A Book Club Blog

And the Winners Are...

2009-10-09T13:55:00.001-07:00

Hello Book Clubbers!

I had so much fun listening to you and dreaming about how our next ten discussions are going to go after seeing the diverse list. We have books set in France, Baghdad, USA, Shangri-La, Nigeria, England, Canada, Israel, Latin America....once again a diverse list. There is also the graveyard list which is full of great reads for you to check out as well once you are done the official reads! but Amy also wanted to remind you of a few books she has enjoyed recently: Harare North, The year of Magical Thinking, The Secret Scripture, and The Book of Negros.

I have already ordered the first half of the list and can't wait to dig in. Thank-you all for sticking it out for another year! Cheers to you and our reads.

xoxoxo Natalie

Another Great Year

2009-10-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Natalie here! Thanks to all of you for another fab year. On Thursday you will get a newsletter with the highlights of the year, as well as announcemnts for all kinds of fun award winners within the group (person who recommended the worst book, person who managed to.....and other funny titles!) Can't wait for the selection meeting-I am already reading the reviews of your titles and anxiously waiting to hear how you will pitch them!

xoxoxo
With gratitude for a wonderful year of literature and friendship
Natalie Dupuis

Author in Residence

2009-09-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

As mentioned at our last meeting, I will feature an up and coming author on a weekly basis on the blog. This week's author is Dina Viergutz, a rising star in teen literature.

Brother-and-sister team Dina and Daniel Nayeri are happy to present their debut novel: Another Faust, The First of Another Series (Aug '09 by Candlewick Press). The book is a retelling of the Faustian Bargain, set in a modern NYC prep school. The series as a whole is designed to make works of classic literature accessible and fun for students through a modern, stylish re-imagining of each concept.

Dina and Daniel's website, the Another Faust trailer and their co-writing video are now all available.

Her first novel, Another Faust, is the perfect back to school gift for any teenager:
In this sibling duo's debut, an unusual urban fantasy, five 10-year-olds (overachieving Victoria, homeless writer Christian, twins Bicé and Belle, and fame-hungry poet Valentin) disappear from their homes and are adopted by the beautiful, mysterious Madame Vileroy. Their families forget them, and they emerge in New York City five years later as the rich Faust siblings, joining the exclusive Marlowe School midyear. Each of the teens has been given a unique power (stopping time, mind-reading, bewitching beauty), though not all of them know the real cost. The novel's pace can be languid, though it picks up once the school year starts and the Fausts learn about the nature of evil and who Vileroy really is. The writing is clever and stylish ("Bicé left a trail of moments like this, when people came away from her feeling better somehow--the kind of moments that were the very opposite of all those little evils that Madame Vileroy left in her wake") and the dips in and out of reality almost conceal the characters' superficiality. It's an absorbing, imaginative read, with a tense climax. Ages 14-up.

"Ten ways to tell if you've accidentally woken up in a brand new house with the Devil as your Governess"

10. When you breathe on the glass doors of the Kwik-E-Mart it doesn't fog up, and you just don't find Itchy And Scratchy episodes funny anymore.

9. You find the idea of punting a small dog across the yard amusing.

8. You wake up with a start and go, "Oh. Em. Gee. Red Rum is MURDER backwards!!!!"

7. You freak out the first time you go to the bathroom, until someone reminds you that you had beet salad for dinner the night before...and THEN you remember the salad dressing was blood.

6. The only mail you ever get is addressed to "The Seventh Circle of Hell"...and it's only ever the OfficeMax catalog.

5. Your nanny demands that you call her a governess...and when you tell her no one says "governess" anymore, she threatens to break your hamster's finger. And when you tell her you don't have a hamster, she says, "Oh, you will be!" and cackles off before you can figure out what that means.

4. Your alarm clock sounds like a little girl laughing in a dark forest, and the snooze button is the volume up button.

3. Girl Scouts get your order wrong and instead of thin mints, they deliver great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts...plus those crappy lemon ones.

2. Your chore list becomes stuff like, "Clean out the basement, but be evil about it," and "Dance, my soul-less puppet, Dance!"

1. When you invite people to your house they say, "You mean the house full of all the dead kids?" and you say, "I'm not dead." And then you go, wait a minute, maybe I didn't survive that plane crash...and then they interrupt and say, "Oh, no, you definitely survived. I just meant dead *inside*."

Don't forget to vote!!!

