Friday, December 21, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed December's selection . . .

If you enjoyed An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn, then you might also like these Odyssey-inspired books and films:

Ulysses by James Joyce
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Circe by Madeline Miller
O Brother, Where Art Thou? Film by Cohen Brothers
Big Fish Film by Tim Burton

Monday, December 3, 2018

December Not Fiction Book Discussions

We end our year of discussions with a poignant memoir about journeys and the complicated and tender relationship between parents and children, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn, a literary critic and literature professor at Bard College, uses Homer's Odyssey in both theme and form to reflect upon his relationship with his father and to memorialize him after his death. Mendelsohn's narrative begins in the recent past, when his father, Jay, a retired research scientist, enrolls in his freshman Odyssey seminar and then, after the semester, the two of them take an Odyssey-themed cruise together. It also circles back in time to Mendelsohn's memories of his childhood and forward in time to his father's hospitalization after a serious fall. Like the Odyssey, Mendelsohn's memoir is "about a son who for a long time is unrecognized by and unrecognizable to his father, until late, very late, when they join together for a great adventure" and also "about a man in the middle of his life, a man who is, we must remember, a son as well as a father, and who at the end of this story falls down and weeps because he has confronted the spectacle of his father's old age." He is both Telemachus and Odysseus, and his memoir is the story of the great gift of spending the last year of his father's life getting to know him a little better.

What do you think? What does Mendelsohn come to understand about his father Jay? Would this understanding have been possible without the experience of reading and traveling together? Contemplate your own relationship with your parents: How well did you know or understand them when you were young? How well do you think you know and understand them now? What events and experiences led you to your current understanding of your parents and family dynamics? Another theme in both the Odyssey and Mendelsohn's An Odyssey is the power and importance of mentorship. What role do mentors play in our lives? How is it different from that of our parents? Who has served as a mentor in your life? Have you read the Odyssey? If so, how did Mendelsohn's critical explication and personal narrative impact your understanding of the epic? If not, do you think you will read it now? What is intriguing to you about it? How does Mendelsohn incorporate themes and techniques of the Odyssey into his own narrative?  Did you find it successful and enjoyable in all it tried to do? What, in your opinion, makes a work of literature a "classic"?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, December 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, December 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed November's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, then you might also like these books and movies:
  • Bruder’s suggestions from her footnote on p. 160:
    • Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
    • Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
    • Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
    • Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
    • Walden by Henry David Thoreau
    • Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
  • Suggestions from discussion group members:
    • Evicted by Matthew Desmond
    • Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
    • Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
    • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
    • The Road by Cormac McCarthy
    • The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo
    • The film Leave No Trace

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder explores the tension in American culture between the independence of the open road and the security of home. Bruder, a journalist who reports on subcultures and economic justice, profiles a growing community of transient older adults who, largely due to setbacks during the Great Recession, have taken to the road in RVs, vans, even modified sedans, traveling from one low-paying, physically challenging part-time job to another. They work as pickers and stowers at Amazon fulfillment centers in the months before Christmas, sugar beet harvesters in the late winter, and as maintenance crew at state parks and vendors at amusement parks in the summer. Lacking pension plans and facing retirement with gutted home values and savings accounts, they have eliminated the highest cost of living in the United States, paying for a fixed shelter, by making these vehicles their homes. The people she meets are generally optimistic and self-reliant, making the best of a difficult situation. One of the biggest obstacles they face is the stigma in our culture surrounding homelessness, making inhabiting their moveable homes an often illegal and always precarious situation.

What do you think?  Bruder compares these transient older adults to what biologists call "indicator species," organisms that signal disruptions in the larger ecosystem. What do these nomads and the jobs they find indicate about our economy and our culture? Bruder's book is descriptive rather than prescriptive. What do you think could be done to support the people she profiles? How do you account for the odd disconnect between the American love of the open road, the open-road narrative, and #vanlife and the stigma and punitive laws surrounding homelessness? How would you define freedom? And how would you define a home? Many of the nomads Bruder meets are strong and independent women. Did this surprise you? As Bruder notes, "the nomads I'd been interviewing for months were neither powerless victims nor carefree adventurers. The truth was more nuanced . . . " How would you describe the people Bruder meets? Did anything about them surprise you? Bruder makes the journalistic choice to embed herself in the nomads' lives, even doing very brief stints at some of their part-time jobs. What do you think of her decision to include herself in the narrative? Does it give us greater insight, or does it overshadow her subjects' stories? Bruder notes that retirement is a relatively recent concept. What do you think would constitute a "good" retirement?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, November 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, November 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Monday, October 22, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed October's selection . . .

