aunt Sadie's funeral (she lived to be 105!) and is shocked when the ghost of Sadie starts talking to her and demanding that she find a necklace that she owned before she died. At that point, all kinds of craziness gets under way.

I actually thought that this was a fun, light-hearted story and I even was thinking how it might work as a film. There would definitely be plenty of elements to play with and it would be interesting to see how the ghost could be be portrayed.

Has anyone else read this or any of Kinsella's other books?

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang

2010-01-29T18:42:00.000-08:00

Imagine this is your workday:

You wake up from your bunk bed in a cramped dorm room for eight, and with the morning alarm promptly ringing at 6am you are up and fighting for use of the bathroom with all the other women on your dorm floor. By 7am you have eaten in the factory cafeteria along with the other 50,000 employees in the factory complex. That’s right- the factory employs over 70,000 people, more than the population of a small American city! After breakfast you are stationed on your assembly line team. Your task: to cut the upper materials that will eventually become the body for sneakers of famous brands like Puma, Nike, Adidas, and many others. You do this for 12 hours everyday, with a 1 hour lunch break and dinner break. You finish work by 9 or 10pm and return to your dorm to begin a new day tomorrow. It’s only Monday, and you still have 5 more days of work before your one Sunday off. You make roughly 1,000 rmb a month- $160.

Such is the life of many factory girls in China, yet their move from the farming villages into working conditions such as these are seen as a success and a triumph for millions of migrant women.

Leslie Chang offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of real young migrant women in China, girls our age, who move from their rural villages to bustling centers like Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, all of a two hour train ride away from Hong Kong. Simultaneously, Chang also weaves in her family’s own personal history in China. And for once it felt very satisfying to get a Chinese American’s perspective on all the happenings of modern China. She is also the wife of writer Peter Hessler, who wrote two great books on teaching and living in China- Buki has the one I traded at our book swap, Oracle Bones.

Whenever I read books about China, I always reflect upon my own experiences there, and I feel like I’m re-living much of it all over again. Chang provides amusing and humorous glimpses into facets of Chinese society I may never encounter, making the book a fast and entertaining read. I also really appreciated the way in which she worked in the personal story of her family, as I felt it was something I have been wanting to do with my own experiences in learning about my family’s history in China and Hong Kong.

Another favorite scene in the book is when she writes about one of the main characters who works in a handbag factory. It turns out that the handbag factory makes purses for Coach, but the girl and her fellow workers never really understand the true value of how much the bags are worth, trading them among friends and never really using them.

Hope you will all get a chance to read this!

Shanghai Girls

2010-01-20T07:24:00.001-08:00

I've spent the last month reading like a mad woman. While I'm really enjoying school, it's so nice to be able to read for pleasure. Of the books I've read in the past few weeks (I may blog about a few of the others later), Shanghai Girls by Lisa See was by far the most fascinating.

The book follows the lives of two sisters from (you guessed it) Shanghai from the 1930s to the 1950s. I don't want to give away too many details about the story because I think those of you who choose to read it will enjoy discovering them for yourself, but anyone with a sister or a close friend will appreciate the relationship between the two sisters Pearl and May. The story of Pearl and May travels from Shanghai to the U.S. after a suprising turn of events.

In addition to its engaging narrative, I particularly enjoyed learning a little bit about Chinese history from Shanghai Girls. I wasn't aware of the turbulent relationship between the Chinese and Japanese in the late '30s and '40s, and while I was somewhat aware of the immigration challenges in the U.S. mid-century, Shanghai Girls provided me with additional insight and perspective.

During my visit to Florida last weekend, I borrowed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, also by Lisa See, from my grandmother (we did a Lisa See book exchange), and I am excited to get started on it sooon.

Has anyone else read any books by Lisa See? If so, what are your thoughts?

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-01-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

I recently read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery and while it took me almost half of the book to finally get into it, at the end I felt like it was well worth it. The novel was originally printed in French and was on the New York Times Bestseller list.

The story is mainly about an older woman who works as a concierge in an apartment building and a young girl who lives in the apartment building with her family. Both women are extremely smart and feel completely isolated from the world because of it. The older woman is of a lower station and therefore keeps her intelligence a secret for fear of others around her treating her badly because of it. The young girl comes from a wealthy family but her intellect separates her from her family who only seem to care about the most insignificant and trivial things in life. Both women's lives are changed forever when a new tenant moves into the apartment building.

I won't say anything more than that so that I don't ruin anything for anyone who wants to read it, but I was really touched by this story. Has anyone else read this? What were your thoughts?

Gomorrah - Novel to Film #2

2010-01-06T18:32:00.001-08:00

The next book on the "novel to film" list was Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. I had watched the film when it came out last year and was not impressed by what I saw at all. I know that there were plenty of people who did love it though (it was nominated for an Oscar!) so I was interested in reading the book to hopefully change my thoughts about the film.

I found the film extremely confusing with all of the different storylines not really fitting cohesively with the others. I thought maybe it was the editing, but now that I've read the book, I see that it was the style of the way the book was written.

The book itself was interesting when discussing the role of women in the Italian mafia, as well as how Hollywood has been influenced by the Italian mafia and then conversely how the mafia has been influenced by Hollywood. Those chapters kept me engaged and weren't a chore to get through.

However, the parts I didn't appreciate so much were the chapters where the author just told story after story of how different mobsters were killed. I felt like I was reading a police log from a newspaper! I didn't feel like I could connect to any of the characters in the story and I think it was because the author didn't allow for that connection to happen.

Did anyone else feel the same way? What were your other thoughts on the novel?

Non-Fiction Fun

2009-11-08T16:01:00.001-08:00

Thanks, Tiff, for your posts about the Hurricane and Northern Lights. It saddens me that I don't have time for pleasure reading, and I am looking forward to tackling the growing stack of books on might night table when I am off from school in January.

I'm really enjoying being back in school, and while the first half of the semester included some not so fun books (all 85 of the Federalist Papers, for example), I am really enjoying the books assigned in the second half of my Intro to Public Affairs course.

I've read most of What You Should Know about Politics...But Don't by Jessamyn Conrad. Though not the most sophisticated book (I like to think that Conrad, who is getting her PhD in Art History, wrote this book as a guide to politics for art history majors), it explains all sorts of political issues very well--and to her credit, Conrad does explain the many sides of political issues. The book is not entirely non-partisan, as it claims to be, but it does provide a well-rounded view of what is going on in American political life.

