Watch This . . .

I'm still looking for something--anything--to post about If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, but in the meantime, go to YouTube and watch this video (fans of Jian Gomeshi will especially love it) . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MeQK7JtLpU&feature=related

(sorry, forgot how to make a link--cut and paste in your browser--it's worth it).

Novembr and January

Our next meeting is Monday, November 29th, when we will read Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. It already appears to be a controversial book, so NOT TO BE MISSED! See you at Mary's place to discuss it. Here's a description I found:

"Calvino's masterpiece opens with a scene that's reassuringly commonplace: apparently. Indeed, it's taking place now. A reader goes into a bookshop to buy a book: not any book, but the latest Calvino, the book you are holding in your hands. Or is it? Are you the reader? Is this the book? Beware. All assumptions are dangerous on this most bewitching switch-back ride to the heart of storytelling. "


Also, just so you can be prepared, our January book is John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River.

Water for Elephants - New York Times Review

Trunk Show

On our first date, my husband took me to see Tod Browning's "Freaks," a 1932 horror film with a distinctly Diane Arbus feel that takes a voyeuristic delight in dwarfs, fat ladies and other sideshow improbabilities. Sara Gruen's arresting new novel, "Water for Elephants," explores similar subject matter — the pathetic grandeur of the Depression-era circus. And like Browning, Gruen infuses her audacious material with a surprisingly uplifting strain of sentimentality.

"Water for Elephants" begins violently and then veers into weirder terrain. Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student at Cornell, discovers that his parents have been killed in a car accident. Aimless and distraught, he climbs aboard a train that happens to be carrying the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and inveigles a job as an animal doctor. His responsibilities draw him into the unpredictable orbit of August Rosenbluth, the circus's mercurial menagerie director, and his beautiful wife, Marlena, whose equestrian act attracts enthusiastic crowds.

Jacob immerses himself in the bizarre subculture of acrobats, aerialists, sword swallowers and lion tamers, mastering a vernacular that reflects a rigid caste system. Ringling Brothers is nicknamed "Big Bertha," performers are "kinkers" and members of the audience are always "rubes." When an aged Jacob observes a contemporary circus, he sees children carrying blinking toys: "Bet their parents paid an arm and a leg for them, too. Some things never change. Rubes are still rubes, and you can still tell the performers from the workers."

The troupe crisscrosses the country cannibalizing acts that have gone bankrupt in the Depression-era economy. After Uncle Al, the autocratic ringmaster, purchases Rosie, an elephant with an unquenchable thirst for lemonade and the inability to follow the simplest command, Benzini Brothers looks doomed. How Jacob coaxes Rosie to perform — thereby saving the circus — lies at the heart of the novel.

Gruen, whose first novel was "Riding Lessons," turns horses and other creatures into sympathetic characters. According to an author's note, she studied elephant body language and behavior with a former handler at the Kansas City Zoo. The research pays off. August's mistreatment of Marlena pales beside the visceral wallop of his nonchalant cruelty toward Rosie: "I look up just as he flicks the cigarette. It arcs through the air and lands in Rosie's open mouth, sizzling as it hits her tongue. She roars, panicked, throwing her head and fishing inside her mouth with her trunk. August marches off. I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears."

Second-rate and seedy, Benzini Brothers suffers a collective inferiority complex (no one is permitted to utter the word "Ringling" in Uncle Al's presence). When Lovely Lucinda, the 400-pound fat lady, dies suddenly, Uncle Al orchestrates a funeral procession led by 24 black Percherons and an army of mourners competing for the three dollars and bottle of Canadian whiskey promised to whoever puts on the best show. "You've never seen such grief — even the dogs are howling."

Gruen's circus, with its frankly mercantile morality, symbolizes the warped vigor of capitalism. No matter how miserable or oppressed, the performers love the manufacturing of illusion, sewing a new sequined headdress for Rosie or feeding the llamas as men die of starvation in a devastated America. August's paranoid schizophrenia feels emblematic — an indictment of a lifetime spent feigning emotions to make a buck.

