July Nonfiction Book Discussion

For our next Nonfiction Book Discussion, we will be reading 1776 by David McCullough. McCullough provides compelling portraits of the people on both sides of the Revolutionary War, as well as a dramatic description of the events of the year of the Declaration of Independence. According to Publishers Weekly, 1776 is " . . . a narrative tour de force, exhibiting all the hallmarks the author is known for: fascinating subject matter, expert research and detailed, graceful prose. . . . Simply put, this is history writing at its best from one of its top practitioners." We will meet Tuesday, July 10, at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room B at Main Library at 68 Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston. To check availability of this title at Charleston County Public Library, please click on the link to the title. To check availability of large print and audio formats, click here. We hope you will join us!

Summer Reading

The words "summer reading" call up contradictory feelings for me. On the one hand are memories of required reading lists and feelings of obligation, resentment, and, as summer crept on towards fall and the start of school, despair at ever finishing all of the reading and finding something meaningful to say about it in an analytical paper. On the other hand are more pleasant memories of desultory and dilettante wandering and reading in the stacks of my neighborhood library, the oscillating fans rustling the pages of each new book I discovered, and of seemingly endless afternoons on the porch swing immersed in another world. Sometimes, to my surprise and delight, a book from the required reading list would migrate to the pleasure list . . .

This summer, the book discussion group at my yoga studio is reading the novel The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri about the lives of the inhabitants of a Bombay apartment building and the death of Vishnu, their odd-job man. Suri's allusions to Hindu mythology and religious texts have led me to some fascinating nonfiction reading. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism by Linda Johnson is a comprehensive overview of the history, philosophy, and traditions of this ancient religion. The material is easy to read and understand yet not reductive, and the book easily lends itself to browsing. The Bhagavad Gita translated by Stephen Mitchell is a poetic rendering of one of the greatest spiritual books of all time. Mitchell's translation makes timeless the conversation between the warrior Arjuna and his spiritual guide, Krishna. Their conversation takes place on a battlefield as Arjuna finds he must fight a battle against members of his own family. Krishna shows Arjuna the possibility of wisdom and freedom that lie within reach of all who can renounce the fruits of their actions. I hope to eventually read Ralph Waldo Emerson's and Henry David Thoreau's reflections on the Gita.

What does summer reading mean to you? What are you reading this summer, especially nonfiction?

In medias res

We are beginning the Not Fiction Book Discussion blog in media res--literally, in the middle of things--as the Nonfiction Book Discussion has been meeting since January of this year. Here are the titles we have read so far and some highlights from our discussions:

For our first three meetings, we read memoirs about unusual and challenging childhoods: Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer. We admired the humor and honesty of the writers' portrayals of their experiences and marveled especially at the compassion with which Walls portrays her family. Burroughs' legal troubles with the Turcotte family, upon whom the Finches are based, provided some juicy gossip. One of our guests for the discussion of The Tender Bar had lived in Manhasset, the home town of the infamous bar Dickens, and he shared his memories of the town, characters, and bar. We speculated about why memoirs of dysfunctional childhoods are so popular with readers right now. We also pondered the ethical and artistic line between memory and invention.

For our next two meetings, we took up the topic of the rise and fall of civilizations with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. Some critics have accused Diamond of geographic determinism (the idea that geography is fate) and Malthusianism (the idea that population will always outrun food production, so improving conditions for humankind depends upon limits on reproduction). We found, however, that Diamond's theses are broader than his critics' portrayed and much more optimistic. Through his many engagingly narrated examples, Diamond presents the ideas that accidents of geography, not genetics, determined the rise of great civilizations, and that environmental neglect precipitated their fall. He emphasizes that what individuals and civilizations make of their geographical circumstances determines their fate. While we agreed that we would enjoy being students in one of Professor Diamond's classes, we decided that his 400+ page tomes could have been edited to good effect.

Earlier this month, we read Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, a narrative of the infancy of our nation. We agreed it offers a more complex--and more disturbing--picture of Plymouth Colony, the Pilgrims who established it, and the Native Americans they "discovered" here than we received in school. I don't think any of us will look at Thanksgiving quite the same way again! We enjoyed Philbrick's compelling narrative style and good use of end notes for academic debate and citation. We decided that narrative histories written in this style are a necessary genre to introduce reluctant readers to complex considerations of history beyond names and dates.

We welcome your ideas and opinions about these titles!

Next month, we will read 1776 by David McCullough, a master of narrative history, for a dramatic rendering of that crucial year in our nation's childhood and a commeration of Independence Day. We will meet Tuesday, July 10, at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room B of Main Library at 68 Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston. Watch for future posts about this title and plan to join us!

Preface

Welcome to the Not Fiction Book Discussion blog! We will provide a forum for extending conversations from the Nonfiction Book Discussion at Charleston County Public Library's Main Library at 68 Calhoun Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. The discussion is an outreach of our reference department and will include works shelved in that department: memoirs, biographies, histories, current events, commentary, and possibly even poetry, photography, and other genres. Watch for posts about upcoming discussions and plan to join us. We welcome comments about the books we are reading. We also encourage suggestions for further reading and conversations about reading and writing. We look forward to composing this blog together!