Monday, May 24, 2010
Meeting Tomorrow
Sorry for the delay in updating, all, but I've been out of town. Anyway, it appears that there is no date in the foreseeable future that we can all agree on, but most of us can meet tomorrow (Tuesday, May 25). So, let's discuss Oryx and Crake tomorrow at 7:30pm at Astor Coffee Shop. See you then!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
One More Try
Hey All,
Since Liz, Ray, and I were the only ones who didn't end up with a scheduling conflict for our book club meeting today, we decided to make one more attempt at rescheduling. If you are interested in getting together to discuss Oryx and Crake, please let me know when you'll be available. Ray and I are free Tuesday after 7pm this week, Tuesday or Thursday after 7pm next week. I won't bother with Memorial Day weekend, but we're free most evenings (except Wednesday) the week after Memorial Day, too. Please let me know what dates and times work for you.
Thanks!
Since Liz, Ray, and I were the only ones who didn't end up with a scheduling conflict for our book club meeting today, we decided to make one more attempt at rescheduling. If you are interested in getting together to discuss Oryx and Crake, please let me know when you'll be available. Ray and I are free Tuesday after 7pm this week, Tuesday or Thursday after 7pm next week. I won't bother with Memorial Day weekend, but we're free most evenings (except Wednesday) the week after Memorial Day, too. Please let me know what dates and times work for you.
Thanks!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Update
Hey All,
We have a reservation for Sunday brunch at Tilth Restaurant (address = 1411 North 45th Street, Seattle, WA 98103) to discuss Oryx and Crake. The reservation is at 1pm and under my name. Can't wait to see you all there!
PS: I made the reservation for 7 people, so please let me know if you don't plan to attend so I can get a smaller table.
We have a reservation for Sunday brunch at Tilth Restaurant (address = 1411 North 45th Street, Seattle, WA 98103) to discuss Oryx and Crake. The reservation is at 1pm and under my name. Can't wait to see you all there!
PS: I made the reservation for 7 people, so please let me know if you don't plan to attend so I can get a smaller table.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Rescheduling
Hey All,
Due to schedule conflicts, let's move the day and time of our book club meeting to this Sunday (May 16) for a 1pm brunch. Location TBA as soon as I can contact a brunch place that takes reservations. Probably in Bell Town or Wallingford. I really hope this works for everyone.
Due to schedule conflicts, let's move the day and time of our book club meeting to this Sunday (May 16) for a 1pm brunch. Location TBA as soon as I can contact a brunch place that takes reservations. Probably in Bell Town or Wallingford. I really hope this works for everyone.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Friday
Hey All! As I'm sure you know, this Friday is our next book club meeting. Since nearly everyone in our group was probably also invited to Jaxon's bonfire party, I wanted to make sure people were still planing to come out for book club. I hate to do this, but if everyone is planning on going to the bonfire party, do you want to change the date?
I'd prefer not to start changing dates, but if necessary, Ray and I could do Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday night next week. Thoughts?
And, is the same location as the last to meetings OK with everyone. Please respond asap. Thanks!
I'd prefer not to start changing dates, but if necessary, Ray and I could do Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday night next week. Thoughts?
And, is the same location as the last to meetings OK with everyone. Please respond asap. Thanks!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Oryx and Crake
If any one wants to miss out on the library wait list, I have a copy you can borrow. Just holler at me...
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Next Book: Oryx and Crake!
Hey All! The votes are in and it looks like Oryx and Crake is the winner (with three votes, just beating Dorian Gray's two votes). I checked the library and there's a wait list, but there seem to be a lot of cheap copies at used book stores.
I hope to see you all on May 14. Does the same coffee shop work for everyone, or should be try to pick a new location?
I hope to see you all on May 14. Does the same coffee shop work for everyone, or should be try to pick a new location?
Monday, April 5, 2010
New Poll
Hey All! There is a new book poll. Please vote by Sunday (April 11). I never heard any new suggestions for this time around, so I just revisited previously suggested books.
Our next book club meeting is set for May 14, so we'll have a month to read the next book.
I hope the discussion for The Dante Club went well. I was really sorry to miss it, and to miss seeing all of you. Hope to see you soon!
Mel
Our next book club meeting is set for May 14, so we'll have a month to read the next book.
I hope the discussion for The Dante Club went well. I was really sorry to miss it, and to miss seeing all of you. Hope to see you soon!
Mel
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Reminder
Hey Book Fans,
I just wanted to remind everyone that the next book club meeting is THIS Friday, March 12, around 7pm-ish. Since I never heard any other suggestions, the same place as last time (Aster Coffee Lounge) will work just fine.
