Next Up: Lamb

OK, we're in for 444 pages, but most of us know the basic story more or less. Critics hate it, but 490 Amazon reviewers gave it 5-stars, so I'm thinking: SUMMER FUN. And even if it sucks as hard as Christopher Moore's other book (ha ha), at least it'll be a quick read. Btw, WHAT IS IT WITH US & BOOKS ABOUT RELIGION!! Next Up: Existential Crisis meets Bill & Ted, i.e., kinda like high school.

Feel free to post anything book club related on blog (ALWAYS NOTE SPOILERS!) including nominations for next month's book, so we can settle that by end of June's meeting (some people get all demandy about having enough time to actually read the book ;) I think everyone can post, but if not, facemail/email me & I'll add you to blogger account.

$10 @ Amazon

Oscar Wao: Angie's review

I'm incredibly delayed in posting this, but in contrast to the Oscar Wao love-fest, I thought I'd share the perspective of someone who found the book to be a bit overrated.

I began reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz with very high expectations. It has received tons of critical acclaim (including receiving the Pulitzer Prize), and is raved about by a number of friends whose literary opinions I hold in high regard. I knew nothing about the book itself, though, and when I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning chapters I thought I was in for a treat. Unfortunately I found it really never went anywhere, and I think it'll be one of those books that I don't think about much now that I'm through with it.

My full review is here. I'd love to hear why you felt differently!

NonFiction Book Club: More Details

The Plan: read only one SHORT book (like a Penguin Lives Series book) or pre-selected essays within a book of essays per month.OR read one long biography/narrative nonfiction book every 2-3 months. READING LOAD: ONLY 150-200 pages per MONTH & 3-6 in-the-flesh meetings per year.

Given time pressures, NONFICTION meetings would likely be VIRTUAL during Summer, i.e., we'd connect online, mostly thru the blog, but I'm looking into technology to "grow" club's virtual connection option (like video conferencing). Also I'd set up a facebook invitation-only group with video clips and resources, and members could contribute NOTES.

IF, HOWEVER, we have a quorum, I'd love to get together LIVE/REAL-time this summer ONCE to gel the group.

Then We Came to the End: Novel

JULY/AUG Selection: Something (unfortunately) relevant to the times. And funny because it's summer.

Check out New York Times Review "It is a brave author who embeds the rationale for writing his novel into the novel itself. But 70 pages into Joshua Ferris’s first novel, set in a white-collar office, we meet Hank Neary, an advertising copywriter writing his first novel, set in a white-collar office. Ferris has the good sense to make Neary’s earnest project seem slightly ridiculous. Neary describes his book as 'small and angry.' His co-workers tactfully suggest more appealing topics. He rejects them. 'The fact that we spend most of our lives at work, that interests me,' he says. 'A small, angry book about work,' his colleagues think. 'There was a fun read on the beach.'

Then We Came to the End is "expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny. It is set at the turn of the current century, when the implosion of the dot-com economy is claiming collateral victims down the fluorescent-paneled halls of a Chicago advertising firm. Clients are fleeing, projects are drying up and management is chucking human ballast from the listing corporate balloon. The layoffs come piecemeal, without warning and — in keeping with good, brutal, heinie-covering legal practice — with no rationale as to why any person was let go."

Also Check the "The End's" Web Site. CAUTION: If you're at the office, turn OFF sound before clicking. Included is a READER'S GUIDE, if that's your cup of coffee, so to speak.

Here's link to Video about The End (also available on You Tube and linked on right side of Blog.

Non-Fiction Satellite Book Club, Anyone? (Bios, Narratives, and Essays in rotation)

Sunday Thomasin asked about nonfiction books. And, I'd like to read nonfiction, with one caveat: the focus must be on top-notch writing, not necessarily interesting subject matter (ideally both). Put another way: When in Doubt, Form Must Trump Content.

I suggest a Book Rotation: Biography/Memoir (BM)-- Narrative Non-fiction (NR)-- History/Essay(s)/New-Yorker-worthy Journalism (HEJ), i.e., we read a BM (or MB if potty-training pun is too much); two months later, we read narrative; two months later is HEJ; and then the cycle begins again.

