Archive for the ‘Bookclub’ Category

Bookclub Day! click here, or follow the link above…

In other news, Ms O had her last day of preschool on Thursday. It was full on pomp and circumstance… okay I wasn’t, but it did have a few cute moments…

When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up Olivia had said she wanted ‘to be a girl named Olivia’.   Well,  she may not be reaching for the stars yet, but at least she won’t be changing her name to Olivier anytime soon.

But if she did, I would still love her, and with her father’s Greek lineage, facial hair will never be problem…

*Note to Self
I’m gonna miss my Tuesdays and Thursdays…

I’ve been such a lazy poster lately, and now that the sun is out… I guess I just have to get up that much earlier.

I’ve actually been rather busy so you can’t completely blame me. I had the Hubby working on a ‘honey-do’ job…

After a least a year of plotting, and planning and trying to figure out a way to get the hubby to do a little building project  AND finish said project now titled “The Husband Project” …

It actually happened.

All household activities stopped for two days as my father and the Hubby put together a greenhouse (on Fathers Day), reminiscent of the Amish barn raising in Witness…unfortunatly without Harrison Ford OR Viggo Mortensen.

The hubby, however, did sport the beard.

The building itself went up without any trouble, the same cannot be said for a pair of tomatoes plants.

It still hurts my heart.

I have come to assume the men in my family do not really realize their sheer strength when it comes to prying posts and toppling into gardens.

Just saying…

PS – thanks Olivia for squealing. Mommy loves you most.

We will be calling this ‘Mommies New Office”… She is very happy.

Perhaps it’s also time to announce summer bookclub books? What could be more exciting – a greenhouse AND new books!

Fine, I don’t get out much.

Moving on, I decided to put both July and August up in the spirit of the two months of summer…

Our July selection is Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden

From Booklist

In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn’t know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase.  When the girl, called Nell, grows up, she starts to piece together bits of her story, but just as she’s on the verge of going to England to trace the mystery to its source, her grandaughter, Cassandra, is left in her care. When Nell dies, Cassandra finds herself the owner of a cottage in Cornwall, and makes the journey to England to finally solve the puzzle of Nell’s origins. Shifting back and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling, old-fashioned novel, as well-cushioned as a Victorian country house, replete with family secrets, stories-within-stories, even a maze and a Dickensian rag-and-bone shop.

And, Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, for August

Description

We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building’s tenants, who, for their part, are barely aware of her existence. Then there’s Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma’s trust and to see through Renée’s timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

*     *     *

I have to say I am especially excited about the first of these two books; I have been racing through the Shadow of the Wind just to start it…

*Note to Self
Ah, books and gardening what more could a girl ask for… perhaps a man servant and a latte?

Bookclub day again, and I’m going to warm you this novel was a bit ‘different’ to write about.

You’ll see..

You can either click here, or the link above.

__________________________________________________

So I was lying in bed last night thinking, as I do on occasion, about the stale pee smell in my bedroom and the difficulty of really scrubbing a cushy queen mattress well.

I started thinking about a plastic bed covers.

So Romantic.

Stuff happens in the adult bed that you just can’t have a plastic bed cover for. Not only will it hinder your love life, but will undoubtedly make you feel like a three year old.

The alternative to the plastic bed cover is having Ms. O stop mistaking my soft warm bed for the bathroom. Coming in for a snuggle is one thing, peeing on me is another.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t already sharing the bed with the Hubby and Lil’ A. Neither of whom seem to wake up for anything, including fresh pee. So when an accident, does occur it’s only Ms. O and I who wake up and deal with it. Meaning, I clean Ms. O, put her back into a nice dry bed, go get a towel and have the glorious option of either sleeping on it, or asking the dog if he’ll move over on the couch.

I usually get the towel…

Not cool.

So while in bed the other night, dreaming of plastic, having forced Ms. O to go pee twice before bed, I waited. I waited for the usual 5am appearance, the usual ‘mommy I wanna cuddle’ and the usual warm feeling of pee puddling near my thigh.

She never came in.

It was a night free of pee.

I smiled, snuggled into my pillow and let out a sigh of relief.  As I exhaled and relaxed away that feeling of anticipation, I rolled into pee.

Warm, awesome pee.

Lil’A’s diaper had come apart and there I was…in the puddle…again.

*Note to Self
Plastic bed covers…humm…maybe not so bad after all…

Okay, I didn’t plan on doing this, but when it came down as to which bookclub book I was going to pick I couldn’t decide between two, so I picked the shorter one.