Unfortunately, Ray and I will be out of town this weekend, but hopefully you will have a great discussion without us. Send me your ideas for the next book and I'll get a new poll set up when we get back next week.
Mel
I just wanted to remind everyone that the next book club meeting is THIS Friday, March 12, around 7pm-ish. Since I never heard any other suggestions, the same place as last time (Aster Coffee Lounge) will work just fine.
Unfortunately, Ray and I will be out of town this weekend, but hopefully you will have a great discussion without us. Send me your ideas for the next book and I'll get a new poll set up when we get back next week.
Mel
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Our Next Book
The votes are tallied, and The Dante Club wins with 4 votes. We will discuss The Dante Club on March 12, but I hope to see you all sooner than that!
Monday, January 18, 2010
Four-Way Tie!
Hey all! Well, our poll resulted in a four-way tie, so I guess we're going to have to vote again. This time, there are only four books on the poll, and everyone gets to vote for one. Please vote by next Sunday ... hopefully we'll only have one winner this time.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Next Book and Meeting
Hey All,
I was really pleasantly surprised by the last book we read, and the discussion was one of the best in a long time. I can't wait to do it again!
Based on the "Second Friday of Every Other Month" plan, our next meeting will be on March 12. For the time being, we'll plan on meeting at Astor Coffee Lounge again, unless someone has a better idea.
I've posted a poll for the next book and, as requested, I've made it so that you can vote for more than one book. You don't have to vote for more than one and please do not vote for more than three. Vote by this coming Sunday (January 17) and, if there is a tie, we'll have another poll next week to break the tie. Any books that receive a lot of votes will show up again on later polls, so we aren't totally eliminating anything here.
Here is a brief description of the books in the poll:
The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell team up with 19th-century publisher J.T. Fields to catch a serial killer in post-Civil War Boston. It's the fall of 1865, and Harvard University, the cradle of Bostonian intellectual life, is overrun by sanctimonious scholars who turn up their noses at European literature, confining their study to Greek and Latin. Longfellow and his iconoclastic crew decide to produce the first major American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Their ambitious plans are put on hold when they realize that a murderer terrorizing Boston is recreating some of the most vivid scenes of chthonic torment in Dante's Inferno. Since knowledge of the epic is limited to rarefied circles in 19th-century America, the "Dante Club" decides the best way to clear their own names is to match wits with the killer. The resulting chase takes them through the corridors of Harvard, the grimy docks of Boston Harbor and the subterranean labyrinths of the metropolis. It also gives Pearl an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that he's done his history homework. The detective story is well plotted, and Pearl's recreation of the contentious world of mid-19th-century academia is engrossing, even though some of its more ambitious elements like an examination of intellectual hypocrisy and insularity in the Ivy League are somewhat clunky.
Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs: Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol.
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens: A cautionary tale of a young man raised high above his station by a mysterious benefactor. The novel begins with young orphaned Philip Pirrip--Pip--running afoul of an escaped convict in a cemetery. This terrifying personage bullies Pip into stealing food and a file for him, threatening that if he tells a soul "your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate." The boy does as he's asked, but the convict is captured anyway, and transported to the penal colonies in Australia. Having started his novel in a cemetery, Dickens then ups the stakes and introduces his hero into the decaying household of Miss Havisham, a wealthy, half-mad woman who was jilted on her wedding day many years before and has never recovered. Pip is brought there to play with Miss Havisham's ward, Estella, a little girl who delights in tormenting Pip. When, after several years, Pip becomes the heir of an unknown benefactor, he leaps at the chance to leave his home and friends behind to go to London and become a gentleman. But having expectations, as Pip soon learns, is a two-edged sword, and nothing is as he thought it would be. Great Expectations is different from the usual Dickensian fare: the story is dark, almost surreal at times, and you'll find few of the author's patented comic characters and no comic set pieces. And yet this is arguably the most compelling of Dickens's novels.
Killing Mr. Watson, by Peter Matthiessen: More than 20 men wait in ambush as Mister Watson steps ashore and is shot dead. From this beginning, the story of Edgar J. Watson is told through the recollections of his daughter and neighbors, and by reports from magazines, letters, and other historical papers. This is a study rich in history, social studies, ecology, and nature of the The Ten Thousand Islands area of southwestern Florida from 1890-1910. It was a haven for escapees and renegades, and poor treatment of Indians, blacks, and half-breeds was accepted and expected. When Watson arrived there in the 1890s, he was thought of as quiet and friendly. But an aura of danger grew with the stories told and retold about him. When it was alleged that he killed 57 people (including Belle Starr), the tales became folk legend. The setting and characters are fully drawn as Watson's menacing power grows steadily.
