Eat, Pray, Love, Read



Our next book pick is Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had the chance to read the book when it came out in 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think everyone will have their own perspective about the book and it will be interesting to see how the different members interpret the three aspects. The book has recently been made into a movie. My advise - wait for the DVD. Or better yet wait for it on HBO.

Here is a review from http://www.amazon.com/:

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.
 
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Two more books - May & September 2010

We read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz before the summer break.

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the 2007 novel by author Junot Díaz, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, along with multiple other awards. This modern-day tale of an unlikely hero takes readers on the dark journey of a contemporary immigrant.

The novel's main character, Oscar de Léon, is a "ghetto nerd" from a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Plagued by the fukú curse brought upon the aboriginal people of the Americas by Christopher Columbus, Oscar portrays himself as a hero in search of his personal Grail—a "pure and unadulterated love." Obsessed with science fiction and fantasy, Oscar is alienated in his lower-class community. Throughout high school, and into his teaching career, he is the victim of the narrow perspectives of those without his imagination and vision.
Told from the point of view of Oscar’s sister Lola and his best friend Yunior, this tale of the search for redemption leads the reader through the darkest corners of a country under dictatorial control. Lola seeks her own redemption, away from her family and her heritage. She loves only her younger brother Oscar and seeks to protect him from the curse that tragically affects their family.
Yunior, his best friend and college roommate, does not quite understand Oscar, yet loves him just the same and sees that there is something within Oscar that begs to be understood. As the primary narrator of the novel, Yunior provides a loving portrait of a tortured soul within a tortured family. The redemption of Oscar’s “brief wondrous life” comes at a significant, but justified, price."
Courtesy http://www.enotes.com/

Let the Great World Spin was the book pick for September. It was a very unusual book unlike others that we have read before. A great review can be found on NY Times webpage. Here is an excerpt:

"Philippe Petit, the French acrobat who in 1974 walked across a tightrope between the twin towers, wasn’t on the payroll of the Port Authority, but in retrospect he probably should have been. At the time, the newly opened World Trade Center was shaping up as a huge mistake. Not only had the project cost far more than it was supposed to, but a city spiraling toward bankruptcy didn’t exactly need millions more square feet of office space. Worse still, the towers were out of scale and utterly unattractive — “the largest aluminum siding job in the history of the world,” as one critic put it. They were the ugly stepchild of New York’s skyscrapers, seemingly destined to be forever denied a place in the life and lore of the city. But in the span of a single summer morning, Petit gave the towers a history of their own. His stunt represented nothing less than a symbolic passing of the torch: in the remake of “King Kong” two years later, the furious, lovelorn gorilla takes his last stand not astride the Empire State Building but atop the World Trade Center."
To read more, click here.

Book Selection - April 2010

We had a good turnout in March. Once again- thanks for hosting Jeena!

Our next book is The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. Meilyn has offered to host and she will be sending out an evite with the date and time. Below is a review from Publishers Weekely courtesy of Amazon.com.

Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge (592 pages) rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution. Narrator Richard Papen comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the "hermetic, overheated atmosphere" of Vermont's Hampden College. Almost too easily, he is accepted into a clique of five socially sophisticated students who study Classics with an idiosyncratic, morally fraudulent professor. Despite their demanding curriculum (they quote Greek classics to each other at every opportunity) the friends spend most of their time drinking and taking pills. Finally they reveal to Richard that they accidentally killed a man during a bacchanalian frenzy; when one of their number seems ready to spill the secret, the group--now including Richard--must kill him, too. The best parts of the book occur after the second murder, when Tartt describes the effect of the death on a small community, the behavior of the victim's family and the conspirators' emotional disintegration. Here her gifts for social satire and character analysis are shown to good advantage and her writing is powerful and evocative. On the other hand, the plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. In the final analysis, however, readers may enjoy the pull of a mysterious, richly detailed story told by a talented writer. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections.

Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

March 2010 Book Selection

We have selected The Help, by Kathryn Stockett as our book for March. The meeting is scheduled for March 3 and Jeena has offered to host. See you all then and Happy Reading!!

February 2010 Book Pick

We had a great turn out in January and I would like to thank Mikie & Laura for hosting. Our next book is When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris. This is only our second non-fiction book so I hope you enjoy reading it. The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 3. Madhu has offered to host so please look out for an evite from her.
The following is a review from Publishers Weekly:
Sedaris's sparkling essays always shimmer more brightly when read aloud by the author. And his expert timing, mimicry and droll asides are never more polished than during live performances in front of an audience. Happily, four of the 22 pieces are live recordings, and listeners can hear Sedaris's energy increase from the roaring, rolling laughter of the appreciative audience. Sedaris's studio recording of his 10-page Of Mice and Men runs 16 minutes, while the live recording of Town and Country, which runs the same length in print, expands to 22 minutes thanks to an audience that often doesn't let him finish a sentence without making him pause for laughter to subside. The studio recordings usually begin with an acoustic bass and brief sound effect (a buzzing fly, the lighting of a cigarette, the clinking of ice in a drink, etc.). Sedaris's brilliant magnum opus, The Smoking Section (about his successful trip to Tokyo is quit smoking) stretches across the final two CDs. A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 28). (June)
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