Wednesday, September 12, 2007

9/11 books discussion

Hi
Last night the book club met to discuss the fiction 9/11 books that we read. There were 9 people at the meeting and we discussed several books including: The Good Life by Jay McInerney, The Good Priest's Son by Reynolds Price, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Kevin Kalfus, Extremely Loud and Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Falling Man: a novel by Don Delillo. A book that was mentioned but not talked about, other than to say it was good, was The Writing on the Wall by Lynne S. Schwartz. It was a stimulating discussion fraught with memories and thoughts not always welcome, but needing to be talked about. The members came prepared to talk about the book or books that they read and we also did some readings from the books - passages that struck a chord or especially well-phrased sentences or thoughts.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Book club 2007

This year the Evening Book/Movie club at the library has read a variety of books and disliked many of them. However, this makes for great discussion. It is much more fun to talk about why people hated a book, than to have everyone agree that it was wonderful and then have nothing to talk about. Here is what we've read or plan to read in 2007 :

January - Someone Not Really her Mother by Harriet Scott Chessman
February – An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg (movie)
March – Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian
April – Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston
May – The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (movie)
June – The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
July – When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin
August – Cheat and Charmer by Elizabeth Frank
September – Choice of fiction about aftermath of 9/11
October – Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
November – (movie) The Importance of Being Earnest
December – Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg

Tonight we are discussing the various fiction books we've read about 9/11 for this month's meeting. I read The Good Priest's Son by Reynolds Price and The Good Life by Jay McInerney. The Good Life was much better and more what I was looking for in a "9/11" book. Two couples (Luke and Sasha, and Russell and Corrine) whose lives become intertwined when Luke and Corrine meet as they volunteer for the night shift to help feed the ground zero workers. Both couples are having problems with their marriages and Luke and Corrine have an affair and comtemplate moving on with life together. The best parts of the book were Luke's description of trying to find his friend after the towers collapsed and Russell's Thanksgiving dinner speech.

I was disappointed in The Good Priest's Son. The tragedy wasn't essential to the story and there seemed to be a subtext to all of the conversations that I wasn't picking up on. I haven't read any other books by Price and so don't know if this is a common style for him.

Val - 9/11/-07