At its finest, "Water for Elephants" resembles stealth hits like "The Giant's House," by Elizabeth McCracken, or "The Lovely Bones," by Alice Sebold, books that combine outrageously whimsical premises with crowd-pleasing romanticism. But Gruen's prose is merely serviceable, and she hurtles through cataclysmic events, overstuffing her whiplash narrative with drama (there's an animal stampede, two murders and countless fights). She also asserts a grand passion between Jacob and Marlena that's never convincingly demonstrated.

Black-and-white photographs of real American circus scenes from the first half of the century are interspersed throughout the novel, and they brilliantly evoke the dignified power contained in the quieter moments of this unusual brotherhood. The grainy photos capture the unexpected daintiness of an elephant disembarking from a train, the symmetry of a marching band, a gaggle of plumed showgirls stepping gingerly across a patchy lawn and the haunting solitude of an impeccably dressed cook.

Circuses showcase human beings at their silliest and most sublime, and many unlikely literary figures have been drawn to their glitzy pageantry, soaring pretensions and metaphorical potential (Marianne Moore leaps to mind). Unsurprisingly, writers seem liberated by imagining a spectacle where no comparison ever seems inflated, no development impossible. For better and for worse, Gruen has fallen under the spell. With a showman's expert timing, she saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.

Elizabeth Judd has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Salon and other publications.

Water for Elephants: interview with author

Here is an interesting interview with the author. (Sorry don't remember how to make this a link, so just copy and paste into your browser)


http://www.powells.com/authors/gruen.html

Water for Elephants: discussion questions

Here are some questions for discussion

1. Water for Elephants moves between a story about a circus and a story about an old man in a nursing home. How do the chapters about the older Jacob enrich the story about Jacob’s adventure with the circus? How would the novel be different if Gruen had only written about the younger Jacob, keeping the story linear and never describing Jacob’s life as an old man?
   
   
2. Did the chapters about the nursing home change how you think about older people? In what ways are the doctors and nurses condescending? How is Rosemary different? How do you treat older people?
   
   
3. In chapter two, the twenty-three year old Jacob starts his story by telling us he is a virgin. From the cooch tent to the erections the older Jacob gets when being bathed, sexuality is woven into the whole story. Why do you think Gruen added these details? What role does sexuality play in Water for Elephants?
   
   
4. When you first read the Prologue, who did you think murdered the man? Were you surprised by who the actual murderer was?
   
   
5. The book begins with a quote from Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant…An elephant’s faithful—one hundred percent!” What is the role of faithfulness and loyalty in Water for Elephants? How do different characters define loyalty? (Jacob, Walter, Uncle Al).
   
   
6. Why does Jacob get so mad about Mr. McGuinity lying about carrying water for elephants? Do you see and similarities of temperament between the young Jacob and the old Jacob?
   
   
7. In what ways is Water for Elephants a survival story? A love story? An adventure?
   
   
8. Water for Elephants has a happy ending for Jacob, but not for many other characters. Discuss Walter and Camel’s fates. How does tragedy fit into the story?
   
   
9. There is an “us and them” mentality in the circus between performers and workers. How does Jacob bridge these two classes of people? Why does each group hate another group? Does the circus merely mirror society in an exaggerated way?
   
   
10. Are you satisfied with the end?
    
    
11. In the Author’s Note, Gruen writes that many of the details in the story are factual or come from circus workers’ anecdotes. These true stories include the hippo pickled in formaldehyde, the deceased fat lady being paraded through town and an elephant who repeatedly pulled out her stake and stole lemonade. Gruen did extensive research before writing Water for Elephants. Was her story believable?
    
    
12. Rate Water for Elephants on a scale of 1 to 5.

Book Club Selections for 2010-2011

October 2010 - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, meeting Oct 25th at Harriet's.