On the "I didn't know America had a eugenics program" front, I am currently about a third of the way through of War Against the Weak by Edwin Black. So far, it is incredibly fascinating. I had no idea that Germany learned about eugenics from the US! And with all of the debate over "human engineering" (did anyone see this week's Private Practice), the books feels incredibly relevant. I'll post more when I am done, but if you enjoy history, this is a good one.

The 16th Round by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

2009-11-01T18:02:00.001-08:00

We were supposed to read this book as the first in our "novel to film" round, but as luck would have it (or rather, lack of luck), none of us could get our hands on a copy in time, so we moved on to the next book on the list. I was still interested in reading this book, however, so I kept it on my library queue and read it after I was done with the bookclub book of the month.

I had seen the film with Denzel Washington, so I was vaguely familiar with Carter's story, but after now having read the novel, I see that the film definitely left out a lot of the events of his life in order to make a more sympathetic character out of Carter. You don't see Denzel Washington mugging people (or at least that I can remember...I'm going to netflix it so that I can refresh my memory...)

Considering that the novel is a memoir more than a biography, I couldn't help but question some of the things that Carter tells us. I'm not saying that I don't believe Carter's story to a certain extent because I know that racism plays an big part in the relations between many different ethnicities, but it seems that every time something happens to him, he blames it on the prejudice of others. He never seems to take responsibility for his own behavior (which includes mugging and robbing people) and instead tries to justify his actions by constantly reminding you of the circumstances of what most, if not all, Black people during that time were going through. Not everyone made the same choices that he did.

As for the murders that he was given the life sentences for, I believe him when he says that he didn't commit those crimes, if only because his life seemed to be going in a completely different direction than most of his life was heading and he seems to be on the right path. Married with a child on the way, a career that was flourishing...he'd have had to be an idiot to mess that up.

I found the novel to be an interesting read (especially since my dad grew up in Paterson and my grandmother still lives there...I was even able to picture some of the places that Carter mentions) and I was definitely intrigued by Carter, but I don't think that I ever allowed myself to truly open up to Carter. Perhaps that was because I never felt like he was able to truly open up to us...his audience.

Has anyone else read this novel? What were your thoughts? Do you think that Carter was able to give an objective view of his own life?

Northern Lights - Novel to Film #1

2009-10-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

As the first book of our new round, we read Northern Lights by Nora Roberts. Personally, I was really interested to read the book because of all of the drama surrounding the stars of the made for tv film. I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth. Hehe.

I was pleasantly surprised that this was more than just a typical romance novel. True, it did have the sweeping, unrealistic (at least to me) love story, but what kept me turning the page was the murder mystery storyline that was woven in. I found myself really paying attention to the clues and trying to figure out who the killer was before the story revealed it. Of course, that didn't happen, but that's the point. The author let us know the answers when she decided it was time.

Beyond the love story with the murder mystery subplot, the core of the story, I found, was the internal struggle of Nate. He was a tortured soul who came to the town to escape his demons and he ends up going through a complete transformation. It was almost as if he was SUPPOSED to be in Lunacy at that exact time period so that not only he could experience the transformation, but so could other people in the town. I thought that he was the most interesting character of the book and the only one who could think with a clear head at all times. It was almost like he was the perfect man, except for the fact that you know that he's not. He's flawed, but he rises to the challenge of life and it was great to have someone like that to read about.

I haven't seen the film, but I just got it from work today (had no idea that we had the DVD rights to it! hehe) and so I'll definitely be sitting down to watch it soon. Not sure that I buy Leann Rhimes as Meg, but we'll see what happens...Eddie Cibrian as Nate almost works for me (he's very handsome), but I imagined Nate as a little older.

Who was your favorite character from the book? Any other thoughts on the book? Any thoughts on the film vs novel?

365 Days of Book Reading

2009-10-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

Read a great story this morning from the New York Times about a suburban Connecticut mom who has spent the past year reading a book a day and blogging about her experience. I'm quite inspired!

Here's a snippet of the article:

Last Oct. 28, on her 46th birthday, Nina Sankovitch read a novel, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” by Muriel Barbery. The next day she posted a review online deeming it “beautiful, moving and occasionally very funny.”

The next day she read “The Emigrants,” by W. G. Sebald, and the day after that, “A Sun for the Dying,” by Jean-Claude Izzo. On Thanksgiving she read Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Isaac Newton; on Christmas, “The Love Song of Monkey,” by Michael S. A. Graziano; on July 4, “Dreamers,” by Knut Hamsun. When seen Friday, she was working on “How to Paint a Dead Man,” by Sarah Hall. She finished two more over the weekend during a trip to Rochester with her family (husband; 27-year-old stepdaughter; four boys ages 16, 14, 11 and 8) for her in-laws’ 60th wedding anniversary.In a time-deprived world, where book reading is increasingly squeezed off the page, it is hard to know what’s most striking about Ms. Sankovitch’s quest, now on Day 350, to read a book every day for a year and review them on her blog, www.readallday.org.

Read more here:

Good Girls Should Go Bad?

2009-09-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

Read about this new book by author Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Our culture is teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential. In particular, the pressure to be “Good”—unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless—diminishes girls’ authenticity and personal authority.

The Curse of the Good Girl erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins its destructive sprawl in girlhood and extends across the female life span, stunting the growth of skills and habits essential to becoming a strong woman. This book traces the impact of the curse on girls’ development, and provides parents with the strategies to break its spell."

New Books from Book Club Authors - Part 3

2009-09-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

In October comes The Museum of Love, the latest novel from Orhan Pamuk (My Name is Red). I recently read an excerpt of it in the New Yorker magazine (which you can find online: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/09/07/090907fi_fiction_pamuk) and was mesmerized by it. It’s quite a departure from My Name is Red and seems to tell a modern story about love and marriage.

From Amazon:
It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.

For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure.In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart’s reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society’s manners and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.

A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional—its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.

New Books from Book Club Authors - Part 2

2009-09-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Also being published in September is Kazu Ishiguro’s (Never Let Me Go) new book, a collection of short stories, entitled Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. “Music and nightfall” sounds so sumptious...I'm eager to dip into this book.

