Book Club thread

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sharky

New Yorker
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So the Narnia thread inspired this. Are there any books that you would recommend to the FYM group? More than just the normal fiction stuff...perhaps more political/social related fiction and non-fiction.

As the first, I would recommend The Bone Woman by Clea Koff. Just finished it for my book club and it was quite interesting. Clea was an anthropologist for the UN and went to Rwanda and Kosovo to document mass grave sites as part of the genocidal investigations by the UN. Really interesting take on why they would choose certain sites, what they were looking for, etc. It's not really too gorey either -- she does explain some things about the dead bodies -- bodily fluid and levels of decomposition -- but she also talks about interacting with the UN and discussions with local citizens who are aware of what kind of work she does. Pretty interesting book.

So what do you recommend -- Lord of the Rings? Screwtape Letters? Robert Reich's new book or a biography of Benedict XVI?
 
Been forever since I've read a book I've been blown away by.
Will check your suggestion out.
 
wow, that book sounds fascinating, sharky. like i need another a book to add to my hefty reading list, but i will check that out.

i have a spate of books i'd love for people to read, but i'll stick with these for now:

out of poverty by john stackhouse--a canadian journalist travelled around the third world to report about grassroots community-based development. he unearthed some ingenious grassroots development schemes, and illustrated the power of building schools and hospitals in impoverished regions. amazing, inspiring read.

the story of jane doe--the most amazing book i've ever read. jane doe was raped by a serial rapist in toronto, and found out that the police had used her as bait to catch the guy--only they miscalculated and she was attacked. not to be defeated by this, she sued the police force and launched a brilliant campaign against the justice system's treatment of rape. she is one of my heroes.

eve ensler's necessary targets--a play about the devastating impact of the war in the former yugoslavia on women. also delves into the cultural divide between volunteers from the west who want to help, but end up being traumatized voyeurs; the great divide between academic knowledge and being a witness to unspeakable tragedy. this book broke my heart.
 
I want a novel written by a smart-ass author. Something like Oscar Wilde but with a more modern language. Something like TuckerMax.com or Maddox.

Anyone know of a book like that?
 
BrownEyedBoy said:
I want a novel written by a smart-ass author. Something like Oscar Wilde but with a more modern language. Something like TuckerMax.com or Maddox.

Anyone know of a book like that?

Something like Oscar Wilde? Why not just read Oscar Wilde? :huh: The Picture of Dorian Gray is amazing.

Try something by Stephen Fry - witty and intelligent. The Liar is a good one.
 
mtoreilly said:


Something like Oscar Wilde? Why not just read Oscar Wilde? :huh: The Picture of Dorian Gray is amazing.

Try something by Stephen Fry - witty and intelligent. The Liar is a good one.

Why not Oscar Wilde? Because I already read him. That's how I know I want something like that. :wink:

I will look up Stephen Fry shortly. Thank you.
 
If you just want popular fiction go with Christopher Reich. He writes what I would call "financial thrillers". The protagonist is usually a banker or financial planner who becomes involved in some crooked scheme of some kind. Two books of his I can recommend are The First Billion and Numbered Account.

Being a history grad student, I like to recommend a few history books. Anyone interested in Texas history should read Gone To Texas by one of my professors, Randolph Campbell. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow is a great read, as is Biting at the Grave about the Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland.

If you want great 20th century poetry, read anything by TS Eliot-a little deep and murky, but his command of the English language is great-The Waste Land and the 4 Quartets are food examples. I also recommend 19th Century Russian literature-preferably Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.
 
Nine Parts of Desire Geraldine Brooks

She was a foriegn correspondent for the Middle East. Well balanced and interesting on the lives of Muslim women.

The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver

Story of an American missionary in the Congo. Excellent story and an eye opener about how Western values/ideas sometimes don't transfer so well into other cultures

Conversations with God Neale Donald Walshe

A very interesting read that really made me think. (Always bear in mind this is just one person's point of view though. You don't have to accept what he says!)

Wild Swans Jung Chang

True story of 3 generations of women in China throuout the Cultural Revolution. An absolute must read on the power of propaganda.

Clan of the Cave Bear. Jean Aul

5 books about the dawn of civilization. Light, but incredibly well researched and created. A real joy to read.
 
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imogen said:


Clan of the Cave Bear. Jean Aul

5 books about the dawn of civilization. Light, but incredibly well researched and created. A real joy to read.

I started reading those books when I was eleven, and was in the middle of the second one when my teacher picked it up off my desk, flipped through it, found one of the sex scenes, and then had all of the books immediately banned from our library, so I never finished them. :lol:
 
John Irving has a new book coming out, I love him so I'll try to read it. I was just reading about it online but I can't remember the title.

Does anyone know when Frank McCourt's novel is coming out? I saw him speak a couple of years ago and he said it was almost finished..
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
John Irving has a new book coming out, I love him so I'll try to read it. I was just reading about it online but I can't remember the title.

Does anyone know when Frank McCourt's novel is coming out? I saw him speak a couple of years ago and he said it was almost finished..



Thanks for the headsup on John Iriving. I always look forward to something new of his coming out and I hadn't heard about this.
(Hope they're better than the last couple, though. I've had to keep rereading the old ones.)
 
It comes out on July 12th, here's the description from Amazon

“According to his mother, Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor, but Jack’s most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother’s hand. He wasn’t acting then.”

So begins John Irving’s eleventh novel, Until I Find You — the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack’s missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can’t be found. Even Jack’s memories are subject to doubt.

Jack Burns goes to schools in Canada and New England, but what shapes him are his relationships with older women. John Irving renders Jack’s life as an actor in Hollywood with the same richness of detail and range of emotions he uses to describe the tattoo parlors in those North Sea ports and the reverberating music Jack heard as a child in European churches.

The author’s tone — indeed, the narrative voice of this novel — is melancholic. (“In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.”) Until I Find You is suffused with overwhelming sadness and deception; it is also a robust and comic novel, certain to be compared to John Irving’s most ambitious and moving work.
 
OK, that sounds good to me. I think I'm almost getting excited about a book again.
 
imogen said:
Clan of the Cave Bear. Jean Aul

5 books about the dawn of civilization. Light, but incredibly well researched and created. A real joy to read.

It's funny that you mentioned this because I have just discovered this series and only finished book 4 literally moments ago. It is rather light-weight in terms of fiction writing, but the depth of research into the Ice Age is really fascinating. I'm quite enjoying the books as a diversion into a totally different world. The sex scenes are pretty cheesy and quite repetitive but I guess in a hard life of chasing deer/mammoth, etc. and scraping an existence out of an unforgiving land, sex would be a welcome distraction/amusement. lol.

I'd also recommend another one I've read recently by Bill Bryson, although it is nothing like his usual travelogue stuff. "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It's basically a book about science, but he makes it fun and interesting and really brings alive the men and women who made the discoveries that we take for granted today.
 
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