Miss Austen

Liz mentioned in her previous blog that Masterpiece Theater's next Austen movie is "Miss Austen". Check out a review on USA today
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2008-01-31-miss-austen_N.htm

Lost

Hey, did anyone watch Lost last night? What did you think? If anyone wants to discuss, please feel free to do so in the comments section! (That way those who haven't seen it can avoid spoilers.)

Update: This is a great summary of all the questions on EW.com.

The Complete Jane Austen

So what does everyone think of the Complete Jane Austen? So far they've shown Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park.

Thus far my favorite has been Northanger Abbey. It's a good one to adapt into a 1 1/2 hour movie because it's a shorter, frothier book than her other works.

Persuasion is not as good an adaptation as the older movie that came out (about 10-15 years ago or so?) with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. I remember being so emotional in the final scene in that older version, and when I read the book for book club. But this time around, it wasn't quite as dramatic or moving, or something. Can't really put my finger on it. Persuasion is such a simple story; Austen's achievement is giving it so much emotional weight. Somehow the new movie lost that emotion.

I know Dawn has read Mansfield Park. Has anyone else? This story always troubles me. I think I need to read the book. It's darker than her other books. The mean people (the Crawfords and the Bertrams) are really mean, and on the depraved side. In her other books, when characters choose money over love, it's generally seen as sensible, though sad. But in this book, the Crawfords are just plain mercenaries. They're too wicked to laugh at. And Fanny Price is so abused, like Jane Eyre, but I suppose not quite as badly. But unlike Jane Eyre (and Elizabeth Bennett, and Emma Woodhouse), Fanny Price just lets everyone walk all over her while pining away for Edmund. And in the end, she's rewarded and praised for it. I just can't get behind it!

I'm looking forward to next weekend's Miss Austen Regrets, which must be another version of Becoming Jane. Looks fun!

One more nomination from Sonya

I was in Borders this morning and saw the third book in this series on a stand, and thought it might be a fun mystery. It sounds like pure, sugary, chick lit but also cute and fun. Anyway, just one more to throw on the list: Size 12 is Not Fat: A Heather Wells Myster by Meg Cabot

Allison's Mystery Nominations

Here are two mystery novels that looked interesting to me:

1. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson: A cast of strangers, each scarred by his or her past, is brought together by an Edinburgh road-rage incident that sets off a wave of murders. It's gotten great reviews and Stephen King called this book the best mystery of the decade.
2. The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard: A sheriff finds the body of a teenage girl and fearing that his son or his son's friend is the killer, he bashes her face so that it is unrecognizable. The son's friend unintentionally witnesses this and leaves town. Almost twenty years later, his mother's body is found near a marker commemorating the dead girl. This book has also gotten great reviews and won an Agatha award. I subscribe to the Quail Ridge Bookstore newsletter and it popped up numerous times as a great mystery.
   

Sonya's Mystery Nominations

At last night's meeting we discussed mysteries briefly, but thought it would be best to put some nomination here on the blog and open up some discussion before making a final decision. I'm not a mystery reader, but I did a little research and have two nominations. I thought maybe we could post comments to each nomination, and other folks with nominations could put posts of their own up to get comments on those. The two I found were:

• The Way Life Should Be by Terry Shaw. This is a murder myster set in a small Maine town- a newspaper editor starts investigating his friend's murder and tries to track dow the real killer. What I thought was most intereseting about this one was that it was selected for publication by a social networking site, Gather- members reviewed and voted on their favorite work to be published.
• Murder for Hire- The Peruvian Pigeon. This one is set in a murder mystery acting troupe- bodies start piling up during one of their performances, so the woman in charge of the troupe tries to solve the mystery. The plot reminded me of last year's book, and I know a lot of us enjoyed that one.

Please don't think these are our only two choices- I just wanted to start the conversation. Also, I figure if we can choose a book online by 1/25 or so, that will give Cindy time to read the book and tell us where to stop by late February.

Who's Endorsing Who?

It seems like there's a lot of political interest in our group so I thought these two websites might be interesting to everyone. Today I saw David Price on tv and I thought, "I wonder who he's endorsing for President." A Google search led me to TheHill.com's Endorsements 2008 page, which lists presidential candidates and the Congressmen and Congresswomen that have publicly backed them. In case you were interested, Price has endorsed Edwards. However, the way the primaries are going, I think Price and myself are going to be looking for another candidate pretty soon.

Newsmeat was the other, more fun website I found. You can search by contributor or candidate to see who's contributing to who. I enjoyed the Hall of Fame feature where you can see who the celebrities support. Some tidbits: John Grisham for Clinton, Sean Penn for Edwards, Mark Ruffalo for Gravel.