Well the ‘other’ one has been glaring at me ever since.

It just sits there…looking at me.

And then started to read The Book of Secrets… and the first few pages were a so boring… I opened up the other one… I CAN’T PUT IT DOWN…

I’m sorry.

New June bookclub title…

Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind

From Publishers Weekly

Ruiz Zafón’s novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault’s Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax’s novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax’s novels. As he grows up, Daniel’s fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a “porcelain gaze,” Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend’s sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Officially, Carax’s dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax’s childhood friend. As Daniel’s quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax’s begin to emerge. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is “God’s dandruff”; servants obey orders with “the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects”). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel.

*Note to Self
New book new layout, what can I say… I needed a change

Okay Grandma I get it… no planting until May long weekend.

So I thought I was going to be all prepared. I checked the weather and I heard a windstorm was going to come. So being the clever person I am, I ran outside and tarped up my little garden, figuring everything was cool.

One gust of wind later, my fence blew down, and the 30 second storm had passed. As a precaution I decided the leave the tarp up through the night.

The next morning my fence and buds had survived.

I de-tarped, took the children to preschool and came home to this…

Awesome.

Yes, that is hail.

It was followed by a monsoon.

So while I camp out in my yard with an umbrella and blanket protecting my little green children from harm (okay, I’m not really doing that.. yes I am) hovering  and waiting for the weather to pass… I’ll announce June’s bookclub book.

M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets

From Publishers Weekly

Winner of Canada’s esteemed Giller Prize, this complex novel is at once a story of the British Empire in Africa and a very postmodern meditation on the allures and pitfalls of narrative. It’s set in the racial melting pot of East Africa, where African, Arab, Indian, English and German cultures mesh. The plot has two major strands: the present, in which an Indian-born retired history teacher, Pius Fernandes, discovers a diary written by Alfred Corbin, an English consul stationed in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1913; and the past of the diary entries themselves, whose gaps and omissions Fernandes imaginatively fills with his own narrative. Corbin is posted to Kikono, a small town near Mt. Kilimanjaro, where he falls in love with his housekeeper, Mariamu, a young local woman betrothed to a bumbling shopkeeper. After the marriage, she bears a son, Ali, who has suspiciously light-colored skin and gray eyes. The second part of the novel follows “dashing” Ali’s adventures as a successful salesman who moves to London with his young wife, Rita, who as a girl was a student of Fernandes’s and with whom he was in love. In the present day, Rita visits Fernandes in Africa and ultimately convinces him to give up his prying into the lives of “those who’ve lived a little more intensely than their neighbors.” The book is lush with evocations of East African physical, cultural and historical landscapes. But energy is lost as Vassanji indulges in discursive tangents about the nature of history at the expense of sustained dramatic storytelling

*Note to Self
OMG brilliant idea… Little cocktail umbrellas…

Wow… where did March go? I have 4 days to read a remaining 288 pages…feels like University, the day before a final, all over again.

No pressure…

And now it’s time to announce Aprils Bookclub selection…  Here is a goodie from 1997. Using the Old Testament story of Dinah as inspiration, Diamant’s fictional novel recounts biblical times from the perspective of a woman.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Amazon.com

The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider’s look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob’s daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah–all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery. “Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges,” Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. “They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember.” Remembering women’s earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it’s been said that The Red Tent is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God’s daughters, instead of her sons. –Gail Hudson

*Note to Self
Happy Reading!

Time to announce another bookclub book!

I’ve been itching for days to blab on about “The Help” but won’t…chocolate pie anyone…?

March’s choice is an oldy from 2005… okay 2005 wasn’t that long ago…

A bit of a controversial story and I don’t know whether you will love it or hate it, but I can promise it will definitely give us something to talk about.

If you’ve already read it – don’t worry- just come back for the chat on March 28th.

The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards

From Publisher’s Weekly

Edwards’s assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father’s disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter’s handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul’s twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David’s deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters’ lives, and Phoebe’s absence corrodes her birth family’s core over the course of the next 25 years. David’s undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents’ icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. Though the impact of Phoebe’s loss makes sense, Edwards’s redundant handling of the trope robs it of credibility. This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion.

