Upcoming book picks

September's meeting will be hosted by Lisa and she picked The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It is non-fiction (sort of a biography but sort of not) but reads like a fast paced novel. I'm 80 pages in and have found myself going to bed at nine every night this week so I could get more reading time in!

Other upcoming books are Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (this one is my pick)... I'm hoping for some theme eats/drinks to go with these culturally specific books. We'll see if Japanese night and Mexican night pan out.

Happy Reading!

Tenth Meeting: Stiches A Memoir

When Eat, Drink, and Be Literary regular Sarah told me her pick for book club I was excited and very nervous. Sarah picked Stitches: A Memoir by David Small which happens to be a graphic novel. I had never read (er.... looked at) a graphic novel before so I was nervous that I wasn't going to do it properly. I realize how crazy that sounds, but I stand by it. I was afraid that I wouldn't "get" the book fully or notice what I was supposed to. Luckily, it seemed to go pretty well. Small's story was actually best told through images.

Since I have recently been on a memoir-about-a-messed-up-childhood kick, this fit right in. Small grew up in a love-less and silent home. His mother, who he later found out was a closeted lesbian, was harsh and cold and silent. His father was fairly absent. His brother barely in his life. If that wasn't enough to be considered a "messed up" childhood, Small had a growth on his neck removed, and the doctor took half of his vocal chords leaving him voice-less. Several months later he found out that this growth was actually cancer that had gone untreated for years. Small spent the rest of his youth, and much of his adulthood dealing with the fact that he couldn't speak above a raspy whisper, and that he had been lied to about his life.

The minimal words and dark artwork in this memoir were incredible vehicles for the theme of silence in Small's life. The silence of anger, of confusion, of unhappiness, and of actually being voice-less were all uniquely powerful depicted in one scene after another.

Sarah did a great job hosting a discussion about this book. Our discussion drifted back and forth from the content and the format of this book almost seamlessly.

If you have never read a graphic novel before, this is a good gate-way novel as it is not comic book-y or super hero-ish, but is definitely a piece of literature. I'm very glad it was picked for book club and that I was able to expand my horizons.

Jeannette Walls Extravaganza!

I am always a few years behind on summer beach reading. I don’t know if it’s because I am too busy reading other books, or just never have the attention span to read a whole book while I’m at the beach, but I typically don’t hear about , let alone read, the “fabulous” best seller types until after the movie interpretation has come out on DVD. So, in true fashion, I am six years behind the craze for Jeannette Walls’ incredible memoir The Glass Castle. However, I’m only 2 years behind in reading Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel which could be considered a prequel to her memoir.

Because I’m a rebel, I decided to read Half-Broke Horses first. I figured it happened first chronologically speaking, so what was the difference? Also there was the tiny practical matter that I already had that book in my possession.  Last month I was in Tucson for four days visiting my boyfriend’s family, and I figured the flight down was the perfect time to start the novel. I was pleasantly surprised by the book. Walls wrote in the voice of her grandmother Lilly Casey, whom there are not enough adjective to describe. Born in 1900, she practically defined my idea of feminism-- she spent her life surviving and trying to find her purpose and never let a matter as small as her gender get in her way.  The “true-life novel” was the perfect format for telling this incredible woman’s story, and it is a concept I’ve fallen in love with.  I’m jealous of Walls and her ability to so beautifully bring to life the mythology of her grandmother and I wish I could do the same for my own grandparents!I finished Half-Broke Horses over the first few days of my visit to Tucson, and I relished every minute of it. As I experienced the desert in the summer for the first time, I got to read about Lily and her family living in that very desert—conquering it at times, and allowing it to conquer them at others. I felt a great appreciation for the fragile but harsh environment I found myself exploring, and some of Lily’s pluck rubbed off on me and I felt empowered and strong (which came in handy when hiking through the Sabino Canyon).

The last morning of my trip, as I packed my bags to travel back to Iowa, I serendipitously found The Glass Castle which my boyfriend’s mom had laid out for me to read. I started it over my morning coffee while I sat by the pool, and then somehow managed to finish it before my flight landed in Iowa. The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls' memoir, and chronicles her simultaneously fascinating and disturbing childhood. Her parents, Rex  (a brilliant but irresponsible and somewhat abusive alcoholic), and Rose Mary, (an artist, the daughter of Lily, and in my opinion the worst mother of all time) were constantly on the run from bill collectors and raised four children, Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen on "adventures" around the U.S. The family lived in poverty most of the time, and while never short on creativity, or story-telling, the family was constantly short on food, and, well, responsible parenting. It was shocking to me that a family like this existed in the not-so-distant past, and that the children raised in this way were able to overcome.

Most of all what shocked me was a look at mother daughter relationships across both of the books. My own mother recently told me that the most surprising thing to her about motherhood was that when I was born I was my own person with my own opinions and values and personality right away. I thought of this while reading these novels because as different Lily was from Rose Mary, Rose Mary was from Jeannette. While I of course know plenty of sets of mothers and daughters in real life, these books offered a unique view of the mother/ daughter dynamic. I got to experience firsthand through Walls' descriptions how three generations of women were from childhood to womanhood to motherhood and how beautifully complex their relationships were with one another.

In short, I would recommend both of these books to any woman whether read alone or as a set. I would also recommend reading them while sitting poolside overlooking the Catalina mountains, but that's another story!

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.

Eighth meeting: Zeitoun

Oh my! I am a bad blogger. I am two months, and several books behind. I blame it on the distractions of sunny patios and cold beers... 

Last month (May 2011), Cheyenne hosted our eighth book club meeting to discuss Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. As my previous post indicated, I read the book in two nights and really loved it. But, I love almost everything Dave Eggers does, so that is no surprise. To remind you, this book is written like a novel but is actually the true story of the Zeitoun family from New Orleans before, during, and after Katrina. It is gripping, intense, and magnificently (I think anyway) shows the many different sides of people's responses to disaster. No spoiler alerts here-- though people may feel like they know about what happened in the aftermath of Katrina, what happens to the Zeitoun family is shocking, and best left as a surprise!

The meeting was in College Green Park, and we had a picnic! Pressed sandwiches, strawberry lemonade, spinach salad, and gooey brownies (Matt's first ever attempt at baking-- they were great!) All eight of us at the meeting were cozy and cute under the little gazebo when suddenly the wind picked up, a dark cloud loomed ahead, and all of the families and kids in the part started fleeing. We all started to laugh because it seemed so eerily similar to the book. Like Zeitoun, the main character, we decided to stay in our gazebo to ride out the storm. This change in the weather was the perfect segue to a great discussion of the book.

As usual, the group was split in their opinion of the book. For example, while I thought the book was the least political Katrina story I've read, others thought it was too political. The varying opinions of the Eat, Drink, and Be Literarians never cease to surprise me, but also impress me. It is great to examine a piece of literature from so many different points of view. One thing we could all agree on is that the Zeitoun family has a story that should be told.

If you have read the book already, or perhaps don't mind a spoiler, see a video interview with Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun here.