Friday Flashback: Harry Potter Night!

At long last, I'm posting the pictures from Harry Potter night. Almost one year ago, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released. We had dinner (and margaritas!) at On the Border and then went over to Barnes and Noble to stand in line for our copies.

What a crowd!

Luckily, Dawn and Katie escaped the attack from Cindy the Dementor:
I dominated in the night's quidditch match. Allison and Sonya were there to cheer me on. Around midnight, we lined up and started moving.

But first we had to take the obligatory nose picture.1:20 AM: Success!

"Her mix tape's a masterpiece . . . "

For those of you who still have old mix tapes from your past (preferably made by old boyfriends), you can post pictures of the tape, the songlist and a story here. I can't wait to do this with some of mine. I can only hope that one of the many people for whom I made mix tapes will do the same with one of my creations.

Raise your hand if someone put Depeche Mode's "Somebody" on a mix tape for you . . . that was pretty much the standard profession of love song by alterna-geek (and potentally gay?) boys in my high school years.

Ghostwritten: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was ok - 0
liked it - 2
really liked it - 4
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 0

6 votes total.

Most Discussible Books of 2007

I am learning so much from Book Club Girl. A while back, she posted Reading Group Choices' top 11 most discussible books from 2007. (Reading Group Choices is another book club recommendations website.) We have read 4 of them! The complete list is:

#1 Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
#2 The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
#3 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
#4 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
#5 The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
#6 TIE: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
#6 TIE: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
#7 My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
#8 Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
#9 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
#10 Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and Daivd Oliver Relin

--Barbara Mead, President, Reading Group Choices

Of the remaining we haven't read as a club, I think The Book Thief and Three Cups of Tea look the most interesting. These have been on my list for a while.

N&O Summer Reading List

I personally can never get enough summer reading lists. The N&O published their suggestions on Sunday. The printable PDF guide is here, and it is a nice list. It contains some interesting recommendations organized according to summer movies - the idea is that you can save money by reading books of the same genre rather than going to the movies . . or something like that. Apparently there is also a N&O book club blog.

Monday Bookish Meme

From BTT

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (ot, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

Well, I think we can ignore the first part of this question. Post your answers in the comments!

New Feature: Friday Flashback

Since alliterative titles are all the rage in blogging, I'm moving the memes to Mondays.

The last time I posted about our history was in February, when I posted our book selections from 2001. In 2001 we had just experienced an influx of new members and really started to get our routine down. Whereas in our first few years, our meetings would often get canceled or postponed, meetings got regular and were generally well attended after 2001. As Irina McGovern would attest, with regularity comes the need to spice things up a bit! (Sorry, couldn't resist the reference to our current book.) In 2001 we did our first mystery month in which:

• we select a mystery novel for the month's book
• it must be a "whodunit" type novel that can be figured out, rather than a basic suspense novel
• one member reads the entire book and tells everyone where to stop reading
• we come to the meeting and try to figure out who, why, how etc by asking only yes/no questions
  

It has become our favorite tradition. This is always one of the best meetings of the year. When we first started doing it, Katie had to leave early because she did not want to know who the murderer was before finishing the book. One year we paired mystery foods with the mystery selection, bringing filled foods with mysterious ingredients. This was inspired by the famous book group Mostly we Eat. (Actually I think the mystery month idea might have been inspired by Mostly we Eat as well.)

Our mystery month selections are listed below. Which was your favorite?

2001: Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
2002: Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James
2003: For the Sake of Elena by Elizabeth George
2004: The Missing Piece by Antoine Bello
2005: Death Comes as Epiphany by Sharan Newman
2006: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
2007: Dead Famous by Ben Elton
2008: The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard

Lit Lovers!

Lit Lovers is a website designed for book clubs. It has a really cute design and has suggestions for book selections (many of which we have read!), recipe ideas (including Indian and British food that might be appropriate for our next meeting - no Russian meals or spiced popcorn though), discussion guides, and mini-courses on literature appreciation. I think I'm going to visit again. I'll post a permanent link on the bottom left side of our blog.

Oh! And Lit Lovers has a featured book club section. I have written to the developer to see if we can be a featured book club at some point. Since we have our own blog and all!!

Poetry

My cousin David is a poet (and an English professor). When I was young I would try to read this poetry books that my parent's had stacked on their book shelf (same shelf as the classic "North and the South" by John Jakes---god I loved Patrick Swayze back then). Anyway, I could never really understand the meaning of his poetry and it always made me feel nonliterary. I thought it might be interesting if I brought a book of his poems to book club...we could read a poem or two and everyone could share in their amazement that I'm related to someone who speaks so eloquently (yes, I had to use spell-checker for this entire post).

Here's a link to some of his work in anyone is interested...

Can't eat, can't work, can't sleep??

The Post-Birthday World: Is it possible not to love, but to be in love with a book? I finished it last night at 2:30 AM, basically reading the last half in one sitting. When I stood up to stretch and ruminate, I had no idea what time it was and was shocked to see the numbers glowing on the kitchen stove clock. I slept soon after, but not very deeply. Some words describing my feelings today: giddy, all stomach butterflies, completely unable to concentrate on work, and increasingly, achingly empty. I need more coffee to clear my head but I'm afraid of increasing my heart rate even more! The precipice of pleasure and pain indeed!