Here’s a short description:
One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us his first cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched, interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essential character.A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turning from the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring taste in music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . A struggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failing marriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted, underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe that plastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whose tutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . .Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of the two—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, in one way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment of reckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes just eluding their grasp.An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed works of fiction.

New Books from Book Club Authors - Part 1

2009-09-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

I’m excited by three books that will be released in the next couple months by authors we’ve read in the club: Margret Atwood, Kazu Ishiguro and Orhan Pamuk. I have been hearing great things about their news books and can’t wait to pick them up!

Margret Atwood (The Blind Assassin) has written another dystopia novel, The Year of the Flood, which will be published in September.

Here’s the description from Amazon:
The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power.
The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.

Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.

"Stitches" A Graphic Memoir

2009-09-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

Just read this article in the New York Times, about a new graphic memoir by a popular children's book illustrator. Subject matter is for adults. Sounds pretty interesting, if any of you find and or read it back in NYC, let me know what you think!

"Stitches" by David Small

"Finding a Voic in a Graphic Memoir"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/books/07small.html?_r=1

Summer Reading!

2009-08-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

So I've had THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE sitting on my bookshelf for a full 2 years and this summer I decided that I had to read it once and for all. I had heard so many great things about it (hence why I bought it in the first place), but the thought of reading over 800 pages really bogged me down and I knew that unless I had a good chunk of time to read it, it wasn't going to happen. Then of course, we decided to take an extended break from the bookclub and the opportunity presented itself.

I have to say, I am SO happy that I read this novel! It was such an interesting story and the historical period it was set in (Victorian England) just added another layer of intrigue to the novel as a whole. The lead character, Sugar, is a prostitute who lives in a brothel managed by her own mother. She's an extremely smart girl but opportunities had never presented themselves to her until one day she meets an unusual client and her entire world is turned upside down. I won't say any more since I hope that my raving will propel at least one of you to read it...

Can't wait to see you all at the next bookclub meeting!

Happy reading!

Tiff

Peter Hessler's River Town

2009-08-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

So while traveling around China for a month, I had a lot of time to read on the 14 hour train rides between cities. I finished off Peter Hessler's River Town. He was a Peace Corps volunteer back in the late 1990s, the first batch sent to China, where he taught English at a small sleepy town along the Yangtze River.

If there is one book I would recommend to summarize many of my own experiences and feelings about China, it would be this book. I really hope you all get a chance to read it. It's entertaining and insightful about being a foreigner in China, Chinese history and culture, and the growing pains and successes of the nation and its people in modern times.

Happy summer reading!

Summer Reading

2009-06-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

I've read some great novels thus far this spring/summer (aren't these the best times of year for reading?) and wanted to share them with you.

The Housekeeper and the Professor
Short and compact, funny and heartwarming. Set in Japan, the story is about a brilliant mathematician with short-term memory loss (he can only remember things for precisely 80 minutes) and the relationship he develops with his housekeeper and her ten year old son.

Synopsis: He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professors mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeepers shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.

Hurry Down Sunshine
A New York City based writer chronicles the summer when his fifteen year old daughter is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Though the topic is quite dark, I found it riveting and couldn’t put it down. The writer presents a fascinating account of his daughter’s spiral into psychosis and the underground world of mental health clinics.

Synopsis: Hurry Down Sunshine tells the story of the extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg's daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally's visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city's most sweltering months. "I feel like I'm traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to," Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine.

Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her — her brother and grandmother, her mother and stepmother, and, not least of all, the author himself. Among Greenberg's unforgettable gallery of characters are an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary dreams. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshin e holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.

American Rust

Another book I couldn’t put down. Two teenage boys, best friends, from Pittsburg who find themselves caught up in a murder. The boys are talented, one excels in academics, the other in sports, but both choose not to go to college and end up wallowing in their desolate, poverty-stricken town. The novel unfolds like a film with an interesting mix of characters and strong dialogue. I wouldn’t be surprise if the novel is made to a movie one day.

Synopsis: Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, a lush landscape as deceptively promising as the edifices of the abandoned steel mills that once provided the livelihood of generations, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories, abandoned homes, and polluted river. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.

The Corrections

I remember trying to tackle this book when it first came out in 2001 and disliking it. The writing seemed too clever and over-blown, and I ended up abandoning it after the first chapter. Recently, I gave it another shot, and it went down much better the second time. The novel is very funny and very scathing. It is about a Midwestern family who hate each other and who are forced together one Christmas when the father falls ill with Parkinson’s. The writer, Jonathan Franzen, has a brilliant way of describing the ways that families get under our skin.

Synopsis: If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas. In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does. Unlike his previous works, The 27th City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992), which tackled St. Louis and Boston, respectively, this one skips from city to city (New York; St. Jude; Philadelphia; Vilnius, Lithuania) as it follows the delamination of the Lambert family Alfred, once a rigid disciplinarian, flounders against Parkinson's-induced dementia; Enid, his loyal and embittered wife, lusts for the perfect Midwestern Christmas; Denise, their daughter, launches the hippest restaurant in Philly; and Gary, their oldest son, grapples with depression, while Chip, his brother, attempts to shore his eroding self-confidence by joining forces with a self-mocking, Eastern-Bloc politician. As in his other novels, Franzen blends these personal dramas with expert technical cartwheels and savage commentary on larger social issues, such as the imbecility of laissez-faire parenting and the farcical nature of U.S.-Third World relations. The result is a book made of equal parts fury and humor, one that takes a dry-eyed look at our culture, at our pains and insecurities, while offering hope that, occasionally at least, we can reach some kind of understanding. This is, simply, a masterpiece.

Do you have any summer reading picks? (Books that you already read and enjoyed or plan to read?)

Favorite Book to Film Adaptations

2009-05-23T20:04:00.001-07:00

Hi Girls! So it's been forever, and I'm really sorry I've been behind on the reading. Unfortunately, many of the titles we picked just are not readily available over here in HK....I will have lots of reading to catch up on!

In reading some of the old posts about films and books- Never Let Me Go being turned into a movie, The Last Lecture going from video to book, etc. I was thinking about my favorite book-to-film adaptations. I'm usually in "the book is better than the movie" camp. But there are a few I think that do a great job in respects of 1) staying true to the story 2) enhancing visually the written descriptions and actions 3) being entertaining 4) I still love the book, and the movie.

