22nd Meeting: The Hobbit

In December (yep, I'm over six months behind...), the Eat, Drink, and Literarians had their 22nd meeting. Aaron hosted, and in honor of the first installment of The Hobbit movies (btw, we all agreed that it was outrageous to make it a trilogy of films), Aaron selected Tolkein's classic to discuss.

This definitely strayed from our normal book-picking policies. While it is not a rule, we typically follow the guideline that books should only be picked if they haven't been read before. Books that are already read and known come along with baggage-- if a host has strong emotional ties to a character or plot, and the rest of the book clubbers decide they hate it, discussion can become awkward if not defensive. But, in the case of The Hobbit, we all agreed it would be fun to re-read ( or read for the first time, for a couple of the Eat, Drink, and Literarians).

Since most of us were re-reading the book, discussion was focused on our changing views of the book, and not on our first impressions. Everyone remarked that they discovered something new about the story. In my case, I discovered how silly and funny the whole story is! When I was 12, I read the book (and watched the cartoon- anyone remember that terrible thing?), and I remember all of the adventure, but none of humor. Also, I realized how Bilbo's journey can be construed as a "coming of age" story in the way he grows as a person.... er... hobbit.

While this meeting was much different than most, we unanimously enjoyed the classic tale and felt amply prepared to bash the new films for straying from Tolkein's vision. (Just a note-- we had plans to see the movie together, but it never worked out, so I still haven't seen it or done any real bashing! This must be remedied.)

21st Meeting: Same Kind of Different As Me

Wow, I am very far behind in blogging about book club meetings. Four meetings behind, actually. Totally unacceptable, right? What if I give you a sob story about how I've been working on my dissertation and haven't had time to use any energy writing about anything but construal level and social comparison (trust me, it's interesting... or not). You're right. No excuse!

Without further adieu, let's get back into the swing of things with talking about the 21st meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary. Way back in November, Sarah hosted and picked the book Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman who Bound Them Together, by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent. She picked the book because it was on some New York Times "best of" list, and because she is a fan of memoir/ non fiction. The rest of us were skeptical to say the least when we found out what book was picked. The book not only fits into the genre of memoir, but also into the genre of Christian writing, and somehow this was a red flag for everyone. While some of the book club members, myself included, are Christians, the religious works we typically read are more academic or philosophical (think C.S. Lewis) or more veiled in symbolism (think The Giving Tree.) An overtly "Jesus saves" book just didn't sound too appealing.

When the book club meeting began, we were all very surprised to admit that we almost kind of liked the book, or at the very least, we didn't hate it. The book follows the lives of two men-- one poor black man named Denver, who lived as a modern day slave and ended up homeless in Dallas, and one very wealthy white man named Ron who with his wife, began volunteering at the shelter and soup kitchen where Denver spent time. The two men became close friends, and helped each other to grow in a really beautiful way.

Typically, both the first and last question we ask at book club is "did you like it?" Usually, everyone's approval rating increases from the beginning of the meeting to the end, but this time it was different. Instead, the more we talked about the book, the less we liked it.  I think we all just felt that the truly special part of the story was Denver's life, and we felt that the book maybe spent too much time focusing on Ron's life instead. Obviously Ron was writing his portion of the book as a way to reflect on how much growth he'd had since Denver came into his life, and as a way to heal from the loss of his wife (oh yeah, spoiler alert, his really wonderful wife dies of cancer and I might have cried a little), but after awhile, it started to come across as self-indulgent. It's hard for me to say, because I know that everyone has a story worth telling-- especially when that story is about making themselves better, but we just didn't find Ron's story as compelling as Denver's.

Divergent Series

For the next installment of that very specific genre that I like so much, I read the first two books in the Divergent series by Veronica Roth (and I am very anxiously awaiting the third, and I think final book, so like, come ON already!) Divergent and Insurgent.

The setting: Chicago, a couple centuries in the future. The city has the same landmarks as we would find now including Lake Shore Drive, Navy Pier, and the John Hancock building, but the city is now surrounded by a wall and the population is broken up into five factions that each have a different set of values:

1. Candor-- the honest
2. Abnegation-- the selfless
3. Dauntless-- the brave
4. Amity-- the peaceful
5. Erudite-- the intelligent

On their sixteenth birthdays, kids must choose a faction. Most choose the faction they were raised in, or the one they "match" with according to some super high-tech virtual reality test.

Our protagonist: Beatrice, also known as Tris, who is raised in a very conservative Abnegation household but chooses Dauntless for her faction after her test results are "inconclusive". Tris, who starts out meek and without a clue who she is, slowly grows into an incredibly strong woman who, like both of her factions, is both brave and selfless.

The love interest: Four, an older member of the Dauntless faction who helps Tris find her strength. He is dark, tormented, dreamy, and mysterious... you know, the usual.

What's so dystopian about it? Well, across both books (I'll try not to give too much away here), Tris learns more and more about the different factions and discovers they aren't as peacefully coexisting as she once thought. 

The verdict: As far as I can tell, this series has it all-- it's a coming of age story, has a strong female lead, the swoon factor is off the charts (in the first book especially), and has enough action (in the form of a revolution!) to satisfy anyone. I can't wait for the next installment!

