Happy Holidays!

Well, as you can imagine, it's been a frenetic couple of weeks at Wellesley Books but we're almost through the holiday crush. In what's become a Christmas Eve tradition, we'll have most of my family deployed on the floor tomorrow, so stop in and say hello if you are doing some last minute shopping.


As a reminder about our next meeting on Wednesday, January 25th I'm including this snippet from today's Writer's Almanac:

"It's the birthday of Norman Maclean, born in Clarinda, Iowa (1902). He was a fisherman, firefighter, scholar, and teacher, but it is as the author of his autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, that he is best known. Just as he described in his book, Maclean grew up at the junction of two great trout rivers in Missoula, Montana, in a family that didn't draw a clear line between religion and fly-fishing. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and his rowdy younger brother, Paul, like the sibling in the book, was in fact murdered under mysterious circumstances. Maclean did not publish the story of his last summer with his brother until he was in his 70s, but after it appeared in 1976, it very quickly became a classic of American literature.

"After A River Runs Through It, Maclean wrote about a Montana wildfire that had claimed the lives of 13 firemen and smokejumpers decades before. Part mystery, part investigation, and part autobiography, Young Men and Fire (1992) would be Maclean's final book, posthumously published two years after his death in 1990."


By the way, I also wanted to highlight a great write up in yesterday's Boston
Globe on Nick O'Connell and Cask Force.  You'll remember it was last January that we did an organized  tasting of some of his whisky and we've sampled others over the course our meetings. I've run into Nick a couple of times over the last few months and he's eager to come in for another round of tasting.  We'll see if we can get something set up soon!


Until then, I'm wishing you all a happy and joyous holiday!

Next BBGG Norman Maclean - Wednesday, January 25th

It's a busy time of year both in and out of the store, so this is coming out a bit late, but I wanted to thank everyone who made the effort on a cold/rainy night for our discussion of A Tale for the Time Being.  I have to admit, I was little nervous about the reception for the book before the meeting, but I think it may have been the most overwhelming supported books of any we've read.  (Of course, Parker will be the ultimate judge.)  I was most pleased with the number who said they would never have picked the book up on their own but are now recommending it to others.

I wanted to provide links to a couple of items we talked about over the course of the meeting.  Charlie Cassidy sent this article on the Hikikomori, the approximately half a million people in Japan who have dropped out of either school or work due to bullying or severe parental pressure.  And, once again, here is the link to the This American Life episode featuring the disconnected phone box where surviving relatives and friends have conversations with victims of the tsunami.



I'm very excited about our next book, Young Men and Fire, by Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It.  This non-fiction account of the Mann Gulch fire in 1949, in which an elite team of smoker jumpers parachuted into a wild fire is part detective story, part western, part tragedy.  All of it is told in Maclean's distinctive, concise prose.  Hope you can make it!



I'm in the store every Sunday and on Wednesday December 21st.  Stop in if you can.  Otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Man Booker for The Sellout and a Check-in on A Tale for the Time Being

Deserving Man (Booker)

I'm sure many of you saw that Paul Beatty and The Sellout won the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction on Tuesday night.  We can all take some small satisfaction that we were on the bandwagon relatively early. Yet another example of how The Morning News Tournament of Books identifies great books.  I was interested to read that The Sellout was originally considered "too harsh, too unconventional, too unfamiliar" and was turned down by 18 publishers before it was eventually published.

Incidentally, A Tale for the Time Being was a semi-finalist in the Tournament of Books and short-listed for the Man Booker prize. We have about a month left until our next meeting so I hope some of you have started the book.  Rudy passed along a great episode from This American Life that feathers in nicely with the book.  I've attached his comments below:

"I happened to be listening to an episode of This American Life over the weekend and was amazed at how relevant it was to A Tale for the Time Being. I haven’t finished the book yet, so it might not be spot-on, but the TAL episode (from Sept. 23) started with a story about a guy in Japan who missed his dead relative and put a telephone booth in his back yard, although not hooked up to anything, so that he could “call” him to say the things he was thinking. Then, after the earthquake & tsunami, lots of people started to come to use his “kaze denwa” (wind phone) to talk to the people they lost. NHK filmed and recorded people so there’s lots of interesting footage."

The This American Life episode is online and available here.  It’s about 22 minutes long. Here's the NHK video.

TC Boyle Post Mortem

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  I had to chuckle this morning when, the day after the first Red Sox playoff game, the top trending article on the Boston Globe website is the story of an 81-year-old grandmother in Amherst who had her carefully concealed and well tended recreational marijuana plant seized from her garden after being spotted and radioed in from a National Guard helicopter.  Her response: "I had been nursing this baby through a drought, and I was pretty pissed to tell the truth.  This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, I am a citizen of the United States of America. You have overstepped and I am not going to step aside."  I found myself wondering if I'd stumbled upon a missing dialogue from TC Boyle's book or if the Sara character had recently relocated from Mendocino, Nevada, or where ever she settled at the end of the book.

