Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Fall into Reading...

It's time to get your vote in! No, not for the presidential election we're all sick of hearing about, but for our next reads. Please click on the link below to see what books titles are available as choices for October and November; then vote for your top two picks.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8ZFSGZ7

Stay tuned to find out the winners.
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All Aboard for The Girl on the Train

This month the book discussion group met to discuss Paula Hawkins's psychological thriller The Girl on the Train. A lively discussion was accompanied with some light refreshments. Below are some additional resources on this book for your perusal.

Movie Tie-In


Discussion Questions

Read-a-Likes


Book Reviews


“I did as Gaskill said, I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and a bottle of water from a corner shop and took it to Witney’s only park, a rather sorry little patch of land surrounded by 1930s houses and given over almost entirely to an asphalted playground. I sat on a bench at the edge of this space, watching mothers and childminders scolding their charges for eating sand out of the pit. I used to dream of this, a few years back. I dreamed of coming here—not to eat ham and cheese sandwiches in between police interviews, obviously. I dreamed of coming here with my own baby. I thought about the buggy I would buy, all the time I would spend in Trotters and at the Early Leaning Centre sizing up adorable outfits and educational toys. I thought about how I would sit here, bouncing my own bundle of joy on my lap.”
               -  Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train

Author Interviews


Miscellany

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Saturday, July 23, 2016

Visiting with Some Goons...

For our July 2016 book discussion, we met to talk about Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. We enjoyed coffee ice cream with gold sprinkles, in honor of the character Bennie's penchant for adding gold flakes in his coffee. ;)

Ice cream, sprinkles, and books! What could be better?

Reviews



Author Interviews



Discussion Questions
  • How would you define this book? A novel or interconnected short stories? Do you ever get a feeling of a closure with anyone’s storyline?
  • Was this book like anything else you’ve read? Did it live up to your expectations based on the jacket description -- “a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunctions of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction, that we all must either master or succumb to the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both -- and escape the merciless progress of time -- in the transporting realms of art and music.” ?
  • This book takes place across many different locales (NYC, San Francisco, Naples, etc.). Did any one place seem more real or evocative than another? Which chapter was your favorite?
  • Do the coincidences of the book feel too contrived or do they mesh with your own “small world” experiences? For instance, Lulu has connections - direct or indirect - to all of the other characters in the book. The daughter of La Doll/Dolly, Lulu ends up working for Bennie and collaborating with Alex before marrying Joe, the grandson of the warrior seen on the safari tour taken by Lou, the mentor of Bennie, and his children. 
  • The cult of celebrity is one underlying theme in the book. What do you think the book says about the dangers of celebrity worship? About a culture in which political assassins can’t find a genocidal dictator but paparazzi can?
  • The idea of selling out is also a theme throughout the book, especially in the last chapter. Can art and commerce mix? When does an artist “sell out”? Is Egan being purposefully ironic by describing Scotty’s concert as “pure” and “untouched” when the way that everyone got to the concert was so disingenuous?
  • Do you agree with Sasha’s uncle that she is simply “lost” during her teens/early adulthood? Is there anything else that could have been done to help her? For that matter, for any of the book’s myriad “lost” characters (e.g., Rob, Scotty, Jocelyn, etc.)?
  • What do you think is the real reason behind Sasha’s kleptomania? Is it to regain a sense of control in a world that is out of her control? Is it to make people dependent on her (as in Bennie’s case)? Is it the mere shock & thrill? She starts shoplifting at age 13 but manages to stop for a few years in her late teens/early 20s -- what do you think causes her to pick it up again? Is it Rob’s death? After it causes her to lose her job, she still continues the habit. Do you think that she eventually shakes it? If so, how? Do you think that her “found art” hobby as an adult is just another manifestation of this? (“I don’t know why she loves junk so much. ‘Not junk,’ Mom will say. ‘Tiny pieces of our lives.’ She uses ‘found objects.’ They come from our house and our lives. She says they’re precious because they’re casual and meaningless. ‘But they tell the whole story if you really look.’ - pp. 206-207, chapter “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”)
  • Do you think there is any validity in Scotty’s observation “I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.” (p. 71, chapter “X’s and O’s”) ?
  • What do you make of the character Kitty? How is she able to forgive Jules Jones for attacking her? Yet she later spirals out of control and tanks her career after this attack. Why, in the jungle, does she seem willing to risk her life and the lives of Dolly and Lulu (especially given her own recognition of Lulu’s innocence, probably now shattered by this incident) by speaking out against the General? What do you make of her becoming a public darling again after her “relationship” with the General? Do you believe she thought this would happen?
  • Can you envision the future that Egan portrays? How do you imagine we get there from here to there - or in Egan’s parlance, from A to B?
  • Do you think that Bosco’s plan to document his own death and die by overwork can be considered an art project? Instead he ends up recovering and owning a dairy farm, as Sasha’s daughter tells us in a brief side note. Is there an irony to the fact that Egan never shows us how Bosco got from this A to B? All we know is that Jules Jones did ultimately write Conduit: A Rock-and-Roll Suicide (and perhaps that the phrase “time’s a goon becomes part of the parlance, as Benny later says it to Scotty). Is recovering and owning a dairy farm a kind of rock-and-roll suicide? In that respect, does Bosco ultimately achieve his goal?