Autumn is the perfect time to enjoy a warm drink, a good book, and a cozy conversation! If you liked Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard, then you might also enjoy these other books recommended by our discussion group members:


  • The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
  • Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  • Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones: Selected and New Poems by Lucia Perillo
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

Monday, October 1, 2018

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the first in a seasonal quartet of books, Seasonal Encyclopedia, addressed to his unborn daughter, contemplating the question, "What makes life worth living?" His answer is paying close attention to the ordinary things of our daily lives. "These astounding things, which you will soon encounter and see for yourself, are so easy to lose sight of, and there are almost as many ways of doing that as there are people. That is why I am writing this book for you. I want to show you the world, as it is, all around us, all the time. Only by doing so will I myself be able to glimpse it." In these sixty brief essays, nothing is beneath his consideration: apples, teeth, piss, chewing gum, fever, autumn leaves, lice, Van Gogh, tin cans, vomit.

What do you think? Is the premise, that these essays are addressed to an unborn child who has never experienced the world outside her mother's womb, believable? Which essays surprised or delighted you? Which were not as interesting? Do the essays seems to be a random assortment of topics, or did you discern a theme? Does the book amount to more than the sum of its parts? How do you think Knausgaard's complicated relationship with his own father inform these essays to his unborn child? What view of the world "as it is, all around us, all the time" emerges from these essays? How do the illustrations fit into the narrative? Have you read any of Knausgaard's massive six-volume autofiction My Struggle, the sixth volume of which was just published in the United States in September? How do Autumn and the other three volumes in the quartet compare in scope, style, and interest to My Struggle?

We hope you will join the conversation: Tuesday, October 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed September's selection . . .

If you liked You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie, then you might also enjoy these books recommended by our discussion group members:

  • The Leaphorn and Chee novels about the Navajo tribal police by Tony Hillerman
  • The Love Medicine and Justice series by Louise Erdrich
  • Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne
  • Elsewhere: A Memoir by Richard Russo
  • Son of a Gun: A Memoir by Justin St. Germain
  • Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover


Tuesday, September 4, 2018

September Not Fiction Book Discussions

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie is a story of grief as complicated in form and content as the life it describes. Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, is the author of one of the most censored and yet beloved young adult novels in the United States, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, along with over twenty other books and films. Alexie says, "This book is a series of circles, sacred and profane." Repetitive and metaphorical in form and language, his narrative circles around his difficult relationship with his mother, his Native American heritage, his childhood of poverty and being bullied, his chronic health issues, his escape from the worst aspects of reservation life and his success as an author, and his deep need to belong and to be loved. Complicating any reading of Alexie's memoir even further is the fact that just months after its publication, a number of women authors, some of them Native American, accused him of using his fame and power in the publishing world to make sexual advances and inappropriate remarks over the years of his success. Alexie made a public apology and declined the American Library Association's 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. His publisher, Little, Brown, has delayed the publication of the paperback edition of the book. He has posted an open letter on his website saying that he has stepped away from public life for a while.

What do you think? How do you read Alexie's memoir in light of these recent events, and these events in light of the memoir? Is it possible to read the book on its own terms without reference to the allegations? An important question of the #metoo movement is whether we should even patronize the work of an artist guilty of ethical misconduct. What do we learn about Lillian Alexie? About reservation life in the 20th century? About the "spiritual burden" of being the last generation fully immersed in Native American language and tradition? About the experience of being "a first-generation cultural immigrant to the United States"? About the ways in which trauma can be cultural, generational, and personal? About our own cultural blindspots and our own willingness to judge?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, September 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed August's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui, then you might also enjoy these books, television shows, and films recommended by our discussion group members:

Books

  • The Lover by Marguerite Duras
  • Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat
  • Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
  • The Book of My Lives by Alexander Hemon
  • Monsoon Mansion by Cinelle Barnes
  • The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
  • The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  • Alone by Christophe Chaboute


Television shows

  • No Passport Required with Marcus Samuelsson on PBS


Films

  • East Side Sushi directed by Anthony Lucero


Monday, August 6, 2018

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui is an autobiographical, multigenerational story of the immigrant experience. With immigration in the daily news, reading this complex and moving memoir is a timely opportunity to consider the effects of war and displacement on generations of a family as well as the evolving relationships between all parents and children.