 Thanks, once again, for the overwhelming turnout and enthusiastic debate for The Harder They Come.  Despite my protestations and cajoling to the contrary, I truly believe the discussions are more interesting when the views are mixed.  I thought Wednesday night was a good balance of opinions.  If you enjoyed the book and are looking to try another by Boyle, I would recommend Drop City, A Friend of  the Earth, or The Tortilla Curtain. 

 As much as I appreciated the big turnout the other night, I believe we have reached a limit in terms of the number of participants we can accommodate under our current format.  I like everyone to have an opportunity to speak and the back and forth discussion makes for a better evening.  We lose that capability once we get much above 20 people.  I will think about possible changes to the structure, but until then I'm going to cap the sign up sheet to 25 names (under the assumption that we will have our usual few no-shows.)  That shouldn't lock anyone out, but to be safe please sign up early if you are planning on attending.

 As I mentioned at the end of the evening, our next book will be A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki on Wednesday, November 30th, at 7pm.  On the surface it has a lot in common with The Harder They Come.  Ozeki is also a great storyteller, much of the plot is set in the Pacific Northwest, there are multiple narrative voices, and it centers around family relationships (father-daughter-grandmother in this case.)  However, this book is much more finely observed and constructed, with interesting diversions into global environmental issues, zen buddhism, quantum physics, and Japanese war history.  It should be a great discussion

Lastly, I had several requests at the end of the evening for an updated list of the books we've read since we started in 2014.  You can always find the syllabus for Bill's Book Group for Guys  under the "Events" tab on the Wellesley Books website.  That said, I've attached the list below.

 

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Cooper's Creek by Alan Moorehead

The New Confessions by William Boyd

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Headlong by Michael Frayn

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

The Son by Phillipp Meyer

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

All That Is by James Salter 

Consider the Lobster  by David Foster Wallace

A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr

Lucky Jim  by Kingsley Amis

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

The Sisters Brothers  by Patrick DeWitt

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Tsar of Love and Techno  by Anthony Marra

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

The Harder They Come by TC Boyle

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

TC Boyle - The Harder They Come - Wednesday, October 5th

I'm traveling next week and will be somewhat out of touch, so I wanted to check in and remind you that our next meeting is coming up in a little less than two weeks.  The Harder They Come is rather short and plot driven, so there's still plenty of time to finish. Hope to see you there!

 

 Also, I wanted to make sure you saw that Paul Beatty's The Sellout made the shortlist for the Man Booker prize for fiction.  You can find his short, irreverent interview here. 

My Finnegan Moment and the Dangers of Reading

The Line Up

I was in Rhode Island over the weekend, still glowing in the aftermath of a great Barbarian Days discussion when I woke up on Sunday morning to brilliant skies, an offshore breeze and some very well formed waves (insert your favorite Finnegan description) driven in from Hermine.  Inspired by his writing, surmising he was probably in the water off Montauk in the same storm system and hey, I'm 8 years younger, I never hesitated to grab my paddle board and head out. It had been 3 years since I was out surfing and I quickly realized I was, literally, in over my head.  After 45 minutes and a couple of cautious attempts at the waves, I took a big fall and my leash snapped and my board took off for the rocks.  Suddenly my mind was full of rip currents, double wave hold downs,  and barefoot dashes across sharp slippery rocks to avoid annihilation.  In the end, I emerged from the water unscathed, but with a much more vivid appreciation for some of those passages and a new appreciation for the pleasures of living some experiences vicariously through reading.

Our next Book Group meeting is set for Wednesday, October 5th at 7pm.  We are reading TC Boyle's The Harder They Come. Boyle is a prolific writer, a gifted story teller and one of my favorite authors.  I've gone back and forth about which book we should read.  I had a chance to meet him a couple of years ago in Asheville at the ABA's Winter Institute when this book debuted.  We spent a lot of time talking about our Group's reading selections.  He convinced me this would be a great fit and I've been waiting for it to come out in paperback.

Barbarian Days Upon Us

Hope you are all well and truly stoked about our upcoming meeting this Wednesday at 7pm. Looking forward to seeing you all there. To get you in the right frame of mind, Arthur suggests you check out the point breaks in  Psychic Migrations. If you plan on attending, please shoot me a note so I can make sure we are properly provisioned.

Shaka brahs!

Presidential Endorsement

I'm thinking of inviting the President in for our next meeting given that he's doing the homework.  