2009-09-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

This is it! 12 months of intense reading, all leading up to the infamous award ceremony scheduled on September ?th (Natalie is not home and I can't remember when we are meeting next)!

Don't forget to vote for your favorite book of the year. If you can't remember all the books we read, you can either refer to the monthly blog entries which cover every single meeting we had, or simply watch this:

The Road and Laure's Top 5

2009-04-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

We are meeting in two days, and I just can't wait! I devoured The Road in late March, and talked about it to everyone who wanted to hear about it or not.

I was so looking forward to our meeting that I clicked on the links Natalie posted and watched the interviews with my buddy Cormac.

Here is my first impression after watching the interview with Oprah: you know you are not the target audience of the video when the one ad showed before the clip is about Macy's bras. On this note, I'm going to burp out loud, get a beer from the fridge and watch some hockey highlights. (You should still watch the video of Cormac commenting on excerpts from The Road)

I'm leaving you on Laure's Top 5. It looks like a good starting point for anyone who wants to read great books! (Sorry for the delay Laure!!!)

1. Anna Karénine, L. Tolstoï – Tolstoï's chef d’œuvre. Fascinating vision of the Russian aristocratic society within the city and the countryside from the end of the 18th century. Amazing descriptions of the characters' feelings and great thoughts about life.

2. Les Misérables, V. Hugo – Historical and social picture of the 19th century in France. V. Hugo describes Paris and the poor with strong realism (that might have upset the wealthier readers in those days!). This book is really positive about the human nature.

3. Tuareg, A.V. Figueroa – Amazing insight of the tuareg culture and their life in the desert. (Translated in English on SCRIBD!!)

4. The Grapes of Wrath, J. Steinbeck – Great historical insight of the poor farmers’ conditions in southern USA in the 30’s. Wonderful book about survival and human nature in a hard world. Very good book about the critical period of the beginning of capitalism in the USA.

5. For Whom the Bell Tolls, E. Hemingway – A book, with the Spanish civil war as background, that makes you think about life, love and death. It is a pleasure to read about characters so alive and deep.

Cormac McCarthy

2009-04-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Watch some interviews with him - what a wow book to put images in your head!

If you like this one, you may enjoy the book called "World Made By Hand" by James Howard Kunstler- about how America would be after electricity and who knows what else runs out...interesting speculative fiction

If you like this one, you may find the book called The World Without Us interesting. Is about how the world would be if we did not live in it

By Natalie

Thank you, come again!

2009-03-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Wow!!! What a heated discussion we just had! Does the Master have a real name? How long can you stay in the purgatory? How far can you kick a glass of pineapple juice? Well, we might not have reached a consensus on those questions, but we enjoyed our evening, even though I didn't comply to the no-talking-during-book-club rule.

First, we must congratulate Edouard and Laure again, since they gave us an excuse to have champagne ready to celebrate the good news of Andrea and Natalie. We also must remind people of Natalie's master plan to start sharing emcee's duty during future boo club. The devil knows where that will lead us to!

Natalie will force me to post an alcohol-free post soon enough so that I can update the group with all the books we mentioned, including Or's washroom literature, so stay tune!!!

Are you ready for another impossible-to-understand book?

2009-03-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

During our last meeting, we had a great discussion on The Good Earth, thanks to Natalie who cracked the whip enough times to keep us focused. After an hour-long discussion, we agreed that we should probably go watch the French movie The Class.

In terms of other books we read, last month was a particularly good month. In no particular order, here is what people read:
Laure & Edouard: They really liked Les Funerailles Celestes, which translates into Sky Burial. It's an epic story of Tibet, and it gets good reviews on Amazon.
Karen read The Five Quarters Of An Orange. The amazon.com community gave it a 4 out of 5 rating. The author commented that she would have liked to receive a 5 out of 4 rating.
Natalie read another of these bad tourist trap book based on her next destination, Budapest. You can view her pictures from her trip here.
Or read Midnight's Children, although he has yet to finish it.
Finally, I read Middlesex, the story of an hermaphrodite. The book came highly recommended from Natalie and Karen, and was actually quite interesting, especially if you are interested in either men or women.

Jonathan, Steve, Andrea, Amy: what did you read last month?

Enough said about the past, let's take a look at the future. Ten more days until our next meeting! I hope that you have started reading The Master and Margarita, because from what I can get from it, this story is hard to get. The Dufuis are happy to host you in Richmond, and I'm sure it'll be fun.

