NE Albuquerque Last Update
June 18, 2006 Book Club |
|
|
| Book Club
Book Club meets the second
Tuesday of each
month at the Flying Star on Juan Tabo (just north of Montgomery), and new members are
always welcome! Contact Jill at riesterr@msn.com for
more information.
July 11, 2006
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores
the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Forget your image of an economist as a crusty
professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his
attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your
baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as
one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York
Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad
outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives
behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of
everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts
have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's
wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the
organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns.
While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious
issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage
between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades
later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex
phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. (from
Publishers Weekly)
August 8
The Brief History of the Dead by
Kevin Brockmeier
A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth,
effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled
Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the
planet's dead populate "the city," located on a surreal Earth-like
alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the
living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen
tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories
work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best
friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former
journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier (The Truth About
Celia) follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial,
bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives.
He meditates throughout on memory's power and resilience, and gives
vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe's spots might detach
and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously
keeps the stakes of Laura's struggle high: as she fights for survival,
her parents find a second chance for love—but only if Laura can keep
them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on
relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say
that, in a way, the virus has already arrived. (from Publishers Weekly)
September 12
Josephine: A Life of the Empress
by Carolly Erickson
When she married Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796, Rose de Beauharnais was a 32-year-old widow who had narrowly escaped the French Revolution's guillotine. She was six years older than he, notorious for her lovers, and unlikely to give him children, but possessed of the social connections and skills the ambitious young general thought would help him rise in the revolutionary army. He gave "his living reverie, his dream of perfect passion" a new name, Josephine--perhaps hoping it would blot out her unsavory past. Instead, she continued to be promiscuous as well as extravagant, and the marriage soured as Napoleon ascended to first consul and then emperor of the French. Yet he divorced her only in 1810, when political events made it clear he must have an heir. This highly colored biography practically wallows in Josephine's lurid personal life, colored in by luscious descriptions of the period's clothes, food, and amusements. The author, whose many previous books mostly deal with English royalty, does not burden readers with excessive doses of French history; the focus is always on Josephine, whose psychology is discussed at length. Erickson succeeds in making her subject an attractive figure, if hardly an exemplar of moral rectitude. (from Amazon.com)
October 10
A Confederacy of Dunces by John
Kennedy Toole
Ignatius J. Reilly is the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job. Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber
November 14, 2006
The Average American: The Extraordinary
Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen by Kevin O'Keefe
John Q. Public. Plain Jane. The Average Joe. We know the type but we've never met the person, until Kevin O'Keefe look matters into his own hands. O'Keefe hit the road, pored over surveys and studies, and asked questions of all the "just-folks" that he met, in an effort to find the one man or woman who is more average than any other. And he asked, what does America - a nation as fond of its superlatives, its winners, and its "best of" lists as it is of the common man - think about the averageness within it?" He traveled from New Hampshire to Hawaii to talk business with the proprietors of Average Joe and Average Jane Athletics Company, spent election day with the first candidate for the Average America party, and was wowed by the magician Myklar the Ordinary. He looked closely at what is often overlooked: the especially ordinary, the remarkably everyday, the extraordinarily average. Combining this search with a look into the history and assumptions about the average American, O'Keefe discovered that many myths about Americans are untrue. We are not as culturally divided as is often said, nor as fat. Most people are staying in suburbs rather than moving to exurbs, IQs are rising, and no, not everyone wants to be famous. As he had hoped, he learned a lot about this country, the people in it, and whether it's okay to be average. (from the publisher)
December 12, 2006
1,000 Places to See Before You Die
by Patricia Schultz
This hefty volume reminds vacationers that hot
tourist spots are small percentage of what's worth seeing out there. A
quick sampling: Venice's Cipriani Hotel; California's Monterey
Peninsula; the Lewis and Clark Trail in Oregon; the Great Wall of China;
Robert Louis Stevenson's home in Western Samoa; and the Alhambra in
Andalusia, Spain. Veteran travel guide writer Schultz divides the book
geographically, presenting a little less than a page on each location.
Each entry lists exactly where to find the spot (e.g. Moorea is located
"12 miles/19 km northwest of Tahiti; 10 minutes by air, 1 hour by boat")
and when to go (e.g., if you want to check out The Complete Fly Fisher
hotel in Montana, "May and Sept.-Oct. offer productive angling in a
solitary setting"). This is an excellent resource for the intrepid
traveler. (from Publishers Weekly)
January 9, 2007
Balzac and the Little Chinese
Seamstress by Dai Sijie
This beautifully presented novella tracks the
lives of two teens, childhood friends who have been sent to a small
Chinese village for "re-education" during Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Sons of doctors and dentists, their days are now spent muscling buckets
of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. But the boys-Luo and
the unnamed narrator-receive a bit of a reprieve when the villagers
discover their talents as storytellers; they are sent on monthly treks
to town, tasked with watching a movie and relating it in detail on their
return. It is here that they encounter the little seamstress of the
title, whom Luo falls for instantly. When, through a series of comic and
clever tricks and favors, the boys acquire a suitcase full of forbidden
Western literature, Luo decides to "re-educate" the ignorant girl whom
he hopes will become his intellectual match. That a bit of Balzac can
have an aphrodisiac effect is a happy bonus. Ultimately, the book is a
simple, lovely telling of a classic boy-meets-girl scenario with a
folktale's smart, surprising bite at the finish. The story movingly
captures Maoism's attempts to imprison one's mind and heart (with the
threat of the same for one's body), the shock of the sudden cultural
shift for "bourgeois" Chinese, and the sheer delight that books can
offer a downtrodden spirit. (from School Library Journal)
February 13, 2007
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Brian Robeson, 13, is the only passenger on a
small plane flying him to visit his father in the Canadian wilderness
when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. The plane drifts off course
and finally crashes into a small lake. Miraculously Brian is able to
swim free of the plane, arriving on a sandy tree-lined shore with only
his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had
given him as a present. The novel chronicles in gritty detail Brian's
mistakes, setbacks, and small triumphs as, with the help of the hatchet,
he manages to survive the 54 days alone in the wilderness. Paulsen
effectively shows readers how Brian learns patience: to watch, listen,
and think before he acts as he attempts to build a fire, to fish and
hunt, and to make his home under a rock overhang safe and comfortable.
An epilogue discussing the lasting effects of Brian's stay in the
wilderness and his dim chance of survival had winter come upon him
before rescue adds credibility to the story. Paulsen tells a fine
adventure story, but the sub-plot concerning Brian's preoccupation with
his parents' divorce seems a bit forced and detracts from the book. As
he did in Dogsong (Bradbury, 1985), Paulsen emphasizes
character growth through a careful balancing of specific details of
survival with the protagonist's thoughts and emotions. (from School
Library Journal)
Past Selections 2005
The Color of Water by James McBride 2004 |
