Place your nominations for next BooBooks

Posted by kansas | Oct 24, 2005 | 20 |

Two questions, y’all.

The next BooBooks book club confab is supposed to be the 26-27 of Nov., but damn if that isn’t Thanksgiving weekend. Is it okay with you smarties if we postpone it by a week and do it the first weekend in Dec? Then maybe we’d better skip Dec. altogether and wait until Jan. to do the third one?

What book do you nominate for us to read? Remember our two goals: pick a book that illuminates current events and one that we can buy at Powells, as a way to help this site.

BostonJoe, are you reading this? A whole lot of us would love to read and talk about your book, but I’m thinking that might be a good one for a special, extra book club meeting and that we’d hope you would lead it?

Ready, set, nominate.

About The Author

kansas

20 Comments

katiebird on October 24, 2005 at 10:59 am

I would like to alternate between NonFiction and Fiction. I’ll be back later with some Fiction titles.
- CabinGirl on October 24, 2005 at 11:30 am
  
  I could definitely go for some fluffy fiction…
- CabinGirl on October 24, 2005 at 11:31 am
  
  I hear Nancy Pickard’s books are great, and they’re on my list of “next” books. 🙂
  - kansas on October 24, 2005 at 11:37 am
    
    Ha! I love you guys. Thanks, but let’s do somebody else. I want to read something I haven’t read before, lol.
  - brinnainne on October 24, 2005 at 1:38 pm
    
    I just finished Direct Actions and would love to discuss it with you all — I’ll be writing a review of it that should be ready by Thanksgiving.
    
    Of the fiction mentioned here, I’d have to go with Wicked ’cause it’s the only one that is already IN my bookshelf — as you know, the budget for new books has been slashed considerably! lol
    
    Oh and kansas, I have lots to say about The Truth Hurts but I guess I’d better send an email about it so I don’t spoil anything for any one! Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the series HUGELY! thanks!
diane101 on October 24, 2005 at 11:42 am

I am for fluffy fiction as someone else mentioned above and one of my favs is “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt….don’t know if it is in print still…
I have reread this book about 5 times and still love it everytime.
- katiebird on October 24, 2005 at 11:47 am
  
  I thought Midnight was nonfiction? (we’ve got in in the 900s in my library).
  
  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
  
  But, I think we should alternate so we all get shaken out of our ruts.
  
  Fiction, fluffy and not, can be an effective way to address current events.
  - diane101 on October 24, 2005 at 11:50 am
    
    You are right it is non fiction, I had forgotten that part..Also I checked and the used book is available as well as cd of the movie…at Powells
- CabinGirl on October 24, 2005 at 12:15 pm
  
  Is listed here.
CabinGirl on October 24, 2005 at 11:44 am

Thinking of things I haven’t read, how about Russell Banks? Someone once recommended his books to me, but haven’t had the chance to read any yet.
spiderleaf on October 24, 2005 at 11:52 am

If you’re looking for Fiction.. The Eight by Katherine Neville is a great read… incredibly detailed and the description of the blood bath in Paris during the Revolution puts you right there into the brutality of humanity. Man, I still get chills thinking about that part of the book.

Also Wicked is a great read with a ton of social commentary.

In terms of non-fiction I’d recommend Rubicon which details how the Republic was lost and how we are all still paying for it 2000 years (approx) later.
- Raging Hippie on October 24, 2005 at 12:44 pm
  
  Wicked (one of my all-time favorites) now has a sequel: the just-released Son of a Witch.
dove on October 24, 2005 at 12:02 pm

For non-fiction, Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom — I’d love an excuse to reread this one.

Or Power Politics by Arundhati Roy, especially her essay “The reincarnation of Rumpilstiltskin”
kansas on October 24, 2005 at 12:09 pm

Just occured to me. . doh. . .hit the Powell’s link here and browse their fiction sections.
alohaleezy on October 24, 2005 at 1:37 pm

Well if it’s fiction for this selection, how about “The Constant Gardner”?
katiebird on October 24, 2005 at 2:09 pm

I would like us to consider Oh pure and radiant heart by, Millet, Lydia

I’ve just started reading this strange and fascinating novel (so it fits into the let’s read it together theme). It covers topics that are a natural for our group. It’s fiction. And an award winner. And one of the main characters is a librarian. And the first chapter is terrific! And my friend at work says it gets better and better right through to the end.

Read the two reviews below. Could we do any better?