November 2010 - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino

Other books:

The Bishop's Man, Linden McIntyre
Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving
Lady Chatterly's Lover, DH Lawrence
My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor
Infidel (or Nomad), Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Exit Lines: Reader's Guide

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1. Which of the four friends is your favourite? With whom do you identify most, and why?

2. Were you surprised by Ruth’s request? What do you think is really driving her wish, given that she’s not experiencing a medical crisis?

3. Why do you think each of the friends agreed to Ruth’s request? Would you, in their shoes? What is the biggest favour you’ve ever asked of a friend?

4. What techniques does Barfoot use to build suspense? Consider, for example, the inclusion of the “At three in the morning . . . ” chapters. How did they affect your reading experience?

5. Each of the four friends has developed strategies (whether consciously or not) for handling some pretty large secrets. What is your opinion of the way each copes?

6. Sylvia is withholding a major piece of information from her daughter, Nancy. What do you think of this choice? Can a secret be too dangerous to ever be told?

7. Sylvia finds comfort and humour in the invisibility of old age, “at the useful camouflagings of age and its occasionally happy invisibilities, which is how it can keep secrets, and even some kinds of freedom.” (p 17) What are your thoughts on this statement?

8. Ruth thinks about the hours she has wasted in her life — amounting to eight years by her estimation — and wishes she could have saved them for Bernard to use. (p 91) If you could make up for lost time in your own life, what would you do?

9. Ruth equates her state of loneliness with her previous description of herself as “empty of longing.” (p 313) What do you think she means? Do you think it’s possible to come to the end of longing? Would it be a good or bad thing, in your opinion?

10. What did you think of the pact the four friends make at the end of the book? How do you imagine this agreement might turn out? Would you ever consider such a pact?

11. How did the book’s conclusion make you feel? How would you describe each character’s mental state at the book’s conclusion? What is George getting at when he reflects on the phrase “for the time being?” (p 320)

12. Why did Joan Barfoot select this title for the book? Consider in particular the final sentence of the novel in the context of the title.

13. Have you ever visited a retirement home, on behalf of a loved one or in contemplation of your own future? What are your thoughts on the good or bad points of this option? How do you intend to age? What is your opinion of how society treats old people, and what possibilities might you choose for yourself?

This month's book is Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot. Here is an interview I found with the author:

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What inspired you to write Exit Lines? Is there a story about the writing of this novel that begs to be told?

Like a lot of people, I found myself spending quite a lot of time a few years ago visiting someone I love in a retirement home. Watching the events and the chemistries there, I was captured by how brave humans have to keep being, creating lives from new situations right up to the end; and also how annoying it must be to be treated with the condescension I heard in so many staff and visitor voices. I thought how badly I myself would react to that. And I also thought, this is a bit tragic, what’s happening here — but resistance and sedition could be pretty funny, as well.


What is it that you’re exploring in this book?

Control, I suppose. The right (or lack thereof) to authority — and how far that authority can go — over one’s own body and life. I’m in the boomer generation, and we’ve been pretty spoiled, and adamant, about making our own decisions and being in charge of ourselves. So I suspect operators of retirement homes are going to be in for some surprises in a few years. The people in Exit Lines are much older than boomers, but the principle remains — or as Sylvia says in her straight-to-the-point way, “We’re just old, we’re not morons.”


Did any of the characters become a particular favourite of yours?

I’m fond of them all, for different reasons — they’re like any group of friends in which each person brings something valuable and unique to the table. But Sylvia probably comes closest to my own voice — I like the very crisp way she assesses and expresses various observations.


Are there any tips you would give a book club to better navigate its discussion of Exit Lines?

Well, from the book clubs I’m aware of that have already discussed Exit Lines, there’s not only conversation about characters, themes, plot and dilemmas, but mixed with all that, often, too, an intense and quite powerful discussion about personal relationships with the old, and people’s own desires, fears and intentions. Certainly there are some people who resist looking at these subjects at all, which any group has to respect, but most people seem to demonstrate a kind of relieved pleasure, even joy, in having a frank, sometimes funny, unveiling of what's been tucked nervously away in a whole lot of minds.


