Confederacy of Dunces

This month we read Confederacy of Dunces, a rare re-read from the Greater Westford Literary Society list.  Ed Amidon was the inspiration.  This is one of his favorite books.  And John Kennedy Toole did not disappoint us, except for Tim.  Tim just didn't jive with the book.  Just coming off his legislative duties may have had an adverse effect!  Most of us loved the clever language and the caricature of many different stereotypic characters.  Mindy did some secondary research and was really quite enlightening with excerpts from a biography of Toole.  In any case, the story of how this novel came to be a Pulitzer Prize winning novel is amazing.  The only book in competition at our meeting was Terry's new book, Coffee Can Investing!  

Next Month is Graham Greene's The Quiet American.   We will meet at Ed's for a garden tour on June 11th!  See you then!

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store was a fun read.  The contrast between technology and bound books and bookstores and the internet inspired a lively conversation.  With a show of thumbs called by Chrysanne, the overall opinion was mixed and led to the inevitable discussion of what is a book club book.  For the first time ever, there was a concerted effort to be a bit more definitive and here is what we have (subject to change by the next book club meeting):

The book should:

• Capture the Human Experience
• Expose one to something unusual
• Cause controversy in our discussion
• Expose us to new possibilities
• Be a book we may have never chosen on our own
• Be well written with language we enjoy

Perhaps the group will review and add to the criteria! Tim?  Katie?  Meanwhile, Lexi and Ed reviewed books read and not read in the distant past by the Greater Westford Literary Society and with the help of Fred's excel spread sheet with titles and authors came up with a list of books to consider.  And since it will be at my house I had the definitive vote.  And because I have been hearing about the Confederacy of Dunces for so long and because it is Ed's favorite book and because Lexi always says, "Let's read it!"  We are going to go with it for May 19th at Cindy's House.  See you there!

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

 This month, we met at Ed's.  We were missing our legislative members, Katie and Tim who were off fighting the good fight, creating a better Vermont for all of us.  And Chrysanne was off on her now annual trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.  We had the added benefit of Louise's cooking for this book club with dinner served in the dining room with multiple pieces of silverware and candles!

The book was not overwhelmingly endorsed by members-however, the idea of leaving the house one day and just starting to walk towards something led to some very funny stories including Ed and Louise's recent holiday season where as Louise put it-we outsourced our relatives and our gifts and drove across country with our dog and spent 10 days in a cabin on Lake Tahoe to Terry's tale of a nearly missed Ph.D. and the acquisition of a Rolls Royce when he was living in the Northeast Kingdom, managing a Californian money fund.  Terry eventually drove the Rolls Royce cross country in order to obtain the best sale in California.

I laughed so hard, I cried at one point!  Louise served not one, not two, but three desserts.  They were all so good that some of us took cookies home in ziplock baggies.

We are meeting next at Chrysanne's on March 24th.  We are reading Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore: a Novel by Robin Sloan.  Both Fred and Mindy brought the book for a suggested title.  See you in March!

The Sisters Brothers

 I missed this book club which met at Mindy's in January.  We read Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers.  I found this photo of the author and I think that his image reminds me of the brothers!  I don't really know what to write about, not having been there for the discussion, but Ed did send me this note:

Hi Cindy- Very sorry to hear about Fred's dad. Next meeting is February 10 here at my house.
The book is The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  Everyone liked Sisters
Brothers except me. I wasn't convinced by the discussion- it seemed like loosely connectedincidents of violence porn but others saw humor, redemption, odyssey. And Mindy seemedto see the whole thing as a bit of slapstick on Western novels.

So there you have it.  I hope Ed doesn't mind that I copied his email on this blog.  Will remove if he does!

The Round House

We gathered at Katie's for a warm and welcoming dinner around her fire for a discussion on The Round House by Louise Erdich.  The Club had read other works by Louise Erdich in the past and distant past and these novels had received mixed review.  The Round House was unanimously liked by all Club members.  We were just missing Ed, who we wished had been there to help explain the tribal laws referred to in the novel.  There were so many layers and themes in the novel, which was the fun part of the discussion.  Some were struck by the morality dilemmas, others by the trauma and response to trauma, while others the coming of age/loss of innocence.  The writing was beautiful and the metaphors worked.  We agreed that all the characters appealed to us accept, Lark.  We also found parallels between the themes of Native American segregation and separate laws and our own Abenaki Tribes here in Vermont.    We topped the evening off with  Lexi's legendary holiday cookies.  All words were lost as we grappled with which cookie to choose to end the evening!  Thank you, Lexi!

Next month we are at Mindy's -She is getting home late from work and makes no promises.  Cindy is raiding the freezer and bringing ice-cream.  Lexi is bringing left over cookies (yum).  See you soon.

Stoner

John Williams-Doesn't he look like William Stoner?

Terry suggested the novel, Stoner by John Williams in November.  His wife Debbie had read the novel and said she loved it so much that she could not put it down.  The novel was written in 1965, yet was not appreciated fully until the decade of 2000 when the novel was reprinted and pclaimed the "perfect novel."   The majority of the book club loved Stoner for its simple story of an ordinary life.  The book was described as elegant, painful and beautifully written.  Lexi, Tim, Chrysanne, Katie and Ed said they could not put the book down.   Chrysanne went on to say that what she loves about our book club is the discovery of this sort of novel- A novel you would not otherwise know about, except that someone knew someone who also loved to read and did not want this book to end!  While Terry, Mindy and I all appreciated the novel, we found the painful unfolding of William Stoner's life difficult to take and therefore could not feel the same fondness for the novel as others had-only depression!

Next month, we are reading The Round House by Louise Erdich and we are meeting on December 16th at Katie's House.  Here is the NY Times Book Review.

And because Chrysanne is going out of town and we will miss Ed this month, we have scheduled a book and a date for January-unusual, I know.  We are planning to read The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt and we are meeting at Mindy's on January 6th.

The Flame Throwers

This month we read the The Flame Throwers at Kate's suggestion.  Chrysanne reported that Kate, who is a writer, found Rachel Kushner's work to be brilliant.  We were hoping to get a review by Kate for the blog, but a week or so has passed and I felt the need to take a clumsy stab at it.  But the minute we receive something from Kate, I will add in her words.

The Flame Throwers received a big mixed review with Tim and Chrysanne on one hand loving the novel.  They noted the brilliant metaphors and descriptions:
“It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things happened to you. The person you were when you thought a small cut string could determine the course of a year. You also became the person to whom certain things happened. Who passed into the realm where you no longer questioned the notion of being trapped in one form. You took on that form, that identity, hoped for its recognition from others, hoped someone would love it and you.” 
 They admired the amount of research Ms. Kushner must have done in order to capture the art, motorcycles and New York culture.

Mindy, Lexi, and Terry were on the other end of the spectrum, not understanding the role of the main character was who was never even referred to by her real name, but by her home city, Reno.  They were unable to warm up to the characters and found the writing artistic-but to pondered, to what end-sure the writing was great, but what was the purpose of the work?

Ed and I were in the middle, admiring the writing, yet not loving the novel itself.  There was some thought that it felt like a series of essays or short stories threaded together with the same characters and setting.  Both Ed and I, who lived a much straighter and  more traditional life during the 70's, were a bit fascinated by the edgyArt-as-Life-New York world that we were aware of, but had missed. 

So I close with Rachel Kushner's lines:

“The answer is not coming. I have to find an arbitrary point inside the spell of waiting, the open absence, and tear myself away. Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.” 

Next month we are reading Stoner by John Williams and we are meeting at Terry's on Wednesday, November 13th.  See you there!