Inspired by and in the tradition of graphic novels like Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, The Best We Could Do tells the story of Bui's family's immigration to the United States from Vietnam during the 1970s. The narrative moves between the present and the past, with the birth of Bui's son as the center of the narrative, a catalyst for her reflections on family. The book evolved over nearly two decades from a family visit to Vietnam, to an oral history project for graduate school, to a graphic memoir for which she taught herself the art of narrative illustration. With her mother living in a studio apartment in her backyard, her father living four blocks away, and her siblings and their families nearby, Bui was able to include her family in the remembering and the writing of this story.

Bui told interviewer Carly Lanning of NBC News,
I wrote it from a place of empathy and trying to understand my parents as human beings rather than as just my parents. I’m hoping that translates to readers. This political discourse around immigration is so divisive, and I’m hoping that this story and where it was made from will remind people just to empathize. They’re human beings just like everybody else and I hope that will cut through and remind people that these are human beings we’re talking about, not “others.
What do you think? What historical events are tied to your own family history, and did any of these events influence your family to immigrate to another country? How and when did you first learn of your family's experience? What factors contributed to Bui's parents' decision to leave Vietnam after the war ended? What would you have done in their place? What is the difference between leaving a country voluntarily and being forced to leave your homeland? What are some positive and negative effects of such a dislocation? Bui's cousins in Indiana, who had been in the United States longer than Bui's family, criticize her behavior, saying, "Don't be such a REFUGEE!" What do they mean by this comment? When you hear the word "refugee," what do you think of? How do perceptions of refugees affect their experience? Consider the national and international stories about refugees in the news today. How do they compare to the Buis' experience? What is the difference between being born into a family and creating one? What is the difference between proximity to family and closeness to family? How did Bui's parents' experience affect their relationship with their children? What are Bui's concerns for her own child? What do think Bui is saying with her book's title, The Best We Could Do? Bui says in her book that she was seeking "an origin story . . . that will set everything right?" Does she find what she was looking for, or something else? How do you feel the graphic novel format Bui chose to tell her story affected its message and the power of its story?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 16, at 11:00 a.m. West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed July's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay, then you might also enjoy watching Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cooking show and reading her cookbooks. Gay says in Hunger,
What I love most about Ina is that she teaches me about fostering a strong sense of self and self-confidence. She teaches me about being at ease in my body. From all appearances, she is entirely at ease with herself. She is ambitious and knows she is excellent at what she does and never apologizes for it. She teaches me  that a woman can be plump and pleasant and absolutely in love with food. She gives me permission to love food. She gives me permission to acknowledge my hungers and to try and satisfy them in healthy ways. She gives me permission to buy the "good" ingredients she is so fond of recommending so that I might make good food for myself and the people for whom I enjoy cooking. She gives me permission to embrace my ambition and believe in myself. In the case of Barefoot Contessa, a cooking show is far more than just a cooking show.
That's quite a recommendation.

And you might also enjoy watching Roxane Gay talk about her first big success as an essayist in Breaking Big, Episode 6, which will air July 20, 2018, on SC-ETV at 8:30 p.m. Here is a link to a clip from the program: https://video.scetv.org/video/roxane-gay-gets-noticed-jnmgdf/.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

