Book Club, September

One year of book clubs tonight! Wow.

Here are the books shared:

Bossypants, Tina Fey – Recommended

“Tina Fey’s new book Bossypants is short, messy, and impossibly funny (an apt description of the comedian herself). From her humble roots growing up in Pennsylvania to her days doing amateur improv in Chicago to her early sketches on Saturday Night Live, Fey gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of modern comedy with equal doses of wit, candor, and self-deprecation … Bossypants gets to the heart of why Tina Fey remains universally adored: she embodies the hectic, too-many-things-to-juggle lifestyle we all have, but instead of complaining about it, she can just laugh it off.” – Kevin Nguyen

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender – Recommended
“Taking her very personal brand of pessimistic magical realism to new heights (or depths), Bender’s second novel (following An Invisible Sign of My Own) careens splendidly through an obstacle course of pathological, fantastical neuroses. Bender’s narrator is young, needy Rose Edelstein, who can literally taste the emotions of whoever prepares her food, giving her unwanted insight into other people’s secret emotional lives—including her mother’s, whose lemon cake betrays a deep dissatisfaction. Rose’s father and brother also possess odd gifts, the implications of which Bender explores with a loving and detailed eye while following Rose from third grade through adulthood … this coming-of-age story makes a bittersweet dish, brimming with a zesty, beguiling talent.” – Publishers Weekly

The Handmaid, Margaret Atwood – Recommended
“In a startling departure from her previous novels, respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist’s nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the “morally fit” Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: “of Fred”), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be.” – Ann H. Fisher

Thyme of Death, Susan Wittig Albert – Neutral
“China Bayles, former rat-race lawyer, escapes to small-town Texas to operate an herb shop and enjoy the simple life. Murder interrupts her simple life, however, when a good friend and local protest organizer dies suddenly. Revelatory letters, a crazy-eyed dollmaker, a nationally known TV personality, her ex-cop lover, and a shifty developer complicate matters as China begins her amateurish investigation. Like her pursuit of the murderer, this provides pleasant escape from routine.” – Library Journal

The Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli – Recommended
“While the horrors of war are never far from the surface, the love stories, as well as Helen’s personal evolution, lie at the center of The Lotus Eaters … Soli’s visceral writing captures an alluring, dangerous country, and she excels at conveying the intricacies of war-torn lives. A few critics disagreed about the centrality of the romance and the characterizations, but overall, they had little but high praise for the work. ‘If you’ve never read a novel about the Vietnam War, this could be the book for you,’ concluded the Dallas Morning News.” – Bookmarks Magazine

The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman – Recommended
“Printing presses whirr, ashtrays smolder, and the endearing complexity of humanity plays out in Tom Rachman’s debut novel, The Imperfectionists. Set against the backdrop of a fictional English-language newspaper based in Rome, it begins as a celebration of the beloved and endangered role of newspapers and the original 24/7 news cycle … The chaos of the newsroom becomes a stage for characters unified by a common thread of circumstance, with each chapter presenting an affecting look into the life of a different player … This cacophony of emotion blends into a single voice, as the depiction of a paper deemed a ‘daily report on the idiocy and the brilliance of the species’ becomes more about the disillusion in everyday life than the dissolution of an industry.” -Dave Callanan

A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin – Recommended
“George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has become, in many ways, the gold standard for modern epic fantasy. Martin–dubbed the ‘American Tolkien’ by Time magazine–has created a world that is as rich and vital as any piece of historical fiction, set in an age of knights and chivalry and filled with a plethora of fascinating, multidimensional characters that you love, hate to love, or love to hate as they struggle for control of a divided kingdom. It is this very vitality that has led it to be adapted as the HBO miniseries ‘Game of Thrones.’” – Amazon

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins – Recommended
“In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch … Collins’s characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic, and engrossing. This book will definitely resonate with the generation raised on reality shows like ‘Survivor’ and ‘American Gladiator.’ Book one of a planned trilogy.” – Jane Henriksen Baird

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon – Highly Recommended
“First-novelist Chabon, with ‘distinctive vision’ and ‘an elegiac, graceful style,’ spins a story about alienated youth that, while serving up some familiar details of sex, alcohol and drugs, ‘fully engages the reader in the lives of an appealing cast of characters,’ said [Publishers Weekly].” – Publishers Weekly

One Day, David Nicholls – Neutral
“The Hollywood-ready latest from Nicholls (The Understudy) makes a brief pit stop in book form before its inevitable film adaptation. (It’s already in development.) The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public school boy, and Emma, the brainy Yorkshire lass, meet the day they graduate from university in 1988 and run circles around one another for the next 20 years. Dex becomes a TV presenter whose life of sex, booze, and drugs spins out of control, while Em dully slogs her way through awful jobs before becoming the author of young adult books. They each take other lovers and spouses, but they cannot really live without each other. Nicholls is a glib, clever writer, and while the formulaic feel and maudlin ending aren’t ideal for a book, they’ll play in the multiplex.” – Publishers Weekly

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver – Recommended
“This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tucson to a family farm in Virginia, where they got right down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one’s own produce but also of harvesting one’s own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that physically nourishes even as the recipes and the memories of cooks and gardeners past nourish our hearts and souls. Although the book maintains that eating well is not a class issue, discussions of heirloom breeds and making cheese at home may strike some as high-flown; however, those looking for healthful alternatives to processed foods will find inspiration to seek out farmers’ markets and to learn to cook and enjoy seasonal foods.” – Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library

Testimony, Anita Shreve – Not recommended
“Most reviewers hailed Testimony as a deft, insightful exploration into the tragic, far-ranging effects of a single night. Yet critics diverged on a number of points. Some thought that Shreve’s diverse perspectives made the sex scandal and other characters’ plights, such as those of the guilt-ridden adults, more immediate. But a few claimed that the fractured narrative distracted from examining the morally gray situation more fully and decreased the overall emotional impact. Character development similarly raised questions. As the reviewer from Los Angeles Times noted, the girl on the tape—portrayed more as vixen than victim—”is Shreve’s missed opportunity for an exploration of what drives young girls toward promiscuity.” In the end, however, Testimony—like Shreve’s other novels—is not always enjoyable, but it’s impossible to put down.” – Bookmarks Magazine

Secret Knowledge of Water, Craig Childs – Recommended
“The ‘essence of the American desert,’ as the subtitle of Craig Childs’s book has it, is water. A desert, by definition, lacks it, but when water does come, it comes in torrential, sometimes devastating abundance. Childs, a thirty-something desert rat with a vast knowledge of the Southwest’s remote corners, knows this fact well … The travels that Childs recounts in this vivid narrative take him from places sometimes parched, sometimes swimming, from the depths of the Grand Canyon to the dry limestone tanks of the lava-strewn Sonoran Desert … By turns travelogue, ecological treatise, and meditative essay, Childs’s book will speak to anyone who has spent time under desert skies, wondering when the next drop of rain might fall.” – Gregory McNamee

Room, Emma Donoghue – Recommended
“In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way–he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue’s Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time.” –Lynette Mong