I remember Allison writing about needing to take a walk after Cold Mountain. On the one hand, I want to hurry up and process this book and move on because really, I have work to do. But on the other hand, I hate to let Irina, Ramsey and Lawrence go. I was considering re-reading the book immediately to be better able to discuss it next week but at this point I think that would be torture. Let the mourning period begin.

Alas

I have just discovered the person I want to be. All envy aside, it looks like it might be a useful site for our club!

Have you started The Post-Birthday World yet?

1. Are you as stunned as I am by this book? The writing is breathtaking, painful, precise.
2. Like Irina, I am completely obsessed with Ramsey Acton.
   
3. Thematically, PBW follows Ghostwritten really well - with all the events hinging on a chance, split-second decision.
4. I cannot stress this enough: be very careful when you do a google image search for snooker.
   
5. Is anyone else thinking that we have had some really awesome book club selections lately? All of our books in 2008 have been really, really good. We rock!
   

Someone who gets it!

This morning I allowed myself to read all the Sex and the City reviews. I got more and more frustrated by stupid male reviewers, and then the woman who wrote the NYT review really pissed me off. Get this: she disregarded the movie for its one-dimensional male characters! But I finally found one I completely agree with so I thought I'd share it. It's from an LA Times (female) reviewer.

____________________

Also, I was doing some reading on the new Brideshead Revisited, for which we saw a preview last night, and found this awesome bit about Emma Thompson and the weight of the actress who plays Julia. Go Emma!

Ghostwritten follow-up

This morning I was thinking about Ghostwritten and the series of random events/coincidences that led to the end of the book. That got me thinking about the series of random events in my own life, which got me thinking about the series of random events that brought us all together in bookclub. If we were to write a book about the formation of our bookclub using the Lost/Ghostwritten style of storytelling, which random connections would we include?

For me, I picked biostatistics as my major because I liked the color of the brochure. If the brochure had been another color, or if I'd seen another one I'd liked better, I might never have met most of you, and Dawn, Liz, Katie and I might not have started the bookclub. Liz, I remember you and I started working at RTI the same day - wasn't sure if you met Katie and Dawn separately. If not, if we'd started work on different days, we might not have connected. So what led us to working there on the same day? Can anyone else think of any, seemingly unrelated, random events that brought us all together? I know there's a Buffy connection, and Marina has a lot of random connections with everyone!

Friday Bookish Meme

From BTT:

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

Summer Reading

I always look forward to the NPR summer reading story with recommendations from independent booksellers. Here's this summer's edition. The full list of recommendations is here.

Kate Vaiden: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was ok - 2
liked it - 1
really liked it - 2
it was amazing - 1
didn't finish it - 0

6 votes total.

July Book: Race and Politics

For the July book, I pick Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. It is his memoir about race, class and politics in his life, written after he graduated from Harvard Law School but before he began his political career. This Paper Cuts post mentions the book in the context of questions about Obama's ability to win white blue-collar voters.

Buffy still inspires!

Check out how Buffy saves a NPR reporter's soul....

Never Enough Books

Last weekend, I was watching CBS Sunday Morning (yes, I'm an old person) and I saw the sweetest story about a couple and their book collection. One million books! He was a farmer and has gradually turned building after building on their farm, including a manure tank, into book storage facilities and a book store. She was a professor and at one point he sold his cows so that he could attend graduate school with her, typing all of her papers. Watch this video, it will make you feel good.

Breathtaking!

What is librophilia?

Check out these beautiful pictures and fall in love.

Friday Bookish Meme

From BTT:

Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

Do you ever read manuals?

How-to books?

Self-help guides?

Anything at all?

Essential Reading

Um, I finished Ghostwritten a few days ago and was really confused. But mostly in a good way.

The wiki summary is enlightening - I so only picked up on about 25% of the story.

I can't wait to discuss it. I'll try to pull together some other materials for us to reference.

Other links:
a published review
a lit blog review

I know we can come up with some better ones

Who are the thinking woman's sex gods?

Paper Cuts wants to know.

Usually I'm really good at this but can't come up with a list right now.

Clive Owen?
Christian Bale?

It must be low hormone time for me because nothing is coming to mind.

Friday Bookish Meme

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

This one's for all the statisticians . . .

The Indexed blog, sample below. Genius. She's now featured on Freakonomics.

I love this picture.

Obama drinks PBR in Raleigh!

Friday Bookish Meme

From BTT . . .

OK this week's seems kind of lame. But whatever:

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….

Some New Blogs

Here are some noteworthy blogs I visited as part of the Weekly Geek challenge.

Tripping Toward Lucidity - Well when I saw she was in NC, I had to visit. She has excellent taste and a lovely blog layout.

Bybee's blog is personable, honest and interesting. I could not stop giggling about and envying her Middlemarch dream featuring Will Ladislaw.

Tammy in FL's blog documents her reading, and her attempts to complete 101 goals in 1001 days! She is a girl after my own heart.

Everyday Reads - a lovely and insanely readable blog. And she gets it when she speaks in beatitudes about Atonement, which you'll remember got nods as our book club's most admired selection.

Book Club Classics - I like how this blog is book club-oriented; not just book review or book news oriented. For any of you who are searching for ideas about what to pick for your next selection, she maintains a great list.

Election Day

Help! I still can't decide who to vote for! Has anyone truly made up their mind? Do you mind sharing why? Post in the comments if you feel comfortable.

I'm totally obsessing about it and being way too strategic.