July Not Fiction Book Discussions

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay is a story of identity, desire, and resilience. In honest and unadorned prose, Gay tells us about a defining moment in her early teens that shaped the rest of her life. She was raped by a group of boys, betrayed by one she considered a friend. In an attempt to manage the shame and trauma of the rape, over the course of the next 20 years she got involved in more abusive relationships and became morbidly obese, eating to create a protective fortress of invisibility with her body, finding herself managing not only her own poor self-esteem, but also the negative opinions and physical obstacles of our fat-phobic culture. Confounding our genre expectations, she tells us upfront,
The story of my body is not a story of triumph. This is not a weight-loss memoir. There will be no picture of a thin version of me, my slender body emblazoned across this book's cover, with me standing in one leg of my former, fatter self's jeans. This is not a book that will offer motivation. I don't have any powerful insight into what it takes to overcome an unruly body and unruly appetites.
This is not an easy book to read. Gay understands this:
Writing this book is the most difficult thing I've ever done. To lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing. To face myself and what living in my body has been like has not been an easy thing, but I wrote this book because it felt necessary. In writing this memoir of my body, in telling you these truths about my body, I am sharing my truth and mine alone. I understand if that truth is not something you want to hear. The truth makes me uncomfortable too. 
It feels like a necessary book, not just for Gay, but for her readers. Through reading Gay's story, we can understand the world from a point of view, from a very real and lived--and uncomfortable--perspective, in a way we might not otherwise have done.

What do you think? Did reading Hunger make you uncomfortable? Why? Think back to your childhood and young adulthood: What experiences helped to create the person you are today? Were they all necessarily positive? How would you describe your own body image? What messages do you feel that you receive from our culture about the body you inhabit? Discuss the role that Gay's family, teachers, friends, lovers, doctors, colleagues, and others played in her self-image. Gay writes, "People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not." What are our culture's ideals and beliefs about the body? What assumptions have you made about overweight people in the past? Has reading Hunger changed your view and assumptions in any way? Are you familiar with recent scientific research that indicates that our food preferences, appetite, and size are largely genetic? At the heart of Gay's writing in Hunger is a conflict, expressed rhetorically by statements such as, "I feel a certain way. Or I don't." The title also includes an ambivalent set of parentheses around the word "my." What do you think she is trying to express? How would you describe Gay's writing style and tone? Do you find it effective? What about genre: If it is not a weight-loss memoir or a self-help manual, what is it?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, July 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed June's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:


  • The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America and others by Erik Larson
  • One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
  • Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation by John Sedgwick
  • Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne
  • Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
  • The Son: A Novel by Philipp Meyer
  • Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

June Not Fiction Book Discussions

"History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of insight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset." Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann tells the nearly-forgotten story of a series of murders of Osage Indians in the early 1900s and the deep-rooted culture of prejudice that made them possible.

Following the discovery of a large oil field under Osage land in northeastern Oklahoma, the Osage became the wealthiest people per capita in the world. Predictably perhaps in hindsight, Osage who held headrights to the oil land were systematically manipulated into signing over their rights and wealth to white citizens who were their financial guardians, their bankers, their physicians, their neighbors, and their families, and then were murdered. The murders went unsolved until J. Edgar Hoover used a limited number of the cases to burnish the reputation of the newly established Federal Bureau of Investigation. In researching this Reign of Terror, David Grann discovered that the murders went beyond the few prosecuted by Hoover and his detectives and indicated a "culture of killing" in which all levels of society were implicated. Grann told Rolling Stone,
This is as close a story to good and evil as I ever came across. I spent so much time with the evil that it was very disconcerting. But I really was determined not to just catalog the victims. I wanted to find the descendants who could help try to give the dead some voice. . . . One of the things that I wanted to try to show, hopefully, in the book by telling it through three different points of view--the Osage and Mollie Burkhart, Tom White and then me in the present--was to show the process of the accumulation of knowledge that only unfolds over time. Each person, as they live through history, can't see it all. There's a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has. . . . I discovered there is a limited trail of evidence; there are gaps. I had always kind of assumed that history was kind of a horror that you know. And this was a story that left me profoundly with a sensation of maybe the real horror is what we don't know.
What do you think? We are familiar with many historical American crimes and criminals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from movies, books, and television shows. Why do you think the story of the Osage murders hasn't received similar attention? How does the story Grann tells differ from the traditional kinds of stories of the American West we are used to hearing and seeing? Killers of the Flower Moon combines the fast pace of a true crime murder mystery with the scope and detail of narrative history and investigative journalism. How does Grann integrate these different aspects of the book and take it beyond a voyeuristic true crime story? What was your first impression of William Hale? Grann introduces him with an allusion to one of William Faulkner's most complicated characters from the novel Absalom, Absalom!: "Like a real-life version of Faulkner's Thomas Sutpen, he seemed to have come out of nowhere--a man with no known past." What does this allusion tell us about Hale? About American history and culture? What qualities does Hale share with this fictional character and with people who achieve power and influence today? What about Hoover? What kind of person was he? How did the bureaucracy he created help to conceal the extent and true horror of the Osage murders? In contrast, describe Tom White. How does he differ from so many other people described in the book? What do the contemporary media reports on the wealth of the Osage and the investigations into the murders reflect about white perceptions of Native Americans? How did they influence the way the murders were treated by law enforcement? Are there historical examples of racial prejudice and injustice that parallel those described in Killers of the Flower Moon? How about recent examples? Has anything changed about the approach taken by media and law enforcement? About the attitudes expressed by the white community in the face of racial, religious, or other discrimination? In what ways have things remained the same?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, June 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