What film adaptations do you girls like best? The least? Why?
Of the books we've read together, which one would you like to see turned into a film? What actors and actresses would you cast?

Jenn's Favorites:

1. The Hours: novel by Michael Cunningham. Yes, I read this for NYU Freshman Colloquium. But when I heard that they were making it into a movie, I was really skeptical they could pull it off. But they did, and somehow I think the film works as well as the book.

2. Babe: novel by Dick King-Smith OK, I know it's a children's book and film, but I read the book when I was young, and the movie is just delightful. They didn't ruin it, and that's a big thing for a little girl : )

3. The Color Purple: novel by Alice Walker I remember I read this book in one day, while I was sick in Vietnam with the Tisch scholars, who were out and about enjoying Halong Bay. It kept me company and took my mind off my stomach pains. I also really like the movie.

4. Persepolis: graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi I think the animation in the film is beautiful, and maybe because Marjane had a hand in both the book and the film, I think the movie stays true to the emotional content and touching humor in the graphic novel.

Of the books we've read, I'd like to see The Blind Assasin turned into a film. It would be a rather difficult piece to adapt, but I'd love to see what it would look like visually. Actresses: maybe Michelle Williams as Iris? As for Laura...hmmm

The Last Lecture

2009-04-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hey Ladies! Sorry I couldn't make it to the meeting, but I hope you all had a great time discussing the book. Here are some of my thoughts...

I had seen the video of Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" online last year and was completely blown away by it. It was funny, insightful, enduring, thought-provoking, just all of the things that I'm sure he was hoping his audience would take from it. So when it was decided that we would read the book, I thought it would just be a repeat of the recorded lecture. I was pleasantly surprised when I began reading the book and found that it gave much more insight than even the video. There was reflection there that couldn't be captured in such a short presentation time.

It's terrible to say, but I agree with him when he says that he was lucky to have gotten cancer.

Not to say that he was lucky to be dying from a terrible disease, but he was able to live long enough to leave his kids with videos and letters and a true sense of how much he loved them. Had he been hit by a bus or something, they would have only been able to rely on what others said about him, not first hand information. I think that's the most heart-breaking thing about the entire book. Here he is giving advice to the masses, but really it's him giving advice to his kids. He loved them so much that he wanted to give all that he could while he could. I couldn't help but cry at the end when he reveals to his audience that he's doing all of this for his kids.

Reading this book really makes you take a hard look at your own life and how you should be grateful for every moment you have. Not only that, but you should always follow your dreams and not be discouraged if at first you don't succeed. He talks about the fundamentals that everyone should know, but that we tend to forget or set aside for other things as we get older.

What did everyone else take away from this book? Was there a particular story or anecdote that hit a nerve with anyone? Any other thoughts on the book?

The Lost Boys of Sudan

2009-03-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Last year, I read What is the What by Dave Eggers, which tells the story of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Eggers tells the amazing story of Valentino Achak Deng who traveled from Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya and finally to the U.S. (Georgia) to escape the civil war in his homeland. The Eggers' version of the story is technically fiction, but it is based on fact and provides a pretty good picture of the struggles of Deng and the other Lost Boys. (To learn more about the Lost Boys who are known for walking thousands of miles to leave Sudan click here.)

Several months ago, I added a documentary about the Lost Boys to my netflix queue--inspired by Deng's story, and yesterday, I watched God Grew Tired of Us. Like What is the What, the film told the story of the Lost Boys through the experience of a few individuals. Like Deng, the subjects of the film fled Sudan for Ethiopia, then Kenya and finally the U.S. (Pittsburgh and Syracuse). The film brought to life the struggles and inspiration I had read about in What is the What. It is also fascinating to learn how John, Daniel and Panther, who are followed on their journey from Kenya to the U.S., adapt (rather quickly) to their new lives.

By the way, I also learned that there is another documentary out now about the Lost Boys--appropriately called Lost Boys of Sudan.

Book to Film Adaptation

2009-03-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

I’m a fan of the novelist Salman Rushdie, who wrote the wonderfully mystical Midnight’s Children. Last month, he wrote an essay for the British newspaper, the Guardian, about the difficulty of adapting novels for the big screen.

Mr. Rushdie analyzes a few of this year’s Oscar nominated films, focusing particularly on Slumdog Millionaire. He disliked that movie and most of the others and argues why it is often so hard to make good films from books. I found the article interesting and thought I’d share. Think it’d be great to have a book-to -film round for our book club at some point. I envision it’d foster a lot of great discussion.

Here’s the beginning of the essay. Click the link below to read the rest.

Adaptation, the process by which one thing develops into another thing, by which one shape or form changes into a different form, is a commonplace artistic activity. Books are turned into plays and films all the time, plays are turned into movies and also sometimes into musicals, movies are turned into Broadway shows and even, by the ugly method known as "novelisation", into books as well. We live in a world of such transformations and metamorphoses. Good movies - Lolita, The Pink Panther - are remade as bad movies; bad movies - The Incredible Hulk, Deep Throat - are remade as even worse movies; British TV comedy series are turned into American TV comedy series, so that The Office becomes a different The Office, and Ricky Gervais turns into Steve Carell, just as, long ago, the British working-class racist Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part turned into the American blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker in All In the Family. British reality programmes are adapted to suit American audiences as well; Pop Idol becomes American Idol when it crosses the Atlantic, Strictly Come Dancing becomes Dancing With the Stars - a programme which, it may interest you to know, invited me to appear on it last season, an invitation I declined.

Songs by great artists are covered by lesser artists; on inauguration day this year, Beyoncé performed her version of Etta James's classic "At Last" to the considerable irritation of Etta James herself (but then, James seemed even more irritated by the election of Barack Obama, so perhaps she was just in a bad mood). All of these are examples of the myriad variations of adaptation, an insatiable process which can sometimes seem voracious, world-swallowing, as if we now live in a culture that endlessly cannibalises itself, so that, eventually, it will have eaten itself up completely. Anyone can make a list of the many catastrophic adaptations they have seen - my personal favourites being David Lean's ridiculous film of A Passage to India, in which Alec Guinness as a Hindu wise man dangles his feet blasphemously in the waters of a sacred water tank; and the Merchant Ivory emasculation of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, in which Ishiguro's guilty-as-hell British Nazi aristocrat is portrayed as a lovable, misguided, deceived old bugger more deserving of our sympathy than our scorn.