*Note to Self

Thank you computer virus for my new laptop…

Bookclub day!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello – first bookclub gathering!  I hope we get some good conversation flowing… now, later, over the course of the weekend, whenever…

I’ll start…

Was it just me or were the first 100 pages really hard to get into?

To be honest I got to a point when I was looking at the book, annoyed that this was the first book club pick, remembering all the great reviews I had read, and decided I needed to do something before I chucked it across it the room.

So…

I cheated.

Well, not so much as cheated like I read the cliff notes, but I did go down to the library and pick up the audio version.  I feel so guilty…

No I don’t.

IT WAS THE BEST IDEA EVER!!!

I have never listened to an audio book before and in retrospect, had I tried it out while at university, I probably would have passed that Classical Purists 341 class…

Have you ever tried to read Ulysses? I didn’t think so.

So, the audio book – it was great. It brought an entirely new dimension to the novel, which in turn made me go back to the actual book, pick it up and carry on.

In general, I really liked the novel. It felt like a smart persons Di Vince Code. But by no means was it traditionally suspenseful; however I was always curious to see how the story would continue play out.

I have a few thoughts about some of the related themes throughout the novel, and the odd observation. My first is about this notion of curiosity, probably one of the leading motivators of the novel.   Reading about that moment when the narrator found the strange Gothic text full of random personal letters, on her father’s quiet shelf, how can you not help yourself from nosily read through it?

Impossible! I would have been all over that like a dirty shirt.

Or those moments when the strange Gothic texts start to find you! How can you not be intrigued by its sudden appearance, and desperately want to learn more?

I started to wonder if this book was a lesson in curiosity, like the familiar proverb “curiosity killed the cat,” the more intent the characters were on discovering truth,  the more harm would seem to come to them – or at least lurk behind a bookcase.  It made me wonder, if none of them fell into this curious temptation what would have happened to them. We did met one character that plainly ignored his dragon book, although he did wind up with a catatonic fiancé….

Layering is the second theme that runs throughout the text. The layers of relationships shape the text.   The Rossi/Getzi relationship needs to happen to have the Paul/ Helen relationship which would then facilitate the narrator’s story. Had Rossi simply ignored the dragon text, nothing would have happened.

But by layering the progression of these relationships and creating a dialogue in which all characters are roughly moving forward with the exact same motivation, one cannot ignore that idea, the layers are representing the idea that history does indeed repeat itself. Whether through people or circumstances, I believe this is Kostova’s strongest lesson of the novel. History will be doomed to repeat itself if we do not change the pattern.

The third theme is the title, The Historian and what its true definition is. The title specifically refers to Dracula; however, I think it is much more than that. Everyone, throughout the novel, is looking for a connection with the past, thus, each character is a Historian. Whether digging through their personal histories, in the case of Helen and the narrator, or society’s past, in the case of Paul and Rossi’s more scholarly approach, they all are represented in the title.

Dracula, identified initially as the Historian because he amasses great texts from the ages, is more or less just a symbol. He is the ‘living’ representation that history never dies; he represents all the terrible and shameful actions that society chooses to ignore or repress and as result, is doomed to repeat.

Perhaps that is why Dracula does not die at the end of the book, and the narrator is given her own copy of the dragon book, (I never thought Helen killed him, it was a too easy way for him to go) because we need to perpetuate this idea, again, of history repeating itself and Dracula is once again resurrected.

Interesting note – was it me or did all the relationships in the novel develop really quickly? Rossi and Helens mother, Paul and Helen, the narrator and Barley they felt like they took three days to develop into “love”.

Paul and Helens relationship felt a tad unrealistic, and my eyes rolled when he proposed. Granted, inevitably they needed to get together to include the presence of the narrator. Similarly, the narrator’s own romance with Barley was a bit rushed and was included in the novel only as a means of transitioning the narrator to womanhood, and to fulfill the role as protector in getting her to her father, and Rossi fell for his Romanian farm girl once he made the Dracula connection.

I also noted that – upon re-reading the preface, in the narrators list of thank-yous Barleys name is omitted – this is no surprise, as I never believed that this relationship was more than a romance that ended in the hotel room. There was that moment when he moved away from her and said, “Ah, you’re just a kid,” and instantly he emotionally removed himself from the narrator. On one hand I thought this was the most realistic relationship in the novel.  However, once they “separated” Barley from the narrator, at least from my perspective he just became a tag along. As a result, I think this added to my skepticism of the confronting Dracula scene.