Nonfiction

  • Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
  • Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan
  • Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
  • The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
  • House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
  • The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding


Fiction

  • The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
  • Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning and the film with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson
  • The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
  • A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Fiction by Janette Turner Hospital
Nonfiction and fiction by V. S. Naipaul

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

With Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova  we take a journey to the liminal land between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. Kassabova and her family emigrated from Bulgaria in 1973 after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. She  returned in 2013, making three trips altogether, and Border is the tale of travels.

The narrative alternates between brief chapters of definition, folktale, myth, and history, almost like border markers, and longer chapters telling the stories of the people she meets and the places she visits. Kassabova says,
. . . the initial emotional impulse behind my journey was simple: I wanted to see the forbidden places of my childhood, the once-militarised  border villages and towns, rivers and forests that had been out of bounds for two generations. I went with my revolt, that we had been chained like unloved dogs for so long behind the Iron Curtain. And with my curiosity, to meet the people of a terra incognita. . . . As I set out, I shared the collective ignorance about the regions not only with other fellow Europeans further away, but also with the urban elites of the three countries of this border.
What she discovers is a land of blurred boundaries between East and West, North and South; between ethnos, religion, and culture; between myth and history; and between loyalty to a political entity and the shared experience of living in world riven for centuries by deep political unease--most recently, the exodus of refugees from Syria and Iraq. What she discovers is that "There are beautiful places on earth where no one is spared." And yet, when asked by Jeffery Gleaves of  The Paris Review, "What was the most surprising thing you learned about the people of these borders?" Kassabova replied, "They seem to define themselves by what they love rather than by any political identity, or by any labels."

What do you think? Have you ever made a pilgrimage to a place from your childhood that you hadn't visited in a long time? Why did you go? What were your thoughts and feelings? What did you find? What do you think Kassabova was looking for on her travels through the borderland between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey? Did she find it? Which of the people and places, myths and histories that Kassabova describes was most interesting to you? What is the role of myth and folktale in the communities Kassabova visits? What do you understand about the current migration crisis in this area after reading Border? What purpose do her short chapters of definition and explication serve in the narrative? Are they successfully integrated into the longer narrative of conversations with people living in the borderland today? What does a border represent? What do you think accounts for the humor and perseverance with which the people of the borderland live their lives?

We hope you'll join the discussion: Tuesday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Friday, April 20, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, then you might also enjoy these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

  • Dead Souls and others by Nikolai Gogol
  • Notes from Underground and others by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • War and Peace and other by Leo Tolstoy
  • Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
  • The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
  • The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding
  • Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union by Conor O'Clery
  • Red Notice: A Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
  • The Death of Stalin, a graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin--and the movie it inspired with Michael Palin, Steve Buscemi, and Jason Isaacs.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles--Soon to be a television series starring Kenneth Branagh!

Monday, April 2, 2018

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich offers readers an intimate look through the genre of oral history at the collapse of Soviet-era communism and the rise of Vladimir Putin and state-run capitalism.