Musicality

“The answers were maddeningly absent -- it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.” - p. 253, chapter “Pure Language”

Music plays a large role in the book. Here are just some of the many bands mentioned throughout the book’s pages:


●     Flipper
●     The Mutants
●     Eye Protection
●     The Stooges
●     Patti Smith
●     Black Flag
●     The Stranglers
●     The Nuns
●     Negative Trend
●     Crime
●     The Avengers
●     The Germs
●     Ricky Sleeper
●     Dave Brubeck
●     Joe Rees/Target Video


Lincoln’s collection of songs with pauses:
●     “Bernadette” by the Four Tops
●     “Foxey Lady” by Jimi Hendrix
●     “Young Americans” by David Bowie
●     “Fly Like an Eagle” by the Steve Miller Band
●     “Mighty Sword” by the Frames
●     “Long Train Runnin’” by the Doobie Brothers
●     “Supervixen” by Garbage
●     “Roxanne” by the Police
●     “Rearrange Beds” by an Horse
●     “Closing Time” by Semisonic
●     “Faith” by George Michael
●     “Good Times, Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin
●     “Pls. Play This Song on the Radio” by NOFX
●     “The Time of the Season” by Zombies
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKVnKnXrj9g1T1q1VYmYL7QBPQNDpWPG


“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn’t really over, so you’re relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.” - p. 223, chapter “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”

Here are some of the music-based locations and large musical festivals mentioned in the book:

●     Mabuhay Gardens (Bennie and his teen punk rock band dream of making it here) - http://oldpunkflyers.tumblr.com/mabuhaygardens
●     The Pyramid Club (Sasha is pictured outside here during the early 90s in Jules Jonses’ Conduit book) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Club
●     Monterey Pop - http://montereyinternationalpopfestival.com/festival/
●     Human Be-In - http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/rare-footage-of-human-be-in.html
●     Woodstock - http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/p/woodstock.htm

Members of our group wearing band / concert t-shirts


“Sow’s Ear” - the name of Bennie’s record company, likely a reference to the idiom “You can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” meaning you can’t make quality products out of inferior materials, symbolic of Bennie’s feelings that music is dead? - “‘The problem is,’ Bennie went on, ‘it’s not about sound anymore. It’s not about music. It’s about reach. That’s the bitter ---- pill I had to swallow.’” - p. 253, chapter “Pure Language”

Miscellany


-       Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball http://www.vanityfair.com/style/1996/07/capote199607
-       Malcolm Forbes’s seventieth birthday http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2010/this-was-then-malcolm-forbes-70th-birthday & http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2010/this-was-then-malcom-forbes-70th-part-ii
-       The party for Talk magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/business/media/03carr.html?_r=0
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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

All the Little Birdies Go Tweet, Tweet, Tweet for The Goldfinch

For the month of June, our intrepid book group members tackled Donna Tartt's tome The Goldfinch. We enjoyed a golden bird cake (pictured below) with our discussion of this hefty novel.


