Ninth Meeting: The Charioteer

June's meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary was hosted by my friend and former roommate Matt. He picked a book called The Charioteer, by Mary Renault. The story was about Laurie, a young british soldier in WWII who also happened to be gay. He struggled with these feelings and with who he wanted to be, and found himself quickly caught in a love triangle- one side he is being pulled by Andrew, a very innocent concientious objector o the war with whom he has an innocent love that neither of them act on, and on the other side, he is being pulled by Ralph, a young man that Laurie had gone to school with when he was young. Ralph is not innocent like Andrew, at all, and in many ways acts as a mentor to Laurie as he discovered himself and what his sexual-identity was.

The book was really difficult to read-- perhaps our most difficult yet! For one thing, the book was written in the 1950's, and for another thing, the book was written by a British woman. So, the vernacular and style were basically foreign. However, there were times when the language used was absolutely poetic. The writing is much more flowery than is found in today's novels, and in between the vague and hard-to-understand sections were beautiful descriptions.


For me, something that made the book even more difficult was that I didn't really like any of the characters. In fact, my alliance laid more with the peripheral characters in the story than Laurie or his two loves. Also, I embarrassingly interpreted all 1950's British slang as innuendo.... and I found out at the meeting that I wasn't the only one who experienced this!

The discussion of the book was one of our best yet. It was a small group this time (only six), probably because of the difficulty of the book, but six of us showed up with treats and ideas in hand. As usual, we were divided on our opinions of the book, but we all agreed that we didn't quite know what happened. Thank goodness Beth (who majored in English literature in college) was there to explain everything to us! Matt asked some great questions that really made me appreciate the story more. After having the plot re-explained to us, we discussed the symbolism in the book, and then whether we thought the book was still relevant today. We also talked about the author who wrote the book partially based on personal experience. Ms. Renault was working as a nurse during the war, and was a lesbian. She wrote the story based on gay soldiers she had befriended, and presumably also relied on her own experience while in search for her gay identity in a time where there was no such thing.


Though I didn't particularly like reading the book, my opinion towards it after our discussion is a lot higher.

Rembrandt Affair

Every night before bed, I read for at least a half an hour. I have done this basically since I could read. When I was little it was much more exhilarating-- I would hide under my covers with a flashlight so my parents wouldn't know I was cheating bed time. Somehow the adventures of the babysitters club always seemed more exciting past bedtime. Now that I'm the one in charge of my bedtime, I still find myself pushing the limits on occasion, when a book is so good, I just can't bare to be a responsible adult.

Since reading is such an important part of my life, it was a somewhat shocking revelation for me that I had never once shared a book with Tim. He reads less frequently than I do, but when he is visiting his parents in Tucson, he goes on mega reading-binges. Over the last few years, he has talked non-stop about a few authors. Finally, I asked him to recommend a book by one of these authors to me to read. So, he gave me his favorite book by Daniel Silva-- The Rembrandt Affair.

This book reminded me of a Dan Brown novel, only with better writing. In other words, every chapter was a cliff-hanger, the story took the reader all over the world, and never allowed for boredom.

The protagonist of this novel (who is apparently a recurring character for Silva) is an Israeli intelligence officer and art restorer (odd combination, but it works) named Gabriel. He combines his two careers as he tracks down a missing Rembrandt painting. He quickly finds that the painting's history was tainted with horrible tragedies. The rightful owner of the piece of art was a Jewish man in the Netherlands in the 1940's who was coerced into selling his painting to a Nazi officer in order to save his daughter's life. Uncovering more WWII atrocities led Gabriel and his colleagues to discover that a very powerful Swiss banker (nicknamed Saint Martin for his public image as a philanthropist) has been benefiting from the stolen goods of Jews since the war-- and that isn't where his treacherous deeds end.

This book was really fun to read and I think it had something for everyone-- there was plenty of action, there was mystery, and for me, there was a trip around the world and incredible artwork. I enjoyed the book and would definitely read something by Silva again. Most of all, it was fun to share a book with Tim. Discussing where I was in the story and what I thought of characters was great. Hopefully this is something we can repeat in the future.

Vampire Book Club-- Dead Reckoning

My girlfriends Lisa and Mandy and I discovered a few years ago that we all share a passion for silly vampire novels. Obviously we had a hay day with the Twilight series, but now our focus is on the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris-- and perhaps more importantly, the HBO series True Blood that brings the books to life!

Last summer we got together once a week to watch episodes of the show, share our culinary skills with each other, and squeal in delight over the viking vampire, Eric.

This summer is going to be no different, as the show just started up, but to tide us over before season 4, we had a vampire book club night so we could discuss the latest chronicles of Sookie-- Dead Reckoning. While these books are always fun, and very easy to devour in just a night or two, the latest installment mostly fell flat for us. (Somewhat-of-a-spoiler alert)The supernatural world that Sookie finds herself involved in has just gotten crazy-- there are vampires, werewolves, other shifters, fairies, elves, and plenty of others that appear every once in awhile. This book, instead of focusing on Sookie's battle with just one supe (or even one supe), basically covered too much ground. We checked in with every supe in Bon Temps at least once, and the plot barely moved a long.  The big events that unfolded were the end (or what appears to be) of Sookie's relationship with Eric, the end of the latest evil vampire in charge, and the discovery of some interesting Fae related truths in Sookie's home.

The book was still fun, raunchy, and exciting-- but it didn't have the same engaging qualities as some of the previous.

The ladies of the vampire book club are currently more excited for Season 4 of True Blood (Sunday nights on HBO). Any woman who has read the fourth book knows why.