But adaptation can be a creative as well as a destructive force. Rod Stewart singing "Downtown Train" is almost the equal of Tom Waits, and Joe Cocker singing "With a Little Help from My Friends" achieves the rare feat of singing a Beatles song better than the Beatles did, which is less impressive when you remember that the original singer was Ringo Starr. I'm currently teaching a course that highlights some of the instances in which fine books have been adapted into fine films - Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence mutated into Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence; Giuseppe di Lampedusa's portrait of Sicily in 1860, The Leopard, turned into Luchino Visconti's greatest film; Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood became a wonderful John Huston movie; and, in his film of Great Expectations, Lean produced a classic that can stand alongside the Dickens novel without any sense of inferiority, a film that allows this film-goer, at least, to forgive him for the later blunders of A Passage to India. Read the rest.

The Film Club

2009-03-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

At our last meeting, we discussed "The Film Club," a memoir by David Gilmour. One the surface, the book can be seen as just a story about a father's unusual tactics to get his son to go back to school. But there is so much more going on here. The book is as much about the son as it is about the father. Gilmour's struggle to steer his son in a more positive direction forces him to recognize his own short-comings and ultimately, I think he grows and learns as much as, if not more than, his son.

One of the things that we discussed and all thought was a unique and admirable thing was Gilmour's relationship with his wife and ex-wife. He's able to do what most people only wish they could which is to put aside any grievances they may have after a relationship is over and work to build a new kind of relationship. This is especially crucial when dealing with relationships that involve children. Even Gilmour's new wife is able to join in the fold and not feel intimidated by the obvious strong bond that Gilmour continues to have with his ex-wife.

Another topic that came up was whether or not we believed that Gilmour allowing his son to quit high school was a good thing. There were view points on both sides of the spectrum.

For the purposes of the blog, here are a few questions:

How did Gilmour's plan to get his son to go back to school ultimately work?

How did Gilmour's plan affect his relationship with his son?

Knightley Cloned For New Movie

2009-03-03T18:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a post I read on JoBlo.com this morning:

Just other day I was talking with a friend and lamenting the loss of Mark Romanek on THE WOLFMAN. I'm sure the movie will be great and all but I know Romanek would've brought something special to the material. Hopefully it won't be too long in before we get to see Romanek's first feature since 2002 as he's signed on to direct the sci-fi thriller NEVER LET ME GO for Fox Searchlight. Keira Knightley has signed on to star in the film that follows three English students who realize their boarding school is actually a farm for clones waiting to have their organs harvested. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and while it sounds like THE ISLAND, isn't quite the same as that Michae Bay action flick. The script was written by Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER) and made the list of the 10 Best Unproduced Scripts for 2008. Production on the film is set to begin this April in London.

Extra Tidbit: Time Magazine named "Never Let Me Go" the best fiction novel of 2005.

Warlord: No Greater Friend, No Worse Enemy

2009-02-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

Since this dialogue hasn't been started yet, I thought I'd go ahead and get us going so that those who couldn't make it to the meeting can chime in.

My first thoughts as I finished the book were that I didn't like it and that I didn't like Ilario. The man that I was supposed to have sympathy for came off as arrogant and self-righteous. Believing that he wasn't responsible for the charges that were brought against him was hard because I didn't "like" him. But that's not enough to convict someone of a crime.

To do what they have to do in the armed forces, a certain amount of arrogance and bravado is necessary. You have to be confident at all times that you have what it takes to succeed in your missions and without it, everyone and everything is lost.

But it was because of this arrogance that I felt like I never really got a look beyond the facade he portrayed. There was only one or two moments where I felt he was letting his guard down just a little, but then he would bring it all the way back up moments later.

I think that was my biggest issue with his story even though I know that it shouldn't be the deciding factor in his conviction.

What were everyone else's thoughts?

John Updike Dead at 76

2009-01-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

Since we have read "Rabbit, Run" as part of our bookclub, I thought everyone would be interested in this news....

Prolific, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike has died of lung cancer at the age of 76.
According to publisher Alfred A. Knopf Inc., Updike died at a hospice not far from his home in Beverly Farms, Mass.
Several of his works wound up in Hollywood hands, most notably the James Caan-starring adaptation of one his most famous books, Rabbit, Run (which earned him his first Pulitzer), and The Witches of Eastwick, which, thanks to Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon became a star-studded, twice Oscar-nominated affair.
The author even went on to earn the ultimate pop-culture honor—playing himself in an episode of The Simpsons.
Updike's final work, My Father's Tears and Other Stories, his first collection of new short fiction since 2000, is scheduled for release on June 2.

Has anyone seen the film adaptation of "Rabbit, Run"? I didn't even know that there was one, but now I'd definitely be interested in seeing it...

Favorite Thing of 2008 - The Daily Beast's Buzz Board

2009-01-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite discoveries of 2008 was the Daily Beast's Buzz Board: http://www.thedailybeast.com/beast-board/

The Daily Beast is an online news magazine founded by Tina Brown, former editor in chief of the New Yorker magazine. The website is a fun medley of the serious and silly. One minute you can get up to date on the biggest new stories of the day and, the next, you can immerse yourself in the latest celebrity gossip.

The best part of the site, for me, is the Buzz Board. It's a place where smart people (writers, politicians, celebrities, and entrepreneurs) - people in the know - recommend their favorite things. The choices are far ranging and freewheeling - picks include books, tech products, movies, music, restaurants, and philanthropic opportunities.

Whenever I’m looking for inspiration for what to read, see, and listen to or something new to explore, this is one of my go to places. Highly recommend checking it out. You may become as addicted as I am!

Favorite Things of 2008

2009-01-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

It might be a little late for this, but I'm interested in learning about some of our favorites books, films, music, and events from last year. Perhaps we could write a few words on what moved, enlightened or entertained us in 2008.

I will post one of my favorite things shortly - looking forward to reading yours.

Ender's Game

2008-12-22T19:09:00.000-08:00

I haven't read much Science Fiction (it's not really my thing), but a friend of Pete's suggested ENDER'S GAME and had great things to say about it, so I'm giving it a chance.