On Friday, the White House released President Obama's summer reading list, the titles he will likely read while vacationing with his family on Martha's Vineyard, as reported by Politico. The titles are:

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson



For those of you thinking of coming, there's  obviously still time to get started.  Hope to see you all in a few weeks.

Intermission

We are about halfway through our Summer hiatus and as I'll be out of commission for a bit for my oldest son's wedding next weekend I'm attaching this piece by William Finnegan from the Delancey Place website to remind you that our next meeting is on Wednesday, August 31.  

Today's selection from -- Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. How waves are formed.

"Here is how waves form. A storm out at sea churns the surface, creating chop -- smaller and then larger disorganized wavelets, which amalgamate, with enough wind, into heavy seas. What we are wait­ing for on distant coasts is the energy that escapes from the storm, radiat­ing outward into calmer waters in the form of wave trains -- groups of waves, increasingly organized, that travel together. Each wave is a column of orbiting energy, most of it below the surface. All the wave trains pro­duced by a storm constitute what surfers call a swell. The swell can travel thousands of miles. The more powerful the storm, the farther the swell may travel. As it travels, it becomes more organized -- the distance be­tween each wave in a train, known as the interval, increases. In a long­ interval train, the orbiting energy in each wave may extend more than a thousand feet beneath the ocean surface. Such a train can pass easily through surface resistance like chop or other smaller, shallower swells that it crosses or overtakes."

A couple of other fun notes related to previous meetings.  I don't know where you come down on the election campaigns, but George Saunders has been attending Donald Trump events around the country and has written a highly entertaining account of his experience for The New Yorker.  By the way, Saunders' first novel is scheduled for publication in February.  If you looked closely at the photo of my proposed Summer reading stack last time, you may have noticed the arc for Lincoln in the Bardo. But I'm saving that one for now. Incidentally, I'm still soliciting Summer reading updates, so if you've read anything good, post it as a comment to the blog for everyone to see (thanks Bart!)


Lastly, I was so happy to see that The Sellout was just selected to the long list for the Man Booker Prize, one the most high profile literary prizes out there. My admiration for this novel continues to grow and I've been recommending it to everyone I know. So best of luck to Paul Beatty!

Summer Reading 2016

Thanks for a great conversation around Nobody's Fool last week and apologies, again, for the last minute change of date.  We have about two months before our next meeting on Wednesday, August 31st when we will discuss Barbarian Days: A Surfer's Life by William Finnegan.  This memoir won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. "Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting." Finnegan is a staff writer for The New Yorker, about my age, and grew up near my home town in Southern California and the same generation covered in The Sellout. In the NY Times Book Review's By the Book section Geoff Dyer described Barbarian Days as the last great book he'd read because "it made me realize my whole life has been pretty much a waste. I suspected this anyway; he explained why: because I’d not surfed."

My summer ambition

 Apart from our next read, several of you have asked for some summer reading suggestions. Wellesley Books publishes a Summer Reading pamphlet, available in the store, which features recommendations from our entire staff if you are interested in something beyond my narrow scope.  Otherwise, here's what I'm thinking:

•  The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan - Replace Texas with Kentucky and this is an epic on the scale of The Son. I'm just getting started but already enthralled.
• The One from the Other by Philip Kerr - After The Quiet Flame I read the Berlin Noir trilogy which contains the first 3 Bernie Gunther novels and I have to admit I'm hooked.
• Before the Fall by Noah Hawley - "The thriller of the year." When a private plane plunges into the ocean off Martha's Vineyard, the media and the government want answers.
• The Ginger Man by James Patrick Dunleavy - Never read it, just recently heard of it, but a classic contemporary of Lucky Jim.
• Be Frank with Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson -  An editor's assistant is sent to act as caregiver to a reclusive novelist's quirky 9-year old son while she tries to finish her next novel. A whimsical page-turner in the spirit of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Where'd You Go, Bernadette.
•  The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin - For those of you who haven't had enough dystopian drama.  This is the third book of a trilogy.  The first, The Passage, was a thrilling literary phenomenon.  I felt the second was a bit of a plod, but this last has apparently returned to the level of the debut.

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind or head in a different direction. Are you reading something good?  Have other ideas or suggestions you think the group might like? Please respond or comment via the blog about books you plan to read or have enjoyed over the Summer.

***New Date for Nobody's Fool - Wednesday, June 29th***

Due to a conflict, I need to change the BBGG date for Nobody's Fool  to Wednesday, June 29th.  For those of you who have already committed, I hope you can still make it. We'll gladly refund the price of the ticket if you have a conflict (I hope you'll still enjoy the book.) Please reply to this email letting me know your plans either way so that I can confirm you've received this message.  For those of you who were on the fence, this notice provides a bonus week of reading time, so come sign up!  By the way, I'll be sure to bring something good for tasting due to this unexpected inconvenience!