In her Nobel lecture in 2015, Alexievich said,
I do not stand alone at this podium . . . There are voices around me, hundreds of voices. They have always been with me, since childhood. . . . Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think--how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness. We haven't been able to capture the conversational side of human life for literature. We don't appreciate it, we aren't surprised or delighted by it. But it fascinates me, and has made me its captive. I love how humans talk . . . I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion. 
Secondhand Time is an orchestrated chorus of voices from 1991-2001, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin's election to President of the Russian Federation, and from 2002-2012, the years of Putin's consolidation of power. They range from young to old, staunch supporters of Soviet socialism to advocates of capitalism, majority ethnic Russians to the multitude of minority ethnic groups comprising the many states of the Russian Federation. Writing for The New York Times, Dwight Garner noted, "You can open this document anywhere; it's a kind of enormous radio."

Alexievich's intention is that the larger contours of history and the essence or truth of this history will emerge from this chorus of voices. In her Nobel lecture she explained,
It always troubled me that the truth doesn't fit into one heart, into one mind, that truth is somehow splintered. There's a lot of it, it is varied, and it is strewn about the world . . . So what is it that I do? I collect the everyday life of feelings, thoughts, and words. I collect the life of my time. I'm interested in the history of the soul. The everyday life of the soul, the things that the big picture of history usually omits, or disdains. I work with missing history. . . . I'm interested in little people. The little, great people, is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. In my books these people tell their own, little histories, and big history is told along the way.
Echoing the title of her book, she ends her lecture by asserting,
I will take the liberty of saying that we missed the chance we had in the 1990s. The question was posed: what kind of country should we have? A strong country, or a worthy one where people can live decently? We chose the former--a strong country. . . . A time full of hope has been replaced by a time of fear. The era has turned around and headed back in time. The time we live in now is second-hand . . . 
What do you think? Which of the many voices Alexievich records were most interesting to you? Do the voices blend into a meaningful chorus? Do you have a new understanding or appreciation of the history of the U.S.S.R. and the Russian Federation after reading Secondhand Time? What "big history" emerges from these voices? How would you describe the Russian soul as presented by Alexievich's interviews? What do you think Alexievich means by "secondhand time"? In a critical review for The New Republic, Sophie Pinkham argues that "Alexievich's apparent reliance on other people's voices doesn't mean that she has removed herself from her books; she has only made herself less visible. She edits, reworks, and rearranges her interview texts . . . In doing so, she reduces the historical value of her work, effaces the texture of individual character, and eliminates the rhythm on which drama depends." Would you agree or disagree? Why?

Read Alexievich's Nobel lecture here.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed War and Turpentine: A Novel by Stefan Hertmans, then you might also like these books, films, and television shows suggested by our discussion group members:

Books and films about war
  • The Red Badge of Courage by Stephan Crane (also a film 1951)
  • All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (also a film 1930)
  • Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead (also a film 1981)
  • Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb (also a film 1957))
  • Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain  (also a film 2014)
  • A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations by Juliet Nicholson
  • Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
  • The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service (also a film 2017) by David Finkel
Fictionalized autobiography
  • Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls
Autobiography/Memoir in two voices
  • The Color of Water by James McBride
Other films and television shows
  • Joyeux Noelle (2005) directed by Christian Carion
  • Downton Abbey (2010-2015)

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

March Not Fiction Book Discussions


War and Turpentine: A Novel by Stefan Hertmans  explores how well we can really know another person, especially an older relative with whom we are very familiar.

Stefan Hertmans inherited two journals written by his grandfather, Urbain Martien, that provided a glimpse into the three great influences on his life: love, war, and painting. In these journals, Urbain wrote about his deep affection for his father, Franciscus, a sensitive and fragile church muralist, and his mother, Celine, a proud, beautiful woman. He wrote about his father's art and craft and his memories of the many long, quiet days he spent assisting him. He wrote about the horrors of hard labor in an iron foundry and of trench warfare in Flanders during World War I. And he wrote about meeting the great romantic love of his life, Maria Emelia, only to lose her to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and make a marriage of convenience to her sister Gabrielle. After thirty years of contemplating how best to understand and write about his grandfather, Hertmans decided to write this story as fiction--a detective story of sorts--and as a contemplation of the relationships between generations of a family, with someone very much like himself as the narrator framing the grandfather's story with memories and reflections of his own. He says, "This task confronted me with the painful truth behind any literary work: I first had to recover from the authentic story, to let it go, before I could rediscover it my own way." What he learns shakes him to his core, confronting him with the transience of life and its many personal dramas as well as the mystery of personality and character: "Clues like these turn out to have been present throughout my childhood, invisible to me, and only by drawing links between my memories and what I read could I begin work on a modest form of restitution, inadequate reparations for my unforgivable innocence in those days."