Essentially, it's about this 6 year old named Ender Wiggin who is chosen by the government to hopefully lead an army to kill the "Buggers" who have been attacking Earth. In fact, all of the "soldiers" are children, but they think that Ender may be the "chosen one".

So far, I think I like it (I'm about half way through). There aren't too many over the top, out of this world plots/dialog so it's pretty easy to follow and it's interesting that the characters are mostly children, but they are treated like adults.

Has anyone else read this? Do any of you have any Science Fiction novels that you really like?

Tis the Season....for Film Adaptations!

2008-11-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

Holiday film season is here! In my weekend ritual of cruising the New York Times online, I have come across so many reviews for movies based on popular books.

So my question for the book club is:

-Which ones will you go see?

-Have you read the books?

Twilight

So I remember Tiff's previous post about the Twilight series, and I had never heard of the books before she mentioned them. But now there is apparently a movie, and it has definitely sparked my interest in wanting to read the book, or at least see the movie (if it ever makes its way to Hong Kong)

Opens November 21, 2008

Revolutionary Road

Have any of you read this Richard Yates classic? It's on my To-Read List, hope I can finish it before seeing the film! Kate Winslet and Leo reunited! Woohoo!

Opens December 26, 2008

The Tale of Despereaux

A great modern children's book by Kate DiCamillo (also wrote Because of Winn-Dixie) . The animation and art direction look really great. I love the book's full title: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread. I think that about sums up the plot!

Opens December 19, 2008

The Reader

I read this book back in NYU days, I really enjoyed it, and too bad I wasn't in a book club back then to talk about it. Would definitely recommend reading the book. The film's director previously directed the film adaptation of The Hours, which I personally feel is one of the best book to film adaptations I have ever seen. I hope he does equally great work on this film adaptation.

Opens December 10, 2008

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Anyone read F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story? There was also a similar book that I saw at Barnes and Noble called The Confessions of Max Tivoli that I had wanted to read before hearing about the Benjamin Button movie. I'm not sure how different MT and BB are. I believe MT was also based off Fitzgerald's short.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/01/26/040126crbo_books

Opens December 25, 2008

Identical Strangers & Secrets and Lies

2008-11-03T08:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently started reading Identical Strangers and am enjoying it. As I read, I keep thinking about the movie Secrets and Lies.

Have any of you seen it?

It’s one of my favorite movies. It’s about a 30ish successful, black adopted British woman who decides to find her birth mother. When she finally meets her mother, she discovers that her mother is white and has not told anyone in her family that she had her child adopted years ago.

I found it interesting how the main character in the movie starts her search to answer a simple question (who is my mother?) and ends up uncovering a host of family secrets. In a way, she finds herself with more questions than answers. So I’m interested to see where Elyse’s and Paula’s story leads, what other surprises are in store for them.

Jenn's Questions for Out Discussion

2008-10-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

I finished Out and really enjoyed it. Here are some questions that I would be interested in hearing your responses to. I will post my own thoughts later since some of you might still be reading the book!

1. I didn't understand the title of the book when I first started reading it. By the end though, I thought the title to be very fitting. What does the title mean to you?

2. Do you think each character's way out was befitting for them?

3. Which woman did you empathize/sympathize with the most? The least?

4. How would you compare the treatment of women in Japanese to society to women in America?

5. What did you think of the secondary characters, Anna, the loan shark, the Brazilian? Were you satisfied with their storylines, and what did their characterizations add to the books' perception of male/female roles in Japan?

6. What one word would you use to best describe this book?

Out - Black comedy?

2008-09-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

I started reading Out this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised at how much of it I found humorous. I found myself laughing out loud a number of times. I think it has to do with how twisted nearly all of the main characters are and how low they’re all willing to go look after themselves or make some quick $. I’m really enjoying the mix of dark humor with the ickier parts of the novel.

Any thoughts?

Am I weird to be finding comedy in such a sad/dark story?

Babar

2008-09-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

I am deep into Out--I am finding it an eye-opening read and a look into Japanese culture. In the midst of the heaviness of Out, I thought would share with you a lighter article about one of my favorite children's book characters Babar and a new exhibition of Babar artwork review in today's NY Times.

Even though some may say that the Babar books promote colonialism, I still remember them with happy memories. I hope you enjoy the article (linked to above and pasted in below)--and let me know if you want to check out the exhibition.

The article makes me wonder whether we would ever want to reread some of our favorite children's books for bookclub. I wonder if we would still feel them same about them today as we did as children.