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood: In Oryx and Crake, a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde: A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
Seems like we, as a group, chose a whole pile of "dark, cautionary tales" this time around.
See you all soon!
I was really pleasantly surprised by the last book we read, and the discussion was one of the best in a long time. I can't wait to do it again!
Based on the "Second Friday of Every Other Month" plan, our next meeting will be on March 12. For the time being, we'll plan on meeting at Astor Coffee Lounge again, unless someone has a better idea.
I've posted a poll for the next book and, as requested, I've made it so that you can vote for more than one book. You don't have to vote for more than one and please do not vote for more than three. Vote by this coming Sunday (January 17) and, if there is a tie, we'll have another poll next week to break the tie. Any books that receive a lot of votes will show up again on later polls, so we aren't totally eliminating anything here.
Here is a brief description of the books in the poll:
The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell team up with 19th-century publisher J.T. Fields to catch a serial killer in post-Civil War Boston. It's the fall of 1865, and Harvard University, the cradle of Bostonian intellectual life, is overrun by sanctimonious scholars who turn up their noses at European literature, confining their study to Greek and Latin. Longfellow and his iconoclastic crew decide to produce the first major American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Their ambitious plans are put on hold when they realize that a murderer terrorizing Boston is recreating some of the most vivid scenes of chthonic torment in Dante's Inferno. Since knowledge of the epic is limited to rarefied circles in 19th-century America, the "Dante Club" decides the best way to clear their own names is to match wits with the killer. The resulting chase takes them through the corridors of Harvard, the grimy docks of Boston Harbor and the subterranean labyrinths of the metropolis. It also gives Pearl an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that he's done his history homework. The detective story is well plotted, and Pearl's recreation of the contentious world of mid-19th-century academia is engrossing, even though some of its more ambitious elements like an examination of intellectual hypocrisy and insularity in the Ivy League are somewhat clunky.
Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs: Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol.
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens: A cautionary tale of a young man raised high above his station by a mysterious benefactor. The novel begins with young orphaned Philip Pirrip--Pip--running afoul of an escaped convict in a cemetery. This terrifying personage bullies Pip into stealing food and a file for him, threatening that if he tells a soul "your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate." The boy does as he's asked, but the convict is captured anyway, and transported to the penal colonies in Australia. Having started his novel in a cemetery, Dickens then ups the stakes and introduces his hero into the decaying household of Miss Havisham, a wealthy, half-mad woman who was jilted on her wedding day many years before and has never recovered. Pip is brought there to play with Miss Havisham's ward, Estella, a little girl who delights in tormenting Pip. When, after several years, Pip becomes the heir of an unknown benefactor, he leaps at the chance to leave his home and friends behind to go to London and become a gentleman. But having expectations, as Pip soon learns, is a two-edged sword, and nothing is as he thought it would be. Great Expectations is different from the usual Dickensian fare: the story is dark, almost surreal at times, and you'll find few of the author's patented comic characters and no comic set pieces. And yet this is arguably the most compelling of Dickens's novels.
Killing Mr. Watson, by Peter Matthiessen: More than 20 men wait in ambush as Mister Watson steps ashore and is shot dead. From this beginning, the story of Edgar J. Watson is told through the recollections of his daughter and neighbors, and by reports from magazines, letters, and other historical papers. This is a study rich in history, social studies, ecology, and nature of the The Ten Thousand Islands area of southwestern Florida from 1890-1910. It was a haven for escapees and renegades, and poor treatment of Indians, blacks, and half-breeds was accepted and expected. When Watson arrived there in the 1890s, he was thought of as quiet and friendly. But an aura of danger grew with the stories told and retold about him. When it was alleged that he killed 57 people (including Belle Starr), the tales became folk legend. The setting and characters are fully drawn as Watson's menacing power grows steadily.
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood: In Oryx and Crake, a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde: A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
Seems like we, as a group, chose a whole pile of "dark, cautionary tales" this time around.
See you all soon!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Book Club THIS Friday
Hey Book Fans,
I never did hear for certain, but I'm pretty sure the place Liz recommended for our next book club meeting is Astor Coffee Lounge at 5615 24th Ave NW in Ballard. And as a reminded, we're meeting THIS Friday, January 8, around 7pm. Bring suggestions for the next book. See you all then!
I never did hear for certain, but I'm pretty sure the place Liz recommended for our next book club meeting is Astor Coffee Lounge at 5615 24th Ave NW in Ballard. And as a reminded, we're meeting THIS Friday, January 8, around 7pm. Bring suggestions for the next book. See you all then!
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