First the Food is on Twitter!

We have recently started tweeting. I think it is a good way to share and keep track of news/public debate on items of personal interest. We will mostly tweet links to interesting literary or book club related articles. Perhaps a few on women's relationships and on politics! Or local NC/RTP area goings on. Please follow us if you're interested in these topics. And let me know: what would you like to see us tweet about? What do you think you would use it for, if at all?

The Lace Reader: Final Results

didn't like it - 1

it was OK - 5

liked it - 2

8 votes total.

Yay, we had a lot of people voting this time!

Monica Ali

Has anyone read anything by the author Monica Ali? The New York Times recently reviewed her latest book. Brick Lane and her new book, In the Kitchen, both sound really good. And In the Kitchen seems like it would have a nice culinary theme for a book club meeting.

Where's Spike?

You may have seen this week's cover of EW, with the 20 best vampires of all time.

The list includes Lestat, several different versions of Dracula, Edward Cullen, Bill, Angel, and Keifer Sutherland from The Lost Boys! But I was dismayed to find that you-know-who did not make the list. This is so wrong. It is obvious that Spike is the best vampire ever! Angel whines, Edward pines, Lestat attempts suicide. But Spike is the only vampire who ever has come to the realization that he is evil, and then gone out and done something about it. He's the only one who fought Hell demons to get his soul back, and won. And then, he became a hero. Sure, Spike was the comic relief and Buffy's man stud for a while. But he saw his flaws and tried to make himself a better man, much like another favorite hero of mine.

It's a shame that Spike only made EW's list of hottest vampires. But at least he got something.

The Girls from Ames has a local connection

I'm becoming more and more intrigued by this book, especially as many of my friendships are now in their second decade, along with this book club. It turns out one of the Girls lives here in NC and is a cancer survivor- http://unclineberger.org/news/2009/release0730/

Two Questions

With which to start a book club meeting, per Book Group Buzz:

“If you particularly enjoyed this book, what did it offer that you found most satisfying?” or “If the book disappointed you, how would you define its most glaring weakness?

I like the idea about asking what was the most satisfying aspect of a book. Or the least satisfying.

The Monsters of Templeton: Final Results

didn't like it - 0

it was OK - 1

liked it - 1

really liked it - 0

it was amazing - 0

didn't finish it

2 votes total

The Hobbit: Final Results

didn't like it - 0

it was OK - 1

liked it - 0

really liked it - 0

it was amazing - 1

didn't finish it - 0

2 votes total

Nine

That's the number of books I packed for a 1 week trip to Poland. Not a vacation. A business trip. Five are packed in my suitcase. Four are in my carry-on. Only 2 are for work. (1 each in carry on and in suitcase.) The five in my suitcase?

1. A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
2. Swimming Lessons by Mary Alice Monroe
3. the last Sookie Stackhouse book (#9)
4. Coming of Age in Second Life (work book)
5. The Believers b (Zoe Heller)

The 4 in my carry-on?

1. Infinite Jest (all 1000+ pages)
2. the 8th Sookie Stackhouse book
3. The Survey Interview of the Future
4. the 7th Sookie Stackhouse book (already finished, on the flight from RDU to JFK)

Posting from the JFK airport.

Buffy vs. Edward

I kinda love this in theory. From Bookshelves of Doom.

You can also buy this T-shirt:

Case Histories: Final Results

didn't like it - 2

it was OK - 3

liked it - 0

really liked it - 2

it was amazing - 0

didn't finish it - 0

7 votes total.

Harry Potter: A Romance

Meg Cabot has a hillarious blog post (please, just click through to look at the comments on the pictures) on how the new Harry Potter movie promotional materials make it look like (gasp!) a romance.

What Would Irina Do?

Remember Irina McGovern, central character of The Post-Birthday World? The book hinged around her choice between contentment with one partner and passion with another.

Well, Irina was the first person I thought of (after my husband and myself, I guess) while reading this NYT review of the new book, A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the 21st Century, by Christina Nehring. According to the Times Review, her book is an argument for a "darker, more demanding vision of love."

Nehring thinks the contented happy ending of a stable marriage is too tame. The choice to stay in such a marriage is less a sign of emotional health than of insecurity. She praises famous "great lovers" like Frida Kahlo and Heloise, women who had the confidence to entangle themselves in demanding or unorthodox relationships. (Does this mean that when I find my husband a challenge I can credit my mental fortitude?)