The odd climax of the story seemed very convenient and rushed. One minute Dracula was throwing a man across the room with super human strength and the next he’s been shot dead with a single silver bullet.

Pa-lease.

You’re telling me Dracula has outlived man, in a cave for over the past 509 years, to be killed in 2 seconds. It just didn’t feel plausible – yes, I know, silver bullet…  I just would have thought he should have had some minions around to engage in more of a dramatic scuffle…

The conclusion of the text was wonderful.  I believe, Kostova did an excellent job tying all her loose ends with a little hint of intrigue in the mix.  Did the narrator get her dragon book from Dracula? Will we ever really know? It was a strong way to end a curiously suspenseful novel.

In retrospect this novel was more about the ride then the conclusion, on occasion Kostrova spent a little too much time showing off her own research then focusing on the progression of the story. However, it was well written, entertaining, hardly scary as some reviews made it out to be  and I give it a strong 3.5 out of 5

Your thoughts?

Another month, another book…

I’m actually really excited about this particular read.  It was at the top of all the bestseller lists of 2009, including Goodreads best of 2009…granted Twilight was also on that list…

Now, if you are a book nerd and never heard of Goodreads – then you better check it out. Their goal is essentially to help you find “good reads” based on your interests – it never lets me down! Plus, if you are also, like me, extremely attractive AND can spend hours on amazons’ website, then this Is the place for you –their newsletter is also enjoyable.

I think for this particularly rainy Monday, I will chuck in a princess movie, pump my kids full of cookies and popcorn, and grab my snuggie…

Hell.

No.

Rather… stay in my housecoat, brew a pot of tea and open this month’s book.

Work can wait.

Okay it can’t.

But a girl can dream can’t she?

(Remember to meet here on January 30th to chat about The Historian)

And now to announce our second book…

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

From Publisher’s Weekly

Set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing “about what disturbs you.” The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies–and mistrusts–enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who’s raised 17 children, and Aibileen’s best friend Minny, who’s found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.

*Note to Self

Maybe work can wait…an hour…or six?

If you could see my bedroom, my office, the bathroom drawer…the top of the microwave… the top of the entertainment unit… the top of the lamp…my purse…inside the stroller…and the laundry room…

…You would find a book, or 10. Most of which i have started to read but found myself too distracted by life to finish.

I have finished some! – For those i deserve a medal.

That moment between, work, kids, husband, dogs, extended family…and episodes of The Jersey Shore just sometimes isn’t long enough to go find a book and re-read the opening paragraph for the eight time.

But this year will be different (yes i say that every year – but i mean it this time…)

12 months in 12 books – how hard can that be?

And so begins, (said with glorious exclamation) “the Nuttermother Bookclub“.

It’s easy, everyone can play along. We read a book, and a month later i post a long winded critique and we chat in the comments box.

No one needs to leave their house, make appy’s or brush their hair. If you’ll notice i added a new page at the top of the menu bar called ‘bookclub’ under which you will eventually find all twelve books as they progress. The idea here being – you can always add to a current or past book – as not all of us are fast readers, or start at the same point. Either way it is an opportunity to try something new…

(I will take book suggestions and recommendations)

And now to announce our first book…

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

From Publisher’s Weekly

“In 1972, a 16-year-old American living in Amsterdam finds a mysterious book in her diplomat father’s library. The book is ancient, blank except for a sinister woodcut of a dragon and the word “Drakulya,” but it’s the letters tucked inside, dated 1930 and addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor,” that really pique her curiosity. Her widowed father, Paul, reluctantly provides pieces of a chilling story; it seems this ominous little book has a way of forcing itself on its owners, with terrifying results. Paul’s former adviser at Oxford, Professor Rossi, became obsessed with researching Dracula and was convinced that he remained alive. When Rossi disappeared, Paul continued his quest with the help of another scholar, Helen, who had her own reasons for seeking the truth. As Paul relates these stories to his daughter, she secretly begins her own research. Kostova builds suspense by revealing the threads of her story as the narrator discovers them: what she’s told, what she reads in old letters and, of course, what she discovers directly when the legendary threat of Dracula looms. Along with all the fascinating historical information, there’s also a mounting casualty count, and the big showdown amps up the drama by pulling at the heartstrings at the same time it revels in the gruesome. Exotic locales, tantalizing history, a family legacy and a love of the bloodthirsty: it’s hard to imagine that readers won’t be bitten, too…”

*Note to self
Happy reading!