March Book: Death Comes for the Archbishop

March's meeting is to take place next week at Sharon's. Hope to see everyone there! The book we're reading this month is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. I found this brief summary at Time Magazine's top 100 book list.

Cather at her most matter-of-fact and, as a consequence, her most powerful. She based this book on the life of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy—she calls him Father Latour—the French-born Ohio cleric who was assigned by the church to rebuild the faith in New Mexico after the territory was annexed by the U.S. in 1831. With an old friend, Father Vaillant, Latour sets out for Santa Fe. He will find the church there to be fragmented and corrupt, with priests taking wives and charging exorbitant fees to perform marriages. Latour embarks on a decades-long effort to reform and reinvigorate the diocese. The style and structure of this book are strange, unemphatic, as if Cather had simply laid the scenes side by side in a tapestry. She compared the book to a legend, in which no event is given much dramatic weight. If this sounds like a formula for boredom, it's not. Her serene language, with its immemorial simplicity, gives the story a weight mere drama could never provide.—R.L.

February Meeting: Eat, Pray, Love

The February book is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. We're meeting at Kate's. If you haven't picked up the book yet, here's some information from Elizabeth Gilbert's web site: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/faq.htm

Editorial reviews, copied directly from Amazon:
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Gilbert (The Last American Man) grafts the structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of soul-searching and self-discovery. Plagued with despair after a nasty divorce, the author, in her early 30s, divides a year equally among three dissimilar countries, exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and divine transcendence. First, pleasure: savoring Italy's buffet of delights - the world's best pizza, free-flowing wine and dashing conversation partners - Gilbert consumes la dolce vita as spiritual succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic rigor: seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram in India, Gilbert emulates the ways of yogis in grueling hours of meditation, struggling to still her churning mind. Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where Gilbert tries for equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with a merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair. Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional tapestry - conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor - as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.'"
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

January 2008 Meeting - Thirteenth Tale

Next month, we're reading Diane Setterfield's Thirteenth Tale. Here's the book's official Web site (kind of a hoot) http://www.thethirteenthtale.com/

The review from Amazon:
Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:

"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts."
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan.

Margaret has a story of her own: she was one of conjoined twins and her sister died so that Margaret could live. She feels an otherworldly aura sometimes or a yearning for a part of her that is forever missing. Vida's story involves two wild girls--feral twins (is she one of them?)--who would have been better off being suckled by wolves. Instead, their mother and uncle, involved in things too unsavory to contemplate, combine to neglect them woefully. There's also a governess, a Doctor, a kindly housekeeper, a gardener, and another presence--a very strange presence--which Margaret perceives as a ghost at first. Making obeisance to other great ghost stories, there is a deadly fire, a beautiful old house gone to ruin, and always that presence....

The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan

The Other Boleyn Girl Meeting

Thanks, Betsy for a fabulous and well-attended book group gathering on Tuesday! It was great to see everyone, and welcome back to Sharon!

September's almost here!

Hello to all,
The lazy days of summer are passing fast! As fall approaches it seems a good time for some non-fiction!
This month's book will be "There are No Children Here" by Alex Kotlowitz, I would love to volunteer to host but have a meeting Sept 11th. If you all wouldn't mind switching to the 18th I can host. If the 11th is best we will need another host.
Cheers and enjoy the rest of August!
Michelle

Are we still meeting for August?

Hi everyone,

Hope you all are enjoying the summer time.

Just checking to see if we are still planning to meet for our August Book Club?

Thanks,
Fangfang

Hooray, Kate!

Kudos to you, Kate, for bringing TNBC into the 21st Century! Glad to be on board.

August Book: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Meeting Date: August 14, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Movie Night at Kate's
Leader: TBD

Our book selection for August is The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. Originally published in 1925, The Painted Veil is not seen as one of the author's major works, which instead include Of Human Bondage (autobiographical, 1915), The Moon and Sixpence (historical fiction about artist Paul Gaugin, 1919) and Cakes and Ale (1930). He also wrote The Razor's Edge (an account of a soldier after WW I, 1944), as well as a number of other novels, plays and short stories.

Many of Maugham's works have been turned into movies. The third screen version of The Painted Veil movie came out last winter -- starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.



* Blog Critics Magazine
* Internet Movie Database info about the current movie
* Amazon.com link to the paperback and reviews
* Wikipedia link to a Maugham biography

Results of the Email Poll

This is the brand new second Tuesday of the month book group blog, for keeping in touch, reviewing favorite books and helping to select the reading list for the group!

The results of our recent email poll suggest that:

* We should maintain a good mix of fiction and non fiction book selections.
* Books should be selected at least a few months in advance so members can plan their reading.
* Books should be in paperback and ideally available from the library to keep costs down.
* People like meeting in each other's homes each month.
* We also like having a leader for each book to keep the conversation focused on the book.