Another thing to look forward to is the release of The Watchmen on DVD. The movie is fine, but the DVD will include a short animated movie of a story told inside The Watchmen graphic novel, which I read recently. Here is the preview:

Prepare for some weirdness!

2009-02-28T02:05:00.000-08:00

Readers: watch this trailer (in Russian) for the movie and prepare for some strangeness in our next novel! Maybe we should try to arrange a movie night...OR?

Most vital novel, period. Watch the trailer!

2009-02-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

Midnight's Children

2009-02-02T11:31:00.001-08:00

Last week, we met to discuss the book Amy and I read: Midnight's Children. After Amy served us an amazing soup and secured a heart-breaking reading comprehension quiz victory, we went on to discuss why we didn't read Midnight's Children. Natalie explained how she can't read a book when she doesn't connect with the main character, while Or described the story of another sci-fi novel. I was too busy drinking to write down the title, although I do remember that:

- Amy is reading On Brick Lane, not to be confused with Brick Lane
- Natalie is reading Prague, a book on Hungary?!?!?!?
- I'm reading The Dark Half by Stephen King, and I'm trembling like a little girl

The absentees might think that they didn't miss much that night, but that would not be giving credit to Laure and Edouard! En effet, the blogosphere joins us in congratulating them as they are expecting!!! Will we be adding an eleventh book club member next year? Will Or and Karen serve burgers at the next book meeting? Will we be reading Teletubbies: An Outing at the Zoo over the Christmas break next year? I think so!!!

Until then, our next book club is on Feb 26, and we are discussing what will probably win the best book award of the year: The Good Earth. This is an easy read folks, so I expect everyone to have read it (that means you too Steve).

Read forever,
Tube Reader

Or's Top 5!!!

2008-12-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

As you know, I would like to update the top 5 section on the right side of the blog monthly with someone's top 5 books of all time. I don't intend to create a post about it every time I change the section, but Or provided such good descriptions of his top 5 (after much procrastination) that I couldn't let this good work go un-noticed...

1. The Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien - The ultimate narrative of the everlasting struggle between good and evil. On its initial review the Sunday Telegraph felt it was "among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century." The Sunday Times review stated that "the English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them."

2. State of Fear / Michael Crichton - One of Crichton's, who died last month, most critical and thought provoking books on the relationship between science, capital, mass media and politics.

3. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) / Jerome K. Jerome - First published in 1889, one of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers; the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

4. The Man in the High Castle / Philip K. Dick - A mesmerising novel depicting an alternative history in which Germany and Japan have won The Second World War. Like most of Dick's novels, the main themes touched upon concern life in a police state and a genuine difficulty (for both readers and characters) to ascertain what is real and what is false

5. Good Omens / Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Quite possibly the funniest book ever written, despite it mostly depicting the Apocalypse.

On another note, I'm devoted to keep a track record of the books mentioned during the meetings. Although I thought most people gave compelling reasons to read these books at the last meeting, I decided not to repeat them like I did in last month's post. This is a simple bullet point version of them:

1) Flowers for Algernon
2) Outliers: The Story of Success
3) How Ms Claus Saved Christmas
4) Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
5) We Need to Talk about Kevin
6) The Door
7) The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa

My guess is that Steve is reading "How Ms Claus Saved Christmas" and that Natalie is reading "Outliers: The Story of Success".

Pulitzer Prizes enters the online era

2008-12-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

This information might be of interest to some of you.

The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet. The Pulitzer Board also has decided to allow entries made up entirely of online content to be submitted in all 14 Pulitzer journalism categories.

Most of you will naturally expect that your devoted blogger will shortly be nominated for this prestigious prize. However, that would be forgetting that the prize is only awarded to American newspapers and news organizations. Given the complexity involved in getting a UK visa, I think I will pass on applying for US citizenship!

Farewell Michael Crichton

2008-11-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Michael Crichton passed away yesterday after a long fight with cancer. Personally, I have only read two of his books: Sphere (on Or's recommendation) and Prey, and wasn't blown away by them. I however have to admit that I like this genre, for which he pioneered.

Crichton's battle with cancer probably went back to more than 5 years, as he seems to have been the victims of delusions over this time period. For example, he was ferociously challenging that climate change is caused by man-made greenhouse gases emissions... Sad faith for such an illustrious scientific writer!