I also wanted to let you know of an upcoming event that's just recently been added to the calendar.  Long-time Sports Illustrated writer and NPR commentator Frank Deford will be in the store on Thursday, June 16th to discuss his new book I'd Know That Voice Anywhere.  You can sign up in the store or on-line by following this link.


Lastly, Wellesley resident and NY Times best-selling author Ben Coes will be in the store on Thursday, June 30th to discuss his new novel, First Strike. I hope you can find some time to come in, meet these great authors and help support the Events Program at Wellesley Books.

Sellout Follow-up & Richard Russo on Deck

Wow! What a great evening and conversation for The Sellout on Wednesday night.  I admit to being a little nervous, given the subject and inflammatory style of the book, but I personally learned a lot during the discussion and really appreciate the differing views on the book and personal anecdotes, as well.


The next Book Group meeting is set for Wednesday June 22nd at 7pm.  We'll be reading Nobody's Fool,  Richard Russo's "slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years."

I'm excited about this selection for a number of reasons.  It's a great story filled with memorable characters. As reported recently, this was the top rated book by the Man Book Club.  Richard Russo will be in our store this coming Wednesday (with Jennifer Haigh) to talk Everybody's Fool, written 20 years later but a follow up to this book.  The event is sold out, but you can order a personalized copy, if you are interested.  Lastly, Russo was recently named that ABA's Indie Champion, awarded annually the author who goes out all out to support independent bookstores. 

Hope you can be there!

Manly Book Clubs

Many of you wrote me about an article on all male book clubs that looks to be published in tomorrow's NY Times.  It's well worth a read and many comparison opportunities with other men's reading groups, including a Top 100 Books for Every Man list from the subtly titled International Ultra Manly Book Club.  The website and blog for the iUMBC are quite impressive, although it does look like they've only recently discovered The Sisters Brothers.

Men Have Book Clubs, Too www.nytimes.com An all-male book club in California has a rule: “No books by women about women.”

Overall, the article left me wondering if I would have right stuff to become a member.  For instance, The Man Book Club lists its lowest scoring book ever (yes Parker, other groups seem to have score keepers as well) as Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey - one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.  The only reason I haven't previously suggested it is its overwhelming length.  However, their highest scoring book is Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo which intrigues me enough to pick for our next book group meeting in mid-June.  Coincidentally, Richard Russo and Jennifer Haigh are in the store for an event on Wednesday, May 25th.  Russo will be discussing his new book, Everybody's Fool, an obvious follow up to the former title with the same characters and small town upstate New York location.  I understand the event is close to sold out, so come in soon if you are interested and want to get  your book signed.


Also, many of you had previously expressed an interest in attending an event with Nathaniel Philbrick, the National Book Award winning author of In the Heart of the Sea. Wellesley Books is hosting him on Saturday, May 14th at 4pm, at the Wellesley Community Center on Washington Street.  He will discuss his new book, Valient Ambition, an account of George Washington and Benedict Arnold during the middle years of the American Revolution. Again, I suggest you get your ticket early for this great event.

Hope you are all deeply engrossed in The Sellout, looking forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks.

    

Tsar Follow Up - Sellout Preview

This is a slightly delayed follow up to the excellent Tsar of Love and Techno  discussion of a few weeks ago.  Thank you to all participants.  I loved the substance and structure of the conversation and will continue to look for ways to broaden the level of the conversation going forward.

 

As I hope you know by now, the next BBGG selecton is The Sellout by Paul Beatty and is scheduled for Wednesday, May 18th at 7pm.  The book is a modern day Huckleberry Finn, with biting, inflammatory social/racial satire that is one of the funniest books I've read in a long while.  The Sellout knocked Tsar out of The Morning News Tournament of Books and ended up going on to win the whole thing (always a great endorsement) and should provide the backbone for a great conversation.  I couldn't put the book down and ended up finishing it in a couple of days.  If you find yourself in a similar situation and are looking for some additional (and more serious) background reading, you should pick up Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, a recent winner of the National Book Award and one of our store's top sellers.

 

 

Alexander Hamilton did not make the list

Time magazine just released its annual list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Coates was among the handful of authors showcased: Bryan Stevenson wrote: "Many of us have known for years that Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of America's most compelling and thoughtful voices. His timely, provocative and well-researched writings about race and this nation's shameful history of inequality have been essential reading.... Between the World and Me is brilliantly structured, insightful and forcefully argued. He navigates the complexities and burdens of race in America compassed by a father's love for his son. But it's the soulful writing that makes the work a classic... He has much more to say, and we will all be the wiser for reading it."

Hope to see you all on the 18th.