What do you think? Why does the narrator say that at first he "didn't even dare to open the first page [of his grandfather's journals], in the knowledge that this story would be a farewell to a piece of my childhood"? Do you remember when you first realized that your parents and grandparents had complex lives of their own? As you have grown older, have you discovered or realized a truth about an older relative whom you thought you knew very well? What were your thoughts and feelings upon making this discovery? Upon seeing a naked woman for the first time, the young Urbain "cannot believe [she] is real, a figure that opens the door to a whole new world inside him, a door he had taken great pains to keep shut, out of Christian piety and the repression it entails." When the narrator goes to visit the spot, now an urban wasteland, many years later, he thinks, "Never before have I been so deeply struck by the transience of human life." Why is this a pivotal moment in the novel? The narrator asks himself many questions about his grandfather's idealized attraction to Maria Emelia and his long marriage to Gabrielle (p. 236). What do you make of these relationships? What does the novel seem to say about love? Scholars of modernism have noted the effect of the mechanized violence of World War I on the ethics and worldview of people living at the beginning of the twentieth century. How does the novel portray this effect, and what does it seem to say about war? What do you think of the way Hertmans has divided his novel into three sections, the first and third in the narrator's voice and the second in Urbain's voice? Why do you think he chose to write the book this way, as a novel, rather than as a biography or memoir or transcription of his grandfather's journals? What is the effect on you as a reader? What do the many illustrations and photographs add to the story, and why do you think Hertmans does not include photographs in the middle section? There are many descriptions of painting in the novel, from the great-grandfather's technique of painting a mural in wet plaster, to the grandfather's very controlled and precise painting style and the effect of his partial color-blindness on the colors in his paintings, to the fact that the grandfather often included original portraits within the context of reproductions of great masterpieces. How are painting and writing similar? What does the novel seem to say about art? Why do you think Hertmans wrote War and Turpentine? What was his purpose for his readers? For himself?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog?

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams, then you might also like these other books, articles, and television series recommended by our discussion group members:

  • Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson
  • "The Wildest Idea on Earth" by Tony Hiss, Smithsonian, September 2014, an interview with Wilson and an overview of his plan. 
  • This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein
  • The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang and other works by Edward Abbey
  • The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
  • A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
  • The Yosemite and other works by John Muir
  • The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
  • Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors
  • The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings and other works by Wendell Berry
  • A Good Day to Die and other works by Jim Harrison
  • An Outside Chance and other works by Thomas McGuane
  • The National Parks: America's Best Idea PBS television series directed by Ken Burns

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

February Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams is one writer's personal exploration of a public and shared landscape, and of what, if anything, separates wilderness from civilization.

Williams wrote these twelve essays about twelve parks of interest to her as a commemoration of the National Park Service's centennial year, 2015. They are part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique. She says, "This is a book about relationships inside America's national parks, and as is always the case with relations, the bonds formed, severed, and renewed within these federal lands are complicated. They are also fundamental to who we are as a country. Whether historical or ecological, political or personal, the connective tissue that holds together or tears apart our public lands begins with 'We, the People.'" Williams does more than memorialize America's National Parks; she also asks us to consider, "What is the relevance of our national parks in the twenty-first century--and how might these public commons bring us back home to a united state of humility?"