The Idyll Inn feels eerily familiar. Did you base it on experience?

People all over the country have recognized The Idyll Inn. So I’m pretty pleased that wherever it is, it’s apparently everywhere — which is gratifying to me as a writer, although otherwise slightly alarming.


A reviewer in the Toronto Star described this book as that of a new genre, which she called “death comedy.” What do you think of this description?

“Death comedy” is cute, and apt enough although like even the happiest catchphrase, incomplete. But I like the idea of a “new genre” that will approach aging from a whole lot of fresh perspectives, and I do think that Exit Lines is more or less at the front of what’s coming as people feel more and more comfortable, curious and bold about ways to get old. I certainly hope that comedy is well-embedded in the serious themes of the novel — much as most serious aspects of life have their comedic, or at least absurd, aspects.


Has your former work as a journalist influenced your work as a writer of fiction? Do you find any overlaps in the careers?

Journalism is always about questions — more and more of them, about everything. So is writing fiction. Both are — or should be — sort of like being two years old again, hammering on (sometimes annoyingly in the case of two-year-olds) about what and why, what and why, what and why. Trying to unfold the next layer, then the next.


Did your own ideas of aging evolve as your wrote this book, or did you start writing with these ideas fully formed? Do you find your opinions change as you write?

Often enough I write partly to help myself figure stuff out. So as Exit Lines evolved, so did my own ideas and perceptions about the possibilities involved in getting old — not just the losses, difficulties and invisibilities, but the powers and some of the pleasures. I hope that having written it will remind me to be more graceful in old age than I might otherwise have been — but equally I hope it’ll remind me to employ a certain enjoyable disgracefulness, also.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Slap -- Australian Book Club discussion

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s2493453.htm

If you don't have time to read The Slap, take 12 minutes and watch this book club discussion from Australian television. Very interesting . . . I agree with all the panelists--those who liked the book and the guy that hated it too!

I think this book is going to give us some great discussion as long as everyone has read it.

About the Channel Islands

I've been wanting to visit the Channel Islands ever since I read horse books set there when I was eleven. Maybe one day I'll get there, but for now I have to be satisfied with my trip via The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society. I also really liked the movie The Others, which is set in the same time period on Jersey. Here is some info on the Channel Islands.

About Guernsey, from the publisher's website: http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/guernsey//a-glimpse-of-guernsey/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Islands

Potato Peel Pie Recipe

Potato Peel Pie Recipe

Here’s a recipe for a potato peel pie, but I warn you, it tastes like paste. The more authentic it is, the nastier. These ingredients will make a very small pie (expand at will):

1 potato
1 beet
1 Tablespoon milk

Peel the potato and put the peelings in a pie pan. Don’t cook the peels, because you’re in the middle of an Occupation and you don’t have any fuel. Boil the potato and the beet together in salty water, but not for very long, due to the fuel problem. Just until you can stick a fork in the potato. Take them out and mash them up with the milk. Pour the glop in the pie pan. Bake at 375 for as short a time as is consonant with digestion (fuel again), say, fifteen minutes.

The finished product will look quite attractive and pink. If you squint, you can almost imagine raspberries. Don’t be fooled. It looks a lot better than it is. However, if you forgot that you were in the middle of WWII and added a bunch of butter and milk and salt, it could be quite tasty.

