Friday, December 28, 2007

The Friday List! Best Holiday Movies

The holidays are always a good time to catch up on movies, whether it's at the movie theater or lounging around watching DVDs at home. What have you seen recently that's good? Bad?

Russ and I had a double feature on Wednesday night: The Golden Compass and Charlie Wilson's War. The Golden Compass was kind of terrible. It is almost always hard to watch a film adaptation of a book that is so well-loved. It looked amazing, and the actors were well-cast, but the structure of the story made all the interesting things you discover along the way just exposition. I don't see how people who haven't read the book could really care about what was going on in the movie. And the ending? Ugh. I felt embarrassed for the film because half the theater groaned at the ending and said, that's it? What the hell is Dust anyway?

On the other hand, Charlie Wilson's War was great! It was especially interesting after having recently read A Thousand Splendid Suns. Tom Hanks was a pleasure to watch. I highly recommend it.

More holiday movies I'd love to get out to see:
Juno
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Sweeney Todd
The Kite Runner
and of course Atonement, after it comes out next week

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Allison's 2007 Favorites

Top 5 Books of 2007*
  1. Atonement
  2. Eat, Pray, Love
  3. Little Children
  4. Interpreter of Maladies
  5. Little Earthquakes
*Of the books I remember reading. I have a vague recollection of reading some good books my last semester in school but they are lost to me now. If you are like me and have trouble remembering what you've read but would like to, I highly recommend giving GoodReads a try. You can keep track of books you've read, are currently reading, and would like to read as well as write mini-reviews. Plus you can link to friends' profiles, like mine and Liz's.

Top 5 TV Shows of 2007

1. 30 Rock
2. The Office
3. Friday Night Lights
3. Cold Case
4. Pushing Daisies
5. Ugly Betty

I wanted to end this list by taking a moment to honor the memory of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, both of which ended this year. While neither of their final seasons was their best, they are sorely missed.

*Addendum - I just noticed a huge omission in my list of best tv shows of 2007 and that would be Damages, the BEST tv show of the year. I would have added this as a comment but this show is just too good for a comment and deserves its own post. It was short (13 episodes) but highly suspenseful and fun to dissect and discuss after each episode. How much did I love this show? So much that when I realized the season finale would broadcast two days into my honeymoon - my romantic, Hawaiian, tv-and-internet-free honeymoon - I seriously considered postponing it for a few days. Of course, we set up the DVR to record the finale to watch after we got back but that was just too long to wait. Luckily, the episode was available on the internet a few days after the broadcast and we had brought along a laptop. We "borrowed" a neighbor's wifi connection, though the signal was so weak, we had to go outside the cottage and hold the laptop towards the sky to download the episode. Yes, we are geeks but we love our tv.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Liz's Favorite TV Shows of 2007

(almost all of these were watched on DVD so they really came out in previous years)

1. Brothers and Sisters (my new favorite!)
2. Journeyman
3. Big Love
4. Deadwood
5. Lost (final episode of Season 3 only!)

Favorite Book Club Books of 2007

Sorry about the last post. I should have proof-read before publishing it. As many of you know, I love books and TV. For me they go hand-in-hand! My favorite book club books that I've read this year are:
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
-Eat, Pray, Love
-Atonement
For the non-book club books, I need to go home and remind myself what I've read. I think my memory is getting worse the older I get! More later...

Top 5 TV Shows of 2005

Here are my favorite 5 TV shows of 2007.

-Big Love
-Lost
-Battlestar Galactica
-How I Met Your Mother
-Flight of the Conchords

Honorable Mentions: Pushing Daisies (favorite new show), House, Heroes (2006-2007 season), and The Office....Wow, I really watch a lot of TV!

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Liz's Best Books Read in 2007

This was harder for me than I thought. I had trouble remembering the books I read in 2007 - even with my LibraryThing and Goodreads accounts. I guess if I can't remember a book, it doesn't belong on the top 5 list.

1. Atonement
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
3. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
4. I Don't Know How She Does It (Allison Pearson)
5. Key of Light (first in the Key trilogy by Nora Roberts - seriously, how many times do I have to plug these books before one of you reads them??)

The Friday 5! Best Books of 2007

Happy Friday everyone! As it's the last Friday before the holidays, now is the appropriate time to be creating "best of the year" lists. What are the top 5 books you read in 2007? Book club or non-book club books count. Books released in any year count, as long as YOU read them in 2007.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

FTF: The Next Generation

From our holiday party . . . the second generation of book club!


Are these great looking kids or what? Clockwise from top left: Matthew, Sarah, Collin, Jake, Isa, Charlie, and London. It was such a treat to get all the kids together. Happy holidays everyone!!