For HEJ month, people should be open to reading about strange things, like, for example, Cod. Yes, like the fish. I'm referring to Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. "Well worth your time--about a fish that probably has mattered more in human history than any other. The cod helped inspire the discovery and exploration of North America. It had a profound impact upon the economic development of New England and eastern Canada from the earliest times....Kurlansky sprinkles his well-written and occasionally humorous history with interesting asides on the possible origin of the word codpiece and dozens of fish recipes. Sometimes a book on an offbeat or neglected subject really makes the grade. This is one of them." (Amazon Review)

Cod is just an example. But it's the kind of book we should read. That is, please suspend judgment about content while we aim to read the most well-written, most interesting books we can find.

Coincidently, I'm getting a Masters in Fine Arts for Non-Fiction Writing at Sarah Lawrence. My thesis is a combination of the forms I've talked about, i.e., it's part narrative (story with dialogue, set in scenes); part international history; part investigative journalism; and part philosophical essay about truth and beauty. So I'm totally enthused about non-fiction!

Some suggested titles for each genre:

Biography/Memoir
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
Penguin Lives Series (short, about 150 pages!) Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon; Julia Child by Laura Shapiro; Robert E. Lee by Roy Blount; Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley; Abraham Lincoln by Thomas Keneally, etc.)

Journalism/History/Essays
Food and Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast
Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup; State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, by Matt Weiland/Sean Wilsey
Random Family by Adrian Nicole Leblanc
Cadillac Desert: American West & Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Narrative Nonfiction
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Executioner's Song; Miami & Seige of Chicago: informal history of Republican & Democratic conventions of 1968, by Norman Mailer
Another Day of Life; Soccer War; or Imperium, by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Joe Gould's Secret; McSorley's Wonderful Saloon by Joseph Mitchell

So is anybody game?

Questions from Fearless Reader

What do you think about the fact that the book completely skipped over the whole chapter of their lives when Beli first got to America w/ Lola and Oscar's dad (after giving us so much history up until that point).

And yunior - how does he know so much? Is it in the package that oscar sends that arrives eight months after he's dead? And what do you think was in the package that never arrived - the secret of the fuku and salvation?

Wowed by Women of Wao & Flummoxed by Fuku

Fearless readers met Sunday at Prospect Park on an amazingly beautiful day. Amanda, Lynne, Martha and myself gathered to discuss Junot Diaz's Pulitzer's-winning novel and Thomasin joined us at the end, bringing the best box of pink wine I've ever had. And there were healthy snacks (thanks Lynne)!

The most notable aspect of the novel: Such strong women characters! And, for me, the key theme was: To what extent does Fate, or its evil twin, Fuku, determine our lives?

Here's the book's first passage: "They say it came first from Africa carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fuku americanus, or more colloquially, fuku -- generally a curse or a doom of some kind....Santo Domingo might be fuku's Kilometer Zero...but we are all of us its children, whether we know it or not."

Man, but can't that boy write right!

So, were the characters doomed (even before they were born)? Put another way, how how much freedom, really, did the characters have?

I argued that Beli never had a chance. Yes, she was fukud. It would be almost impossible to recover from the ferocity she suffered as a child. In order to survive, she had to become muchissimo hard. La Inca's love notwithstanding, Beli didn't develop deep emotional connections, except (perhaps) with her lovers. Did Beli love La Inca? Did she love her children? I don't know. Presumably, yes, because Beli worked so hard to support them (two jobs or more--it's a immigrant narrative, after all).

And if Beli did love, then what is love worth? I wonder if Love isn't the biggest fuku of all. It was Abelard's love for his daughter that led him to risk the family's ruin, and, of course, Oscar's love inspired him to court Ybon (and death) successfully.

Perhaps Beli might have had a chance (fuku be damned!) -- had romantic love gone right for her. But what kind of chance is that, given the relationships between men and women evidenced in this novel? Even "good" men, like Abelard, betray. He had a mistress, after all, and his intransigence regarding his daughter and Trujillo's vindictiveness led to the family's ruin. Abelard was too brave by half -- he refused to offer up his daughter, which is admirable, but he was a coward not to follow-up and protect his family from the consequences of his supposedly brave decision.

But then, was Abelard the bringer of fuku, or was he merely another fuku product, i.e., had his fate been sealed by the Great Fuku of the Dominican Republic, which Fukud itself by unleashing Trujillo?

So what say you of fuku?