Never Let Me Go Recap and Summer Plans 2017

Happy Summer!  I'm still enjoying the afterglow of the great turnout and enthusiastic debate for Never Let Me Go last week. I'm convinced that our best and most memorable discussions occur around books that evoke such mixed and strongly held opinions.  It seems that as our shared reading experiences continue to grow, the depth of the conversation continues to improve. Then again, maybe I'm just remembering the quality of the whisky!

After a short Summer hiatus, our next meeting is set for Wednesday, September 6th.  We'll be reading Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.  As in the last few years with Barbarian Days and The Son, this Summer's book is a little longer than our typical selections given the extended break.  An ambitious book, but one that flows easily, Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award in 2007. It's set primarily in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.  Think Graham Greene meets John Le Carre meets Hunter S. Thompson. Dennis Johnson died just recently.

Bookmark

When you come into the store to pick up your copy, be sure to ask for our new bookmark which features staff selections for Summer reading.  As for other suggestions, Dennis Noonan posted a great list on the blog. Got anything that you are excited about reading or you think the group my find interesting?  You can comment on Dennis's post or this one. By the way, if you would be interested in posting new content, let me know and I'll set you up as a contributor.

 I've read some very good non-fiction recently.  Some you might want to consider this summer:

• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren - I've been recommending this to everyone I know.  It's so great on so many levels - wonderful writing that's full of science explained simply, an empowering story of a woman battling through a male dominated field, quirky characters and a desperate plea for Earth.
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann - If, like my entire family, you loved Candice Millard's River of Doubt.
• The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery - Fascinating, easy to read, and highly informative. There are several new books out on octopuses (not octopi) and lots of recent research on their intelligence and neural processing.
• Theft by Finding: Diaries by David Sedaris - A great diversion from any reading rut.

As for fiction, I overwhelmingly recommend News of the World by Paulette Jiles.  The only reason I won't pick this short piece of historical fiction for our group meeting is because I don't think we'd get much debate.  In the Frontier West of the late 1800s, an old war veteran travels from town to town providing dramatic readings of recent newspaper publications to the locals who have no access. During the course of his travels, he's commissioned to return a young orphan girl who was captured and raised by the Kiowa to her distant relatives in San Antonio.  It's evocative, action packed, and beautifully told. It's the story you might imagine if Peter Heller had written The Son.





Until September then, I hope you have a safe, sunny, and enriching Summer!  Happy reading.

My Current Summer Objectives

Ishiguro Check-in

As a topical warmup to get you in the mood for our discussion of Never Let Me Go, I'm attaching this link (courtesy of Larry Rosen) to Dave Eggers' McSweeney's Literary site.  See if you can distinguish  the writing between Ishiguro's masterpiece Remains of the Day and, perhaps another modern classic, the Opening Statement from James Comey to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Many of you will remember we read Eggers' A Hologram for the King for one of our early meetings.  So it's all coming together :)

Big Papi and David Mitchell follow-up

Celebrating yet another clutch performance!

 Still coming down off the high of our two key events last week - the in store visit from David Ortiz and the great turn out for Black Swan Green! Big Papi was outstanding - signing almost 500 books in just under 2 hours with plenty of time out for photos, smiles, and fist bumps with his fans. Equally impressive was the enthusiasm brought to the BSG discussion for our Book Group night. Two more examples of the community coming together at your locally-owned independent bookstore!

As we discussed on Wednesday night, I'm passing along an article from the Economist magazine sent by Andrew Lowenstein, addressing collusion in bullying in Japanese schools. While it has some relevance to Black Swan Green, it brings a whole new level of realism to A Tale for the Time Being.  If you thought that novel's depiction was too far fetched, you should read the article.





Lastly, we've set our book and date for the last BBGG meeting before our Summer break.  We'll be meeting on Wednesday, June 21st at 7pm to discuss Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro.  From the Booker Prize-winning author of Remains of the Day, this beautifully written and haunting novel of a near future dystopia should make for a great discussion.

Hope to see you all there!










  

Recap - Decline and Fall

What a wide ranging yet cohesive discussion for Decline and Fall last night (even with a relatively large contingent)!  I love the varied opinions and observations but also feel that enough of you have been attending for long enough now that we've developed a common foundation and set of references that truly enrich the conversation. Not sure we would have had the same meeting about this book in our early days!  I can't thank you enough for your time, commitment, and enthusiastic support for the Book Group and consequentially, Wellesley Books, your locally owned independent bookstore. :)

Courtesy of Andrew Lowenstein I'm attaching a link to the YouTube video of Stephen Fry's autobiographical presentation at the Sydney Opera House where he references Evelyn Waugh and Decline and Fall extensively.

Andrew writes: Like most of Stephen Fry’s work, it's erudite and rambling but if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, here are some times he speaks about Waugh and Decline and Fall:

1. 11:55 “Instead of television…”
2. 13:15 “Waugh’s first novel Decline and Fall”
3. 14:40 “I was sent away to a prep school"
4. 20:05 “I wanted to emulate Paul Pennyfeather”

Our next meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, May 17th at 7pm.  We will be reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.  Mitchell is one of my absolute favorite authors but, contrary to popular belief, we've never actually read one of his books for the Group.  Seems like Cloud Atlas or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet comes up at nearly every meeting, but are too long to tackle for our purposes.  Black Swan Green is a better length and its structure should provide an interesting comparison to selections like A Visit from the Goon Squad or The Tsar of Love and Techno.

Lastly, as promised, here are some photos from my recent sojourn to Taipei and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Bookstore reconnaissance mission. Orwell/1984 is a global phenomenon!

The local best-seller.

Chiang Kai-shek

Looking toward the Freedom Gate

The Whites - Recap

Great turnout and an enthusiastic group last night - even if the reception of the book was more muted :).  As I look back with the Book Group now into it's fourth year, I've realize how much I've come to appreciate these evenings and the conversations and the relationships they've engendered. Thanks for being there to help me celebrate my birthday in style!  And thank you Doug for making it such a festive occasion......

As I mentioned at the end of the evening, we'll be reading Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall at our next meeting on Wednesday, April 12th.  Waugh's singular style remains surprisingly modern and as funny as ever.  In this first novel, Paul Pennyfeather is expelled from Oxford for debauchery and then unexpectedly qualifies for the position of schoolmaster at an elite Welsh boys' school.  Mayhem ensues!  Should make for a great conversation and I hope you can join us in April.

Young Men and Fire This Wednesday

After last night's great win for the Pats, it's time to turn our attention to the next big New England event, the Young Men and Fire discussion this Wednesday, from 7-9pm in the Used Book Cellar.  If you plan to attend, please send me a quick note so that I can make sure we are properly set up and provisioned.

If you'd like to come, but haven't quite caught up with your reading, I can offer a couple of crib sheet solutions.  The first, courtesy of Ralph Blair is official report from the US Forest Service, Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn't Be Won.  But perhaps more useful is this music video for Cold Missouri Water by Cry, Cry, Cry and sent along by Todd Whitten.  It's a Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald kind of thing and filled with a surprising amount of detail from the book if you listen closely.

One way or the other, I hope you will find a way to join us on Wednesday night.  Let me know.

A Virtual Field Trip to the Mann Gulch

 

Thanks to Barton for pointing out a great companion website for Young Men and Fire.  It references the book often and is more or less structured around the book's content.  It provides visual reinforcement to the progress of the fire, the terrain, and the dilemmas faced by the crew. Here’s the link: http://formontana.net/gulch.html. It also has some good updates on access to the canyon which has become more difficult in the past few years.