All About Mr. Elephant, in His Becoming Green Suit
By Edward Rothstein

What does the “very rich Old Lady” see in Babar the elephant? What, for that matter, do we see in him? Something appealing surely, even if we would not follow her example and give him a full purse to go shopping for a suit of a “becoming shade of green,” or do calisthenics with him or buy him a red roadster.
But if most of us don’t actually keep elephants in the strange way the Old Lady did, we have consistently invited Babar into our homes, along with his still thriving, ageless family. Since Jean de Brunhoff expanded and refined the bedtime stories told by his wife, Cécile, in 1931, and published them in French, Babar has been a constant companion. After that first book (translated as “The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant”), de Brunhoff published six more Babar tales before dying of tuberculosis in 1937 at 37.
After World War II his son Laurent, who first heard the stories as a child, took over the franchise. He has illustrated 37 books about this elephant orphan turned king. More than eight million Babar books have been sold.
In the compact, elegant exhibition “Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors” at the Morgan Library & Museum, we don’t learn too much more about the reasons for Babar’s appeal. We simply feel it, and then have to make sense of it. Speculation is restrained and simple demonstration preferred, an approach in keeping with Jean’s spare, precise narrative and laconic illustration, in which diverging lines of dots become tears, angled eyebrows signal anger and the varied curves of an elephant’s trunk evoke an inner life.
The show, organized by Christine Nelson, draws on the collection of Babar material the Morgan acquired in 2004 as a partial gift from Laurent and his two brothers. It includes more than 170 drafts and sketches for the first Babar books by both father and son. A complete sketchbook, a maquette, of the first Babar can be viewed, page by page, on two touch screens; custom-made carpets, based on rugs in the illustrations, mark out areas where books are available for reading.
Jean de Brunhoff’s illustration style (later emulated by Laurent) is charmingly and deliberately naïve. Multiple images of Babar running or riding an elevator suggest movement, comic strip balloons emerge from animals’ mouths as they call out, perspective is skewed or suggested simply by an object’s size. But an affectionate sophistication lies behind the innocence.
The elder de Brunhoff’s pencil sketches are quick and exuberant, experimenting with gestures and attitude. A display of Babar first editions show de Brunhoff’s self-consciously playful covers, the first depicting this king of the elephants marching with a placard like those once used to announce a spectacular new show (here, “Histoire de Babar”), tickets available within.
In the show’s two main galleries — one devoted to Jean de Brunhoff’s first classic book, the other to Laurent’s first, “Babar’s Cousin: That Rascal Arthur” (1946) — we see how the stories developed over time. Jean learned, for example, that when Babar’s mother is killed by a wicked hunter, he didn’t have to say that Babar was sad as he ran away; he could show it.
At first Babar’s suit was not a becoming shade of green at all, but a more mundane gray. Even the existence of the female cousin, Celeste, whom Babar eventually marries, was a later innovation. We see too that Laurent has a completely different method of preparation, his sketches are less experimental, his characters less weird.
The weirdness, though, is what makes the first Babar book — and sections of Jean de Brunhoff’s other books — so powerful. Think of the Old Lady “who has always been fond of little elephants” and gives Babar “whatever he wants.” Without any hint of animal passion, there is something discomfiting about this animal-human partnership.
And what attitudes are we supposed to have toward Babar himself? Escaping the countryside he arrives in a great town — like many another picaresque hero — and what is his first real desire? Fine clothes. And clothes are the first things he buys for his young cousins when they come to town.
Jean may have shared Babar’s preoccupation: his brother Michel was the editor of Paris Vogue, and his brother-in-law, Lucien Vogel, director of another fashion magazine. But there is something else going on here, surely, particularly when Babar later dresses all the elephants in his kingdom in outfits — some with the most ornate ornaments — that he bought for them.
The great temptation in reading children’s books is to see them as allegories, subliminally serving up lessons the way strange beings do in the dark woods of fairy tales. And allegories are latent in these books. Babar comes to town, is taught the ways of humanity and then returns home where he is crowned king. He does not brood. He is patient and industrious, and near the close of “Babar the King,” he even dreams of elephant-angels — Intelligence, Learning, Courage and Work — driving off comically demented figures called Despair, Misfortune, Stupidity and Laziness. Surely there are more than enough lessons in virtue here.
The taste for allegory has led to attacks on the Babar books accusing them of celebrating colonialism. (Illustrations of cannibals in the second Babar book don’t encourage complete skepticism on this point.) The playwright and critic Ariel Dorfman, for example, argued that Babar’s history “is none other than the fulfillment of the dominant countries’ colonial dream.”
The uncivilized, unclothed native is taught the ways of civilization and returns home enlightened, unquestionably embracing the world that will ultimately bring him grief. In “Should We Burn Babar?” the author and educator Herbert Kohl argued that the books are sinister in their celebration of the Old Lady’s idle wealth and corrupt in their admiration of Babar, who allies with the very society that produced the colonial hunter who killed his mother.
But as the critic Adam Gopnik points out in a rich, suggestive essay in the show’s catalog, these arguments miss the point. The saga is not an “unconscious instance of the French colonial imagination,” Mr. Gopnik writes, “it is a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination.” Jean de Brunhoff knew precisely what he was doing. Invoking the colonial world of the 1930s and France’s mission of civilizing subjugated peoples, he was also satirizing that world, celebrating some things while being wary of others, knowing the need for civilization while also knowing the costs and inevitable failures that accompany it.
Finding straightforward allegory — or an unambiguous political message — simply does not work. Admiration and satire are intertwined. Cornelius, the elephants’ elder, is meant to seem extremely savvy when he proposes making Babar king because Babar “has learned so much living among men.” But I can easily imagine Jean de Brunhoff laughing when, in response, he has King Babar turn to Cornelius and say, “You have good ideas.” Babar makes him a general and gives him his hat.
The child reader will not necessarily sense Babar’s pomposity here, but over time such ambiguities will affect perceptions, as they do throughout childhood’s perpetual trials. Yes, there is an allegorical element in Babar, which is why clothes are so important. Clothes represent culture or rather cultivation. They present the wearer in a particular social role. (In one book pictures appear of the workers of Babar’s town, Celesteville, dressed according to their occupations.) Clothes are the counterparts of social manners, the accouterments of civilization. Babar begins as a child in the human city, naked, riding up and down in a department store elevator just for the fun of it and being told, “This is not a toy, Mr. Elephant.” Once he is clothed in his green suit, he leaves childish things behind.
But clothes alone don’t make the elephant, and we feel some pangs watching the unclothed mothers of Babar’s cousins relegated to running in the dust, while their well-dressed children get to ride in a car. There are other pains as well. One of the most upsetting images in Jean de Brunhoff’s books may be of Babar and Celeste, captured and costumed, made to perform in a circus. The indignity is palpable.
There is something melancholy in Babar’s world. It is not really the world of 1930s Paris. Babar’s utopian Celesteville combines ’30s technology with the cultural life of the Belle Époque.
Did de Brunhoff know that these Halls of Amusement or Industry could no longer stand as firmly as they once did? Does that account for the nostalgia they seem to reflect? What world did he imagine was taking shape for his sons? As the ’30s progressed, it had to have been less clear what the divisions were between the animal and the human, or what civilization itself could hope for.
One of the exhibition’s labels points out that there was another beloved childhood character who came out of the same Parisian milieu: Curious George. Margret and H. A. Rey carried the manuscript for that book with them as they bicycled out of Paris in 1940, fleeing the Nazis. They might have been influenced by Babar, but their colonial hunter, the man in the yellow hat, didn’t murder his prey. He took the monkey away. And he brought him to the New World, where George’s anarchic, unclothed spirit roamed so freely it might have tried even Babar’s patience.

“Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors” remains through Jan. 4 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street; (212) 685-0008.