Nehring might be wrong, but I'm fascinated by her argument and want to read the book. I especially admire how she seems to present the willingness to love at great risk as the woman's choice - rather than the woman "falling in love" and losing control the way many novels seem to do. What do you think? Does this sound like a good selection for book club? It might lead to some great discussions.

Infinite Summer Reading Challenge

When David Foster Wallace died last fall, I kept reading articles about his life and his writing and I became intrigued in particular with his novel Infinite Jest. Coming in at 1000+ pages plus extensive endnotes, it has been featured on best of all-time lists like this one from Time. Yesterday I saw several links to this website, Infinite Summer, which is challenging people to read Infinite Jest from June 21st to September 22nd, 75 pages a week. This seems doable and kind of fun to me. I like the idea of reading a book with a large group of strangers. In addition to the blog, which will have daily postings by guides and forums for discussing the book, there is also a facebook group and a goodreads page dedicated to the project. Anybody in with me?

The Kindle

Does anyone have a Kindle or considered buying one? I've been firmly anti- e-readers in the past but I think I'm warming up to the idea of a Kindle. A few people at work have them and love them. I'm impressed by how close the text looks to book text and it would be so nice for travel. I recently realized you can subscribe to magazines through it too. I'm all for reducing book and magazine clutter in my house. At ~$360, it's still too expensive for me but I can only assume cheaper, better versions will continue to roll out as it gains in popularity.

Charlaine Harris in the NY Times

The NY Times has an article on Charlaine Harris and the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. The latest novel, Dead and Gone, is going to be No. 1 on this Sunday's hardcover bestseller list. You can read the first chapter here.

She seems like a neat lady and I'm glad to see the NY Times devote space to her particularly since in the past they have been guilty of ignoring genre fiction.

2009 Agatha Awards

March is Mystery Month is one of my favorite months of book club. However, it's always a challenge to pick an appropriate mystery. The format of the meeting requires that it be a whodunit novel that lays out all the clues and offers the reader a fair play chance of identifying the murderer and motive. Occasionally, we pick a book that doesn't really work.

However, the Agatha Awards are here to help us out! The Agatha Awards go to novels that:

• contain no explicit sex
• contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence
• usually feature an amateur detective
• take place in a confined setting and contain characters who know one another

I'd be willing to bet that Agatha winners are almost all fair play whodunits.

The 2009 Agatha winner is The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny. It looks charming!

Wolfpack

Last week, this photo of the "wolfpack" from New Moon was released.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: 2009

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced this week. The winner for fiction is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. LitLovers (the website that featured our group last year!) has a good compendium of summary, biography, and reviews. This book was first brought to my attention through a rave "You Must Read This" review on NPR by Melissa Bank, author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

Update: Omnivoracious also posted a list of the top 15 most likely winners (regression analysis alert!), before Olive Kitteridge was announced. It might be a good resource for making book selections.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was OK - 1
liked it - 0
really liked it - 4
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 0

5 votes total

Who are the Girls from Ames?

They are 11 women from Ames, Iowa who have sustained a 40 year-friendship. A new book, The Girls from Ames, has been written about them by Jeffrey Zaslow, who coauthored The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch.

The book highlights their ground rules:

Don’t brag about husbands’ jobs or incomes. Don’t gloat about children’s achievements. Make every effort to be with each other for key events. In addition, Zaslow observes, “Ames girls learned early that the way to keep female friendships alive was to listen and talk, in that order.”

One compelling comment from Jeffrey Zaslow featured in the Christian Science Monitor review:

Men’s relationships take different forms. “Men tend to build friendships until about age 30, but there’s often a steady falloff after that,” Zaslow states. “Men’s friendships tend to be based more on activities than emotions. They connect through sports, work, poker, politics…. Women talk. Men do things together…. Women’s friendships are face to face, while men’s friendships are side by side.”

I think I might have just found my next book pick.

Discussion Guides for Case Histories

From Reading Group Guides

From Transworld Publishers

"Atlas Shrugged is absurd but strangely compellling . . ."