Summary

A masterfully crafted literary and philosophical tour-de-force that moves from the poetic to the hilarious to the dreamily apocalyptic, this novel from the 2003 PENUSA Award winner imagines the small foibles and grand moral negotiations of the “genius” A-bomb scientists. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Review

What if Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, the primary physicists from the Manhattan Project, returned to contemporary America to survey their atomic legacy? That question forms the heart of Millet’s excellent fourth novel, in which the souls of the three take earthly form in the present-day Southwest. Ann, a New Mexico librarian, spots the reincarnated Oppenheimer and Fermi at a restaurant near her home; Szilard soon joins them; Ann persuades her garden-designer husband, Ben, to take them all in. Subsequent trips to Los Alamos and (with the help of a rich UFOlogist) Japan to view the monuments at Hiroshima persuade the three to work for disarmament. Army surveillance ensues; at one rally, shots are fired; and Christian Fundamentalists try to take things in a more rapturous direction. It takes considerable talent to pull off a conceit like this, and for the most part Millet makes it look easy, drawing full-blown, dead-on portraits of the three scientists that don’t diminish their characters or their work. Her threads on weapons buildup, the topsy-turvy mosaic of contemporary American political culture and the difficulties of marriage feel realistically motivated and nicely argued. Millet gives a whimsical conceit real depth, and the result, if a bit pious in spots, is a superb, memorable novel. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. Appeared in: Publishers Weekly, May 16, 2005 (c) Copyright 2005, Cahners Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Millet, whose three previous novels include the PEN-USA Award winner My Happy Life (2002), boldly fuses lyrical realism with precisely rendered far-outness to achieve a unique energy and perspicacity, the ideal approach to the most confounding reality of our era: the atomic bomb. This trippy yet revelatory epic begins in present-day Santa Fe, where librarian Ann and her gardener-husband Ben end up giving sanctuary to three renowned atomic physicists bewildered at finding themselves in the twenty-first century when the last thing they remember is the Trinity test in July 1945. There’s elegant and chain-smoking Robert Oppenheimer; depressed Enrico Fermi; and Leo Szilard, who, when he isn’t stuffing his face, is busy launching a global disarmament movement. Ann and Ben take this unholy trinity of unwitting time travelers on a pilgrimage to Hiroshima, after which a megawealthy Tokyo pothead offers to bankroll Szilard’s mission. Things soon take on an End Times intensity as the physicists travel cross-country in an ever-growing caravan (picture Grateful Dead followers), which is soon hijacked by a militaristic Christian group who worships Oppenheimer as the Second Coming. As nonfiction books about the nuclear threat proliferate, Millet’s brilliant, madcap, poetic, fact-spiked, and penetrating novel (think Twain, Vonnegut, Murakami, and DeLillo) illuminates the personal dimension of our most daunting dilemma. DonnaSeaman. Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. Appeared in: From BookList, April 1, 2005 Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
- katiebird on October 24, 2005 at 2:14 pm
  
  And it is carried at Powell’s & my local library!!!
  - kansas on October 24, 2005 at 4:06 pm
    
    This sounds pretty wonderful.
Brementown Musician on October 24, 2005 at 4:37 pm

A wonderful novel that I would like to recommend is Cry of the Peacock by Gina Nahai. Here is the Powell’s summary:

Synopsis:
Weaving a rich narrative tapestry of political, religious, and startlingly personal family history across two centuries of Middle Eastern history, Cry of the Peacock is a magical and mythic achievement that recalls the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison.
A politically outspoken 116-year-old Jewish woman, Peacock has been thrown into prison by revolutionaries loyal to the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. Complicating Peacock’s current predicament is the haunting legacy of her ancestor, Esther the Soothsayer, a wizened prophet thrice betrayed — by her husband, by the Persians, and by her own Jewish community in the twilight of the eighteenth century. Across the generations bridging these two women, Gina Nahai’s captivating novel is a wondrous illumination of Persian, Iranian, and Jewish history.

Synopsis:
Peacock the Jew is nine years old and living in the Esfahan ghetto when she marries Solomon the Man. She is the descendant of a three-thousand-year-old tribe of Jews — the oldest community in diaspora, a people largely unknown to the outside world. He is a singer in the royal court, a wealthy man known for his good looks and his charm. A decade later, she will become the first woman in her ghetto ever to have left her husband.
Against the backdrop of two hundred years of history, CRY OF THE PEACOCK traces the story of a Jewish woman caught in the turmoil of twentieth-century Iran. Told in a series of wondrous linked tales that weave a rich and epic tapestry, it is a magical journey inside the Iranian nation and its people. For the first time in any Western language this story of Iranian Jews offers an insider’s glimpse into one of the most critical parts of the world today.

About the Author
Gina B. Nahai has lived in Iran, Switzerland, and the United States. The author of the award-winning Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, she is the winner of the Los Angeles Arts Council Award for Fiction, and has received international acclaim for her novels. A frequent lecturer on Iranian Jewish history and the topic of exile, she has studied the politics of Iran for the U.S. Department of Defense. She is currently adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California’s Master of Professional Writing program. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
- kansas on October 24, 2005 at 5:48 pm
  
  That looks great, too.
  
  And Wicked, mentioned up above, looks like fun.
  
  Tomorrow I will list the titles you guys have named in this list, put some links in so people can read about them if they want to, and then put up a poll a little later.
  
  I’m moving this along so everybody has plenty of time to get and read the book.

Place your nominations for next BooBooks

About The Author

kansas

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