Please find below various resources regarding this Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Movie Adaptation


The Goldfinch Painting


Discussion Questions


Book/Literary Reviews


Author Interviews
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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Summer Reading

Summer will soon be upon us, which hopefully means we'll have some extra time to vacation, relax, and of course read!

For the summer, our book choices are...

June 21 – The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
July 19 – A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
August 16 – The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
September 20 – The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach



Please join us for any or all of these upcoming discussions. We will meet at 7pm in the library's Sivess meeting room. Light refreshments will be served.

If you have any questions, contact jen @ southriverlibrary.org.


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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

It's that time again ... let your voice be heard for the next few months' book choices!

Please visit our survey to select your top three choices:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KRJHRXV

The three books with the most votes will be our reads for July, August, and September.
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Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Law & Order: Pemberley

For the month of May, we dabbled in murder and mayhem ... only on paper, of course! The group discussed Death Comes to Pemberley, a murder mystery sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice written by P.D. James, and enjoyed tea and iced rose cakes from a recipe via The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye.



Multimedia tie-ins

Regency culture & other stray tidbits

Jane Austen "Easter eggs" hidden in Death Comes to Pemberley
  • Sir Walter Elliot (briefly employs Wickham) - father of Anne Elliot, the protagonist of Austen's last completed novel, Persuasion
  • Mr. & Mrs. Martin, Mr. & Mrs. Knightley (mentioned in the last chapter before the epilogue) - main characters from Austen's novel Emma

More resources on Jane Austen

Hindsight is 20/20

James makes little nods to what we now know happens in the future. For instance ...

    ... Dr. Belcher conducts “experiments on the time taken for blood to clot under different circumstances and on the speed with which changes took place in the body after death.” - p. 94

    ... Sir Hardcastle jokes that scientists should find “a way of distinguishing one man’s blood from another’s? We would welcome such assistance although, of course, it would deprive me of my function and Brownrigg and Mason of their jobs.” - p. 95

    ... Alveston surmises that “surely war and a first-hand experience of the realities of battle could corrupt the sensitivities of even a normally peaceable man so that violence becomes less abhorrent? Should we not consider that possibility?” - p. 141

    ... Darcy argues for a system of appeals to court verdicts; Alveston imagines a future where the defense can make a closing speech just like the prosecution. (pp. 146-147)


Professional reviews of Death Comes to Pemberley

Discussion questions
  • Has anyone read any other works by either author before? If so, how do you find this book compares? Are the characters similar to or different from Pride and Prejudice?
  • Jane Austen never wrote scenes in which only men were present. She also wrote very little about the servants, especially never from their point of view. Why do you think that James chose to depart so drastically from Austen by doing both of these things? Could this story have been told without hearing from the menfolk and servants directly?
  • In a similar vein, Austen revealed very little about wars that were ongoing, even though several of her characters were in the military (as were some of her brothers in real life). What do you think lead James to include details about military exploits within the pages of Death to Pemberley?
  • Do you find it troubling, surprising, or short-sighted that the investigation totally negates any possibility of female involvement? The investigators are quick to say no woman could have caused the wound, Lydia’s bags are not confiscated with Denny’s and Wickham’s, and Georgiana is nearly outcast to her aunt’s as having no bearing or insight to bring to the case.
  • Based on the depiction here of the court proceedings and sentencing being an object of entertainment, does it seem like the publicity of capital cases is actually a deterrent to crime? What do you think makes the courtroom drama so interesting to people?
  • Do you find Wickham at all a redeemable character? So many of the people he knew in his youth (and later burned) were convinced that, despite having not been in contact with him for years, that it was impossible for him to be a murderer. And, Reverend Cornbinder insists “his virtues outweigh his faults” (p. 261) and that Wickham is a changed man for having gone through the ordeal of the court system. Do you think that Wickham will keep on the straight and narrow in the future or is a leopard unable to change his spots?
  • Were you surprised by the reveals? Was the mystery satisfactorily explained for you? 

About P.D. James
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