Friday Favorites: Anna Karenina

I am still hovering at about 300 pages. But I do appreciate this book. Here are a few highlights for me so far

Favorite Setting: Darya/Dolly's ancestral home in the country. I love the chapters where she settles into the house, and then takes her 6 children to the bath and revels in their beauty and perfection, and her own pride in them. I love how Tolstoy describes her love for them as helping heal her profound sadness, in little bits.
Most Interesting Character: Levin
Favorite Character Name: Serpukhovskoy, come on it's just so fun to say!!
Most confusing Russian term: It took me forever to figure out what a samovar is, I had to ask some friends who are actually grad students in Russian. Of course I don't know why didn't just wiki it to begin with.
Most frustrating character: Anna (of course). A little too angst-y for me.

As I read Anna Karenina, I am reminded that what I really enjoy about Victorian-era novels is their morality. I like it when it takes some work to figure out things like what is the author's position on this behavior? How does he judge these characters and their decisions? My favorite authors are the ones like George Eliot who have genuine love and compassion for their characters, even when they make the worst mistakes. Sometimes her writing feels like, "Oh I hate to tell you this, but this person is about to do something really stupid." Tolstoy uses this tone too, for example in in the scenes leading up to and during Vronsky's horse race.

What keeps this book interesting to me is how I'm not sure how Tolstoy is ultimately going to judge his characters. He certainly has compassion for all of them, even while describing their limitations. I am looking forward to the final resolution (500 pages to go) and our discussion.

The Neverending Story

Just out of curiosity, what's the longest book you've ever read? Other than Anna Karenina, of course. For me, it was I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, coming in at 912 pages. I picked it up just before a trip to Europe in college precisely for its length because I knew I had an eight-hour flight (my first ever) ahead of me. Little did I know I would spend that flight gripping my arm rests and staring at the seatbelt light, willing it to turn off and thus ensure my safety as Lloyd Dobler promised me it would in Say Anything. It never did and alas, nothing was read. Once we landed (safely) and began traveling by train, I allowed myself to relax a little and read. I could not put this book down once I started reading it. It's embarrassing to admit this, but my boyfriend had to bribe me with ice cream at times (ein Schokoladeneis!) to get me to stop reading and go sight-see. I think I finished it in about a week. However, as engrossing as this book apparently was, I remember very little about it; I wouldn't even feel comfortable recommending it to you. I suppose I liked it but I've never had any desire to revisit it. If nothing else, thinking about it today has renewed my hope that I will be able to finish Anna Karenina by next Tuesday.

So, what are your longest reads? Has anyone else read I Know This Much is True?

Anna Karenina Discussion Guide

The Penguin discussion guide for Anna Karenina can be found here. Just posting it now in hopes that someone will remember to bring it to next week's meeting.

How far are you? I'm in Part 3.

Friday Fun: Glassbooth.org!

Instead of a top 5 list, I thought you all might like to spend your Friday down time determining your candidate preferences for the 2008 election cycle. Step into the glass voting booth here. This is actually the most useful and comprehensive of these types of tools I've seen.

I've resisted it because I really want a Madame President, but according to my score, it's time to hop on board the O-train!

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone! I finally figured out how to post something - took me a while though. I must be missing some brain cells.

Holiday movies:
I saw Atonement in Atlanta with my mom and grandma a few days ago. It is very well done and true to the book. There are several flashbacks which can get confusing at times (my grandma had a hard time following) but if you read the book it should be easy for you.

Katie's top 5 Books of 2007

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows
2. Eat, Pray, Love
3. When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman
4. Kushiel's Dart by Jaqueline Carey
5. Katherine by Anya Seton

I love historical fiction so it is no surprise that two of my top 5 would be of this category (#3 and #5). Sharon Kay Penman is a wonderful historical author - her books are very well researched and very well told. It is all very historical so there are lots of battle scenes and lots of political background. Not near as fluffy as Phillipa Greggory (whom I also love and can't wait until February to see The Other Boylen Girl movie). Anya Seton is another great author I have recently discovered. She wrote in the 1940's and has done a great job portraying the women of her books. Katherine is a beautiful, historical love story told of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Kushiel's Dart is the strange one of the group. It is set in a fantasy world and is a great adventure story. Some if the subject matter is a little out of the box - I will let you read the BN reviews to find out the details - but it is really good and really captivating.

Katie's top 5 TV shows of 2007

1. American Idol
2. Criminal Minds
3. Private Practice
4. Friday Night Lights
5. America's Next Top Model

Ok - I finally added my little bit.
Hope you all are doing well.
Happy New Year!!!!!!

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

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.

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!

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.

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/

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.

Last Minute Shopping Guide

Looking for gift ideas? Try these.

1. All-purpose gift for book club members #1.
2. For Dawn.
3. For Allison.
4. All-purpose gift #2.

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!

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.

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.