Reader's Guide to the Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Fiction - Literary
Dial Press Trade Paperback | Trade Paperback | May 2009 | $14.00 | 978-0-385-34100-4 (0-385-34100-8)

Celebrating literature, love, and the power of the human spirit, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is the story of an English author living in the shadow of World War II—and embarking on a writing project that will dramatically change her life. Unfolding in a series of letters, this enchanting novel introduces readers to the indomitable Juliet Ashton. Through Juliet’s correspondence with her publisher, best friend, and an absorbing cast of characters, readers discover that despite the personal losses she suffered in the Blitz, and author tours sometimes marked by mishaps, nothing can quell her enthusiasm for the written word. One day, she begins a different sort of correspondence, responding to a man who found her name on the flyleaf of a cherished secondhand book. He tells her that his name is Dawsey Adams, a native resident of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands recently liberated from Nazi occupation. Soon Juliet is drawn into Dawsey’s remarkable circle of friends, courageous men and women who formed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as a cover to protect them from the Germans. With their appetite for good books, and their determination to honor the island’s haunting recent history, this is a community that opens Juliet’s heart and mind in ways she could never have imagined.

The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We hope they will enrich your experience of this captivating novel.

1. What was it like to read a novel composed entirely of letters? What do letters offer that no other form of writing (not even emails) can convey?

2. What makes Sidney and Sophie ideal friends for Juliet? What common ground do they share? Who has been a similar advocate in your life?

3. Dawsey first wrote to Juliet because books, on Charles Lamb or otherwise, were so difficult to obtain on Guernsey in the aftermath of the war. What differences did you note between bookselling in the novel and bookselling in your world? What makes book lovers unique, across all generations?

4. What were your first impressions of Dawsey? How was he different from the other men Juliet had known?

5. Discuss the poets, novelists, biographers, and other writers who capture the hearts of the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. What does a reader’s taste in books say about his or her personality? Whose lives were changed the most by membership in the society?

6. Juliet occasionally receives mean-spirited correspondence from strangers, accusing both Elizabeth and Juliet of being immoral. What accounts for their judgmental ways?

7. In what ways were Juliet and Elizabeth kindred spirits? What did Elizabeth’s spontaneous invention of the society, as well as her brave final act, say about her approach to life?

8. Numerous Guernsey residents give Juliet access to their private memories of the occupation. Which voices were most memorable for you? What was the effect of reading a variety of responses to a shared tragedy?

9. Kit and Juliet complete each other in many ways. What did they need from each other? What qualities make Juliet an unconventional, excellent mother?

10. How did Remy’s presence enhance the lives of those on Guernsey? Through her survival, what recollections, hopes, and lessons also survived?

11. Juliet rejects marriage proposals from a man who is a stereotypical “great catch.” How would you have handled Juliet’s romantic entanglement? What truly makes someone a “great catch”?

12. What was the effect of reading a novel about an author’s experiences with writing, editing, and getting published? Did this enhance the book’s realism, though Juliet’s experience is a bit different from that of debut novelist Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, children’s book author Annie Barrows?

13. What historical facts about life in England during World War II were you especially surprised to discover? What traits, such as remarkable stamina, are captured in a detail such as potato peel pie? In what ways does fiction provide a means for more fully understanding a non-fiction truth?

14. Which of the members of the Society is your favorite? Whose literary opinions are most like your own?

15. Do you agree with Isola that “reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad ones”?

Palace Walk, by Naguib Mahfouz

Here are a few interesting tidbits on our January novel.

• Palace Walk is the first book in the Cairo Trilogy. The next books are Palace of Desire and Sugar Street.
• Even though Palace Walk was written in 1956, it wasn't translated into English until 1990.
  
• Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988
• Mahfouz died in 2006 at the age of 94
• He was attacked by Islamic extremists in 1994, who stabbed him in the neck.
• For an interesting review of the novel, check out this blog written by an English professor: http://maitzenreads.blogspot.com/2009/02/naguib-mahfouz-palace-walk.html (sorry, haven't figured out how to put links into this blog yet, so you'll have to do the ol' copy and paste, or go to her website and search Palace Walk . . . an extra step, but worthwhile, I think)
  

My Favourite Books of 2009

2009 was another great year of reading. Here are my top 10 favs (in reading order, January-December):

1. Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
2. Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh
3. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, Jeff Goldsworthy
4. Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
5. the Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
6. the Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
7. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
8. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
9. Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King
10. Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway

If you click on the book title, you can see the book's home page on LibraryThing.