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is one of many highly read, often cited books that I have never read. I read The Fountainhead in high school and liked it, but then later learned that Rand was a brutal capitalist and haven't been as impressed with it since. Has anyone read Atlas Shrugged? This review certainly makes me interested. Maybe it would be a good choice for the January book one year? I must admit one reason I'm interested is because every now and then it gets discussed on Mad Men!

YA News

Judy Blume's books have been given new covers. What do you think? It's making me want to re-read Deenie. The copy I had was dated even when I read it.

Blindness: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was OK - 1
liked it - 0
really liked it - 1
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 4

6 votes total

What do you do in your succissive moments?

That is, your spare time.

I read.

I found Save the Words while blogreading today.

And I did not want to temerate my recent public commitment to updating the blog every week.

Lost Boys of Sudan

Has anyone read What is the What, Dave Eggers' novel/biography about Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee? I've heard great things about this book but have not read it myself. Today at work I received an email that Deng along with some other refugees will be in the area early next week to talk about their experiences and the nonprofit they've started to build schools in Sudan. Below is the schedule of their appearances which can also be found here. I'm thinking about going to the one Monday night if anyone is interested.

March 23: UNC-Chapel Hill, 12:30-2:00pm in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Auditorium located in the Hooker Building.

March 23: Judea Reform Synagogue 7:00-9:00pm

March 24: Wake Forest University, 11:00-12:30pm in the Pugh Auditorium in the Benson Center.

March 24: Duke University, 4:30-6:00pm at Fleischman Commons in the Sandford Institute for Public Policy.

March 25: Meredith College, 10:00-12:00pm in Jones Chapel.

The Time Traveler's Wife: The Sequel

Not a sequel, but Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, will have her second book out in the fall. It is titled Her Fearful Symmetry and according to this article it is "supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat."

Speaking of The Time Traveler's Wife, Liz informed me that the movie version has been pushed back to February 2010. In other book/movie news, I read in Entertainment Weekly that Julia Roberts will star in "Eat, Pray, Love."

Best Fashion Blog Post Ever

You must, must look! Storybook inspired fashion. I especially love the Nancy Drew outfit.

Facebook

I love this top 10 list of why Facebook is for old people. I'm cutting and pasting the list so you don't have to, but it came from Time magazine.


1. Facebook is about finding people you've lost track of. And, son, we've lost track of more people than you've ever met. Remember who you went to prom with junior year? See, we don't. We've gone through multiple schools, jobs and marriages. Each one of those came with a complete cast of characters, most of whom we have forgotten existed. But Facebook never forgets. (See the best social-networking applications.)

2. We're no longer bitter about high school. You're probably still hung up on any number of petty slights, but when that person who used to call us that thing we're not going to mention here, because it really stuck, asks us to be friends on Facebook, we happily friend that person. Because we're all grown up now. We're bigger than that. Or some of us are, anyway. We're in therapy, and it's going really well. These are just broad generalizations. Next reason.

3. We never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions. We wish we still did that. But we don't. (See pictures of Beer Country in Denver.)

4. Facebook isn't just a social network; it's a business network. And unlike, say, college students, we actually have jobs. What's the point of networking with people who can't hire you? Not that we'd want to work with anyone your age anyway. Given the recession — and the amount of time we spend on Facebook — a bunch of hungry, motivated young guns is the last thing we need around here.

5. We're lazy. We have jobs and children and houses and substance-abuse problems to deal with. At our age, we don't want to do anything. What we want is to hear about other people doing things and then judge them for it. Which is what news feeds are for.

6. We're old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like us. These days, the only way to identify us is with Facebook tags. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

7. We have children. There is very little that old people enjoy more than forcing others to pay attention to pictures of their children. Facebook is the most efficient engine ever devised for this.

8. We're too old to remember e-mail addresses. You have to understand: we have spent decades drinking diet soda out of aluminum cans. That stuff catches up with you. We can't remember friends' e-mail addresses. We can barely remember their names.

9. We don't understand Twitter. Literally. It makes no sense to us. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)

10. We're not cool, and we don't care. There was a time when it was cool to be on Facebook. That time has passed. Facebook now has 150 million members, and its fastest-growing demographic is 30 and up. At this point, it's way cooler not to be on Facebook. We've ruined it for good, just like we ruined Twilight and skateboarding. So git! And while you're at it, you damn kids better get off our lawn too.