A very specific genre

When I log in to my netflix homepage, the things they recommend to me are sometimes slightly, well, ridiculous. I will receive lists of very specific categories of movies-- categories that I didn't know existed, let alone that they were "my favorite". For example, "quirky British movies with a strong female lead", or "feel good sports movies based on a true story", of my favorite, "films starring Ryan Reynolds". Okay, who am I kidding-- I obviously know those are my favorite categories of movies, but I guess I was still surprised that Netflix could figure me out so specifically.

Well, I have come to realize that I have the same thing going in with books. My go-to genre has become something along the lines of "Young Adult futuristic dystopia novels featuring beautiful teenagers almost kissing". (Note. This is different from "YA fantasy novels featuring beautiful teenagers almost kissing", though I've also read my fair share of those!)

I think that The Hunger Games trilogy started it off, but since then, I have read installments of at least four other series.

Anyway, since getting a Kindle for Christmas (have I mentioned I got a Kindle?) this addiction has become even more of a problem since these fluffy-yet-epic reads are now only a click away. I'm ages behind in blogging about any of these books since I can't figure out how to write about all of the angst and take-you-back-to-high-school crushing without spilling the beans about the twists and turns of the plots. So, instead I thought it would be easiest to introduce the whole genre at once so when talking about the books/series, I can save some time!

20th Meeting: The Lathe of Heaven

After reading Ray Bradbury for our 19th book club, Mandy was inspired to choose another old school sci-fi book for our 20th meeting. She selected The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971).

It seems that sci-fi is a good genre for our reading group, as the book received a pretty warm reception overall. The story follows a man named George Orr who realizes that his dreams are literally coming true. If he dreams about a horse running in a field, he wakes up to see a painting change from a mountain to a horse; if he dreams there was a plague that wiped out half of the population, when he wakes up, reality confirms that it's true. When Orr visits a psychiatrist, Dr. Haber, he is hoping to put an end to his "effective" dreams, but the doctor tries to wield Orr's powers and use them for his own good by giving Orr things to dream about.

While reading the book, I kept thinking to myself "I've heard this story before" in some form or another (e.g., Inception anyone?) but when I reminded myself that this story came first -- in 1971-- I was blown away with the genius of it all.

This is the type of book that all of the Eat, Drink, and Literarians wanted to read again after discussing it so we could re-discover the symbolism, foreshadowing, and brilliance of Le Guin.

Sense and Sensibility

This summer (yes, I realize it's winter and I'm writing about the summer- I had a busy fall that included a lot of reading, but not a lot of writing...) I re-read Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I haven't read anything Austen straight through in probably about a decade except for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which doesn't really count, not to mention I have tried to repress all memories of it.

Anyway, back to Sense and Sensibility which follows the lives and loves of sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Austen uses the sisters to illustrate the competing notions of reason, rationality, and rule-based judgments and passion, emotion, and desire. While these were very salient schools of thought at the time the book was written (late 18th century, during the onset of the Romantic period), the same competing principles of deliberate thought and implicit emotions are relevant today (just ask a social psychologist!!)

As I was re-reading the novel, I remembered the main points of the plot-- who ends up with who, for example-- but, I had forgotten all of the details of the two sisters' romances and perspectives  At one point, I even started second-guessing my memory of the plot because things were just not happening as quickly as I thought they would, so every page still managed to be a surprise.

19th Meeting: The Illustrated Man

I like to think that organizing a book club and writing a blog about the books I read means that I am a well-read person. But it's mostly a lie. I read every night, yes, but I don't read the books that I "should" read. You know, the books that everyone else has read? I guess you could also call them "classics". Ha! Anyway, I am mostly in denial about this because of all of the other signs that point to me being a prolific consumer of literature, but every so often, I can't escape the fact that I'm a fraud. For example, when one of the book club members selects a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury.

everyone else in the world: "Oh, this book will be great! Fahrenheit 451 was so amazing, I bet this will  be wonderful too."
me: ... *crickets chirping*... "yeah, totally."

I mean, obviously, I've heard of Fahrenheit 451, I just haven't, you know... read it. But that doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy this month's book selection The Illustrated Man. Collections of short stories are almost always a hit at book club, because there's always enough variety that people find at least one story they connect with. This book was no exception- in fact, we unanimously liked the book!

The short stories in this book are all futuristic (though many take place in the 1980's or now-- they were all written in the 1950's) takes on technology and human nature. The stories either were about the end of the world through atomic warfare (something constantly present in the collective thoughts of the 1950's), or they were about a different life for people once space travel and "rocket men" were everywhere. While these specific events are not true of the future (at least yet) something Bradbury got right was the state of human nature. Bradbury captured the complexity of human character so perfectly-- while the potential for things like love and happiness exist in all of us, so do things like hate, fear, anger, and entitlement. Bradbury showed how consumerism and technology would be enough to corrupt us; while he was talking about rockets and not ipods, I'm not sure we are too far off his predictions of the world!

The short stories in this book were all tied together by the story of the illustrated man. This man was covered in magical tattoos that all moved and told stories, supposedly of the future. Each of the stories in the book was then supposedly one of the tattoos. I really liked this as a tool to tie the stories together. And in fact, the prologue and epilogue were some of my favorite parts of the whole collection! All in all, I thought this was a great book. After a fantastic discussion of this and Bradbury's other works, I may actually try to read Fahrenheit 451 one of these days!

*A final note. There are many editions of this book, and between the six people at our meeting, we had four different versions that didn't always include the same stories. Only one or two stories were different between the versions, but until we discovered that, our discussions were pretty bizarre (e.g., "You don't remember that story? But it was one of the best!)