The House at Sugar Beach (2008)

2008-09-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

I read this great review in Entertainment Weekly and thought I'd share:

Book Review
The House at Sugar Beach (2008)
Helene Cooper

By Tina Jordan

When Helene Cooper was 8 years old, her mother bought her a playmate. At the time, Cooper — enjoying a privileged childhood as the daughter of a wealthy Liberian family — was marooned at the family's flashy new 22-room Sugar Beach mansion, far from the bustle and hum of Monrovia, Liberia's capital. With only her scary cousin Vicky (who ''saw'' spirits) and her baby sister Marlene for company, Cooper was lonely. So the skinny, bowlegged tribal girl named Eunice who appeared one day in 1974 became a sister in every sense but one: When a bloody 1980 coup d'état sent the country's political system reeling, and soldiers began butchering most people in Cooper's moneyed class, Eunice was not forced to flee to the U.S. with the rest of the family but was able to stay behind. Though many terrible things happened to Cooper — including the gang rape of her mother — she was perhaps most affected by Eunice's decision to remain in Liberia. ''In my sheltered existence, I had never dug deep enough to wonder how much native Liberians resented us,'' Cooper writes. ''I had been shocked [to learn] the level of hatred.... Did Eunice feel that way too?'' Unbelievably, Starbucks has made The House at Sugar Beach its fall book pick, so it may actually be bought and read — a boon for any book, but especially nice for this slim, searing little memoir. To understand what happened in Liberia is to understand what has happened in much of Africa, and Cooper tells it not like a seasoned journalist — which is what she is — but like a poet.

"Out" and about in Hong Kong!

2008-09-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

Hi Girls!

Glad you are all enjoying and using the blog! I'm definitely interested in reading some of the other books you talked about in your posts...if I can find them here!

I've been reading Out during my commutes to and from class, and any other opportunity I get! I'm about two thirds done and it has been a great book so far. Can't wait to write my thoughts about it when I'm done.

It's interesting reading this book in an Asian country, because I can actually witness some of those things the book talks about in terms of how women are treated in society and the workplace. While I don't think it's as bad as in Japan, in Hong Kong it seems you have to be young, pretty and well dressed to succeed at work. Posters in the subway emphasize dieting for women, even though all the girls here are super slim. It seems to echo the view that women are only as good as they look, and once they get older they become obsolete.

In addition to reading the book, I've been scoping out how to get hold of other English books so I can read the upcoming selections for the book club. The university library has an English selection with a modest amount of contemporary fiction novels. I also visited a public library, but I can't check out any materials until I get a Hong Kong ID card, which I can't get until I've been here over 180 days. So my goal is to find a good Western/English bookstore. Luckily the past Fulbrighter, who's project was centered on writing poetry, gave me some good suggestions. and as soon as I get better (I have a touch of flu/sinus infection) I'm going to check them out.

Miss you all!

October Book Club Meeting

2008-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Just a friendly reminder: Our first book club meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 7th at 7pm.

We’ll be having Japanese & Korean BBQ at Gyu-Kaku. Hope we can keep our appetite in tack while discussing Out. Looking forward to seeing you all then.

Gyu-Kaku
3rd Ave, 2nd Fl, New York 10022
Btwn 49th & 50th St
http://menupages.com/restaurantdetails.asp?areaid=0&restaurantid=41276&neighborhoodid=0&cuisineid=10&home=Y

Pillars of the Earth

2008-09-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

This whole blogging thing is new for me. I contribute to my work blog, but that is a whole different species of blog. So it just took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to post. I am really enjoying these book reviews. I read about the Twilight books somewhere, but the Gargoyle book is new to me. I'm not usually into fantasy, though the book I am currently reading (while I too wait for the library to send me Out) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet seems to me to be somewhere between fantasy and historical fiction. For my recent trip to Israel, I thought it would be a good idea to travel one really big book instead of a few smaller ones. I am now about 1/2 way through the almost 1000 page book.

Anyway, back to the book. Have any of you read it? It takes place in the 12th century, and it's main characters are a builder/mason, the daughter of a disgraced earl and a prior. It all centers around the building of a cathedral. While I am not enthralled by the book, I am certainly engrossed. I think it is because though the book takes place almost 1000 years ago, the characters act and express themselves no differently than we do today. There is a certain fascination that presents itself in reading about these characters that act and feel just as we do today. I'm not sure what I expected; maybe I assumed 1000 years ago society was less materialistic. Thoughts?

Gothic books

2008-09-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

It's interesting, Tiffany, that you mentioned being hooked to the Twilight series. It seems as if every time I’m on the subway, I see someone reading one of the books. Though it doesn't look like my kind of book, there must be something there if so many people are addicted to it. Maybe I'll cave and pick up the book sometime soon. But speaking of gothic books, I've been hearing a lot about The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Have you guys heard of it? It looks intriguing. The cover of the book alone really makes me want to read it!

Here's a synopsis:

The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

Twilight Series

2008-09-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

So I'm waiting to get Out from the library this Saturday and I can't wait to start reading it. Actually, I tried to pick up the book last Saturday and the library was closed! I wish they would put a notice on the website or something...

Anyway, I'm excited to start reading Out, but in the meantime, I've been engulfing myself in the Twilight Series. Have any of you been reading these books?

Essentially, it's about a girl in high school who falls in love with a vegan vampire (that means that he doesn't drink human blood, just animal blood). It's completely ridiculous and a little too PG for me (I mean, come on! Where's the good stuff?!), but I just can't help myself and I'm totally hooked!

So far, I've read Twilight and New Moon. The next one will be Eclipse and then Breaking Dawn (which apparently the critics did NOT like).

I've thought of how I could try to make these posts more interesting and so I've decided to end all of my posts with a question pertaining to what my post was about. So here goes...

Question: If you fell in love with a vampire when you were 18 and he looks like an 18 year old already (and will be that way FOREVER), would you want him to make you a vampire too as soon as possible (so that you're not like 30 when he finally gets around to it and he still looks 18) or would you just find a new guy?

Blog Kickoff!

2008-08-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

So hopefully this will work as a fun way to keep track of all the books we read, and to keep in touch, especially for me since I will be away and will miss all of the fun at the meetings! I'm going to change the settings to private as soon as everyone accepts to be an author. Also, you can add this blog to Google Reader so you will know when a new post has been added to the blog. Just click add subscription and type in batcnyc.blogspot.com

This might also be useful instead of searching through old emails about meeting dates, book club picks. Adding labels for the post you submit are also useful. Some common ones we can use are meetings, book picks, or your name so we can search by author.

Happy book blogging!

Jenn