Mid-meeting Check-in and NEIBA Fall Conference

 I had a really fun experience this week.  As many of you know, my wife Gillian is not only the active owner of our store but also the sitting President of the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA). Their Fall conference took place this week in Providence. Tuesday night was the awards banquet where New England authors were recognized for recent books in several writing categories.  As president, Gillian selects a writer for lifetime achievement.  Her choice this year was a bit of a Hail Mary when she invited the notoriously reticent John Irving to attend and, to our surprise, he accepted. John lives in Toronto these days and chose to fly in and out of Boston to avoid connections.  He needed a ride to and from Providence and decided to carpool down with me.  Given the weather and the last couple of days I ended up with almost 4 hours of conversation with John who turned out to be super easy going, willing to roll with the traffic and, as you can probably imagine, a great storyteller.

I have a couple of weeks of travel ahead of me so I thought I'd do a mid-meeting check a little earlier than usual to see that everyone is on their way.  As a reminder our next meeting is on Wednesday, October 11th at 7pm.  We're reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford.  Hope you can all make it!


 Dave Eggers (Hologram for the King) has a literary website called McSweeney's that puts out some really great stuff.  If you haven't seen it already, you'll want to checkout the link below:

If Bostonians Loved Other Local Institutions the Way They Love Their Local Sports Franchises

Lastly, I had several requests at the end of the evening for an updated list of the books we've read.  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 

Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean 

The Whites by Richard Price

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 

and now... The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Welcome Back!

What great turnout last night (both old friends and new faces) for a rousing discussion of Tree of Smoke! Whether you liked it or hated it, I'm glad you came and showed once again, I think, that our best discussions come from books that are less than universally loved.  That said, I also recognize that 600+ pages is a big commitment, so thank you for taking the time with it to form an opinion.


As I mentioned, our next meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 11th and we'll be discussing The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford.  While I've read several of Ford's books, I haven't read this particular one but it's been on my list for a while. He's a New England based writer and I anticipate this should slot in nicely with some of our previous reads (Salter, Russo, Boyd, Eggers, etc.)


Hope to see you all there.