What do you think? Williams told the Los Angeles Review of Books that "Choosing the 12 [parks] was like creating a dinner party. I asked myself: 'Who would I like to invite to dinner for a rich and varied conversation?'" Have you visited any of these twelve national parks or any others? Are there any that you would especially like to visit? Which of Williams' essays most interested or affected you? Williams acknowledges that she is "writing out of her limitations"--not as a historian, not as a scientist, not as a government employee--but as a concerned citizen sharing her thoughts and feelings. What does she contribute to the conversation about our national parks? Williams openly shares her own opinions in her essays. How does she include differing points of view? Williams told the Los Angeles Review of Books that "With The Hour of Land each of the 12 national parks is a unique landscape. It made sense that each one deserved its own form, one that mirrored the story I was trying to tell." Which essays did you find most successful in terms of form? Does the book work as a whole? What holds it together? Williams says the photographs in the book "create an emotional landscape alongside the physical one explored through each park in this book." How do the images and text work together to create a conversation and affect your reading of the book? Perhaps the most important questions Williams raises in The Hour of Land look into the future. How would you answer them: "What is the relevance of our national parks in the twenty-first century--and how might these public commons bring us back home to a united state of humility?" She notes that with the national parks there is a constant search for balance between the missions of education and preservation. How do we determine which mission should guide our National Park Service for its next 100 years?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, February 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, February 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Monday, February 5, 2018

January Not Fiction Book Discussions and Readalikes

For January we read On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor, as Moor's subtitle indicates, a true essay or attempt to understand trails of all kinds.

Moor first became interested in trails while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. He thought he would write a traditional memoir about his time on the AT, with just a short chapter on trails and their history and symbolism, but then he found himself much more interested in the trails themselves. His book expanded to investigate the world's oldest fossil trails; insect communication and large herd migration; the evolution of human movement from footpaths to wagon trails to the Interstate Highway system; the history of modern hiking trails; and even the vast communication network of the Internet. We follow Moor as he follows this desire line, weaving his own experiences hiking and investigating trails into his narrative history of trails, moving from the minuscule and ancient to the vast and philosophical. Moor says, "I learned that the soul of a trail--its trail-ness--is not bound up in dirt and rocks; it is immaterial, evanescent, as fluid as air. The essence lies in its function: how it continuously evolves to serve the needs of its users. . . . To deftly navigate this world, we will need to understand how we make trails, and how trails make us."

In our discussions, we considered the following questions. What do you think? Moor says, "Thru-hiking is metamorphosis . . ." Have you ever done something like thru-hiking the AT that changed you profoundly? What was it? Why did you do it? Did you experience any paradigm shifts or conceive of any questions regarding things you previously took for granted, as Moor did with trails? Moor asks, "Why do we hike?" Are you a hiker? Or perhaps a city walker? Why do you walk?
In an essay for The New Yorker, Why the Most Popular Hiking Memoirs Don't Go the Distance, Moor discusses what makes a successful hiking memoir. He says, "The questions arises: Why are the three most famous accounts of hiking three of the world's most famous long-distance trails written by people who did not hike the whole distance? He is referring to Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage. Have you read these books? Read Moor's article and see what you think of his assessment of their popularity. What genre is Moor's book? Which of his topics did you find most interesting? Does he create an "engaging emotional trajectory" for his readers? Were there any that you wanted to know more about? Moor notes that the creation of modern hiking trails and wilderness areas brings up the question of what is wild and what is civilized. Looking ahead to next month's book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams, what, if anything, do you think separates wilderness from civilization, and how should we work to preserve wild spaces while still allowing the kind of access that reminds us of their importance?

If you enjoyed On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor, then you might also like these reading suggestions from our discussion group members:

  • The three hiking memoirs Moor discusses in his New Yorker essay, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho.
  • Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.
  • The Snow Leopard and Shadow Country by Peter Mathiessen.
  • The Places in Between by Rory Stewart.
  • John McPhee's books about geology. 
  • The Thousand-Mile Summer by Colin Fletcher.
  • Overland in Search of America by Philip Caputo.
  • A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
  • Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.
  • Palm at the End of the Mind by Wallace Stevens.
  • The novels of Cormac McCarthy, such as The Border Trilogy and The Road.
  • The article Life on the Edge by Terence Monmaney, from Smithsonian April 2017.
  • The article Trails and Tribulations by Abigail Tucker from Smithsonian July-August 2017.
We hope you will join the discussion and share any of your reading suggestions related to On Trails here on the blog.