Pride and Prejudice Viewing Party

Well, it's official. The P&P viewing party will occur on Jan. 5th at 8pm. We're watching the BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (a Winston-Salem native!). Everyone is more than welcome to spend the night since the movie won't end until around 2:00am. Below is a link to the BBC website for P&P if you're intersted!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/prideandprejudice/

Monday, December 17, 2007

Sonya's Top 5 Guilty Reading Pleasures

  1. Television Without Pity - I'm completely addicted to it. Their recap of The Christmas Shoes movie is a holiday treat for the Scrooge in me: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/Shows/Mondos-Extra/Stories/%3CI%3EThe-Christmas-Shoes%3CI%3E?currentPage=1
  2. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
  3. People magazine
  4. Anything by Maeve Binchy- sweet and satisfying
  5. The Christmas Box series

Allison's Top 5 Guilty Reading Pleasures

  1. The Cat Who ... series.
  2. US Weekly magazine
  3. Perez Hilton, People, Popsugar - celebrity gossip in order of most offensive to least
  4. Watching or reading about The Hills, a MTV show
  5. When visiting my parents I sometimes reread my old Sweet Valley Highs and Babysitters Club.

Memoir about Mormon Fundamentalism

Has anyone read the new memoir, Escape, by Carolyn Jessop? It's by a woman who was raised FLDS and became the 4th wife of a polygamist. She escaped with her children after about 15 years of marriage. It looks fascinating.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Friday, December 14, 2007

Liz's Top 5 Guilty Reading Pleasures

  1. My new love, Nora Roberts! For all of you Buffy watchers, I think you'll really like the Key trilogy.
  2. Sarah Dessen books
  3. Marie Claire magazine
  4. A blog so ridiculous I can't even mention it.
  5. Occasionally I'll read one of those teen series books from TV shows like Alias or Buffy. But only if Russ gets silly and puts it in my Christmas stocking.

The Friday 5! Guilty Pleasures

This is the inaugural edition of our blog's Friday Five. My goal is to keep them book or food-related. But who knows what will appear here.

What are your top 5 guilty reading pleasures? Submit them as a post or a comment. Don't think - just post what comes to mind!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

March 2000: The Power and the Glory

Did anyone understand this book?

January Book: Anna Karenina

It's December 13th. Forget about Christmas shopping, the real clock that's ticking is the 31 days until our January meeting. How many of you have started Anna Karenina? I have not, because I've discovered a new guilty pleasure. More on her later. (And because it's the holidays, and who the heck has time to read anyway?)

But I do think a lot about how I'm going to start reading Anna K. very, very soon. And I plan to be very organized about it. First I'm going to get my head around it with this wikipedia summary. Then, I'm going to peruse Oprah's book club's info on the book. I might even read a little about Leo Tolstoy's life in my down time.

My reward for finishing the book? Watching this miniseries with yummy Kevin McKidd from Journeyman! (And BTW, if you are not watching Journeyman right now you should, right Sonya?) Or if you're more of a Boromir kind of person, you could watch this movie version.

Oprah says Anna Karenina is "an extremely sexy and engrossing read." Definitely something to look forward to.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Atonement?

What was our book club's favorite read? Atonement is the winner! Of the four top 10 lists posted, only Atonement made every single list! Runners up include The Handmaid's Tale (3 votes), and Jane Eyre, The Time Traveler's Wife, East of Eden, Middlesex, The Namesake, and The Blind Assassin (2 votes each).

Also apparently Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin) is our favorite writer!

Now I know this is a skewed sample because Atonement was a controversial book. Several people strongly disliked it! So if you want your opinion known, be sure to post your top 10 list (or send it to me and I'll post it). I'll edit the summary.

The movie version of Atonement is getting awesome reviews. Let's plan to go see it when it comes out in the area.

Friday, November 30, 2007

His Dark Materials Movie

A number of us in book club have read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The movie version of the first book, The Golden Compass, is coming out this month and it is stirring up some kind of controversy!

Here's an interesting essay on it, today's post on Conversational Reading.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Sonya's Top 10 Book Club Picks

Okay, so I'm really feeling like a newbie now as I haven't read a lot of the books on the tops of others' lists. I'm including here a couple of my favorite books because the club has read them, even though I wasn't a member at the time. I'm listing the ones that have made the biggest impression on me, even though I don't think I could attempt Shantaram again.


  1. The Handmaid's Tale

  2. The Poisonwood Bible (didn't read with bookclub)

  3. The Red Tent (didn't read with bookclub)

  4. Jane Eyre

  5. Atonement

  6. The Feminine Mistake

  7. Shantaram

  8. A Thousand Splendid Suns

  9. Daughter of Fortune

  10. Little Children

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Allison's Top 10 Book Club Books

I love making lists! Initially, I wasn't going to rank them but then I decided to think of it as, if I had to read them all over again right now, in what order would I read them.
  1. The Time Traveler's Wife
  2. East of Eden
  3. Atonement
  4. Middlesex
  5. The Namesake
  6. Cold Mountain
  7. The Awakening
  8. A Girl Named Zippy
  9. The Handmaid's Tale
  10. The Lovely Bones

Dawn's Top 10 Book Club Books

Here are my top 10 (but I reserve the right to change my picks at any time)...