Which of Crichton's work did you prefer? Jurassic Park? ER? Airframe? Sphere? Congo?

Richmond Take 2

2008-11-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

Laure and Edouard hosted our first real book club meeting, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that it was great fun! First, we found out that Laure was an amazing chef! I know Natalie particularly liked the surprise birthday cake. Major points go to the Luneaus for pulling this evening off!

Being literary geek (which we found out no longer bears a pejorative connotation), we also referred to and recommended numerous books and authors. I promised you the summarize those recommendations on this page, so here they are:

1) Laure is currently reading Catherine Hermary-Vieille's trilogy titled Le Crepuscule des Rois, which is apparently an entertaining and easy-to-read historical fiction. The author won the Prix Femina in 1991, a prestigious French recognition awarded yearly by a female jury.

2) The Tamirs have just finished a book of short stories from Haruki Murakami, After the Quake. They describe it as a dark, complex but rewarding read from one of the leading contemporary Japanese author.

3) As for myself, I just finished Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. This epic novel was an exhaustive account of how 2 American Jews delt with the impact of WWII on their life. I am comfortable recommending it!

4) Amy is currently visiting our graveyard section, as she is reading Half of a Yellow Sun from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This allows me to point you that section of the site, which is full of cool recommendation.

5) Or also introduced us to a few geeky fantasy books, insisting particularly on Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. It is a fantasy novel written in collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Go check out their pictures on wikipedia!

6) Jodi Picoult got double the air time with mentions for her books My Sisters Keepers and Plain Truth. They are probably her best books, since both books have been adapted into movies.

7) Finally, the Canadian author Miriam Toews and her book A Complicated Kindness was mentioned by Natalie. It won the Governor General's Award in 2004, and spent more than a year on the bestseller list in Canada, for a resounding sales figure of 78 books.

Now, we also had the chance to discuss the brief wonderous life of our friend Oscar Wao, which was so rewarding that Or and I decided to meet up on Tuesday afternoon in a pub in London to continue the discussion. We concluded that Lola was a boring character. Sorry sister!

Future of books

2008-10-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

What will the future holds for our beloved books? Do you think that we will still be reading books in 2050 the way we do today? To put things in perspective, I have researched the evolution of books:

12th century: The first book was produced by monks somewhere in Europe
1450: Gutenberg invents movable type in Europe, 400 years after Pi Sheng did in China, increasing supply to meet the increasing needs of university students
20th century: Lithography becomes widely used in book printing, allowing for an explosion in volume of books produced

My sense is that we are ready for another breakthrough. Surprisingly, e-books have been around for more than 30 years. Today, a few e-books reader start to get some air time in the news (the Amazon Kindle & the Sony Reader are the leading models). I just read that by 2018, more e-books could be sold than traditional books!

What do you think? Will e-books overtake traditional books the way digital songs are slowly winning the war over CDs? Are we missing something here?

Note: To access to more than 25,000 free e-books, check out the Project Gutenberg website. The project was launched in 1971 to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works. They don't spend time on the format of the pdf, which is a shame, but you can access most classics for free.

Cast your vote!

2008-09-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

The most exciting meeting of the year is already over! Check out the Road to Glory that lays ahead of us (on the side bar). Based on the loud random conversations we've had, this will be an exciting year!

Now, it became obvious that this blog will become the cornerstone of our book club experience. As your devoted blogger, I am grateful to the many people have already contributed to this forum. Special thanks go to Jonathan and Andrea, in no particular order.

As agreed, you need to cast your vote for Jonathan's recommendations, to break that suspense as soon as possible. So don't wait any longer, everyone is eager to start reading!

2 weeks to go!

2008-09-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome on our book club blog!

Let me first say how excited I was when Natalie picked me to not only be part of her couples-only book club, but also to create and maintain this blog. It truly is an honor. As your devoted blogger, I promise you random posts and sarcastic comments throughout the year while putting you, my devoted readers, at the forefront of the blog.

Indeed, each month, you will take over this space. Among other things, I will ask one of you to provide me with your top 5 books of all time, which should serve as a great source of literary recommendations. Random polls will also take place, and more contents and functions will be added.

For the virgin book club-ers, you need to know that every respected book club maintains its own blog. It is an inherent part of the book club sphere. This blog will be an essential part of our social interactions, adding texture to the magical evenings to come. I encourage you to start e-mingling (i.e. posting comments) right away!