Atonement
Blind Assassin
Eat, Pray, Love
Handmaid's Tale
Middlesex
Persuasion
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Tender is the Night
Under the Banner of Heaven
For the Sake of Elena (my favorite mystery book so far)

10 Years!

2008 will be our tenth year of book club. We're planning some festivities to celebrate our anniversary. I started this blog as a way of honoring our years together. We're also planning a weekend retreat (location as yet undecided) in Fall 2008. I'd like to initiate one other way of observing the decade: top 10 lists! In the entry below I posted my top 10 favorite books from book club, and would love to know what rates highly for others. Count any book on our list, even if you weren't in book club when we read it. Have fun!

Liz's Top 10 Book Club Books

  1. East of Eden
  2. Atonement
  3. Lolita
  4. The Time Traveler's Wife
  5. The Blind Assassin
  6. The Portrait of a Lady
  7. The Namesake
  8. Jane Eyre
  9. Life of Pi
  10. Bee Season

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

2000 Book List

January: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
February: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
March: The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
April: The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
June: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
July: Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones
August: Beloved by Toni Morrison
September: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
October: Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
November: A Widow for One Year by John Irving

1998-2003: No Book Club Tonight. Must be Tuesday.

For the first 5 years of book club, we didn't meet on Tuesday nights. Tuesday was Buffy night for Dawn, Katie, Liz and Tajhia. Once Buffy was off the air, scheduling was a lot easier. We have met on the third Tuesday of the month since fall 2003.

November 1999: "Does it ever stop, the wanting?"

Success! We recruited two new members in November 1999, with a third on the way. How did we do it?



By picking a sweaty, violent, time-travel romance novel! New members Sarah (Liz's college friend) and Laura M. (Liz's office mate's girlfriend) joined. Laura's roommate Tajhia picked up Outlander as soon as Laura put it down. She joined the book club in January 2000. Along with Dawn, Katie, Liz and Sutapa, that made a total of 7 members!

"Does it ever stop, the wanting?" was one of the choice phrases offered by 16th century Scot Jamie Fraser to his true love, post-WWII nurse Claire Randall, right before he ravished her. This book has plenty of cringe-worthy moments, but it is a fabulous escape.

October 1999: Lolita

Lo. Lee. Ta. We discussed this book so long ago, but it still resonates with me. The writing is simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful and uproariously funny. But the subject is so horrifying that as a reader, you can never relax into the prose or the story. Whenever I really think about it, I'm awestruck.

We had a great discussion on this book but it occurred at a time when our book club was the smallest - only Dawn, Katie and Liz made it to this meeting. We even tried to drum up excitement by serving only desserts. Still only the three of us came. I'd love to know what our current members think of this book.

Hmm . . . maybe I'll pick another Nabokov when it's my turn next! Perhaps Ada, or Ardor. It's supposed to be pretty steamy. (Just look at the cover!) Which leads me to my next post . . .

March 1999: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Every women's book club should read a female bonding book every now and then. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is one of these. It's good for stimulating discussions about your mother and your oldest friends.


February 1999: Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes started a bit of a Frank McCourt following. He came to Durham for a reading and we went and got our books signed, after standing in line for about an hour! Most of us read the follow-up, 'Tis, when it came out. I think we went to see the movie Angela's Ashes together as well.


Friday, November 16, 2007

1999 Book List

January: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Februrary: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
March: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
April: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
July: Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
October: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
November: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon


November 1998: The First Meeting

Our first meeting was at Dawn and Katie’s apartment in Chapel Hill. The book was What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage. There were lots of girls there, and they were all statisticians! Four current members, Dawn, Katie, Liz and Sutapa were in attendance at this seminal meeting.

September 25, 1998: Sutapa’s Party

Sutapa had a cook-out party at the pool of her apartment complex in Chapel Hill on the same night Celine Dion played the Dean Dome. I left work late at 7 and expected to get to the party at 7:30. Maybe I was going to go home and change first, I don’t remember. Having recently moved to the Triangle, I had no friends and was desperate to meet new people. But because of Celine and her throbbing, heart shaped stage, it took THREE HOURS to get to Sutapa’s party from RTP. There I sat, on I-40 surrounded by women of all ages crammed into SUVs and minivans, rocking out to “My Heart (throbbing, surely)Will Go On.” I remember rolling down the window at one point and yelling at another driver, “May I please pass you to exit right out of this traffic? I promise I’m not going to Celine Dion!” As she was a Celine Dion fan, all about love and yummy goodness, probably from some nice town down east like Wilson or Mt. Olive, she let me pass. (Thank you, lady!)

Finally, at 10:30 I got to the party. I had missed the food, some of the drinking, and an appearance by the genuine Carolina ram, but fortunately Dawn and Katie were there. I’m not sure how we met, but here’s what I remember about the conversation between three of us, Dawn, Sutapa, and Liz
:

Dawn: “I watch Buffy! Angel is awesome!”

Liz: “Me too!”

Sutapa: “Oprah has a book club, I think it would be really cool to be in one!”

Dawn and Liz: “We do too!”


One of the great things about Sutapa is that when she has conversations like this, she actually follows up! A month later we had our first meeting.