April Not Fiction Book Discussion

For our April Not Fiction Book Discussion we are reading The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. Kamp, who is a regular contributor to periodicals including Vanity Fair and GQ, presents a social history of American food culture over the last five decades that chronicles what he sees as the happy evolution of American taste from provincial and conventional to multicultural gourmet. Kamp's history is rich with details about the lives of the celebrity chefs who helped create this movement, from the Big Three of James Beard, Julia Child, and Craig Claiborne to current stars of the Food Network such as Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray, and it also suggests the importance of the media and of consumer capitalism in shaping American trends and tastes. Possible topics for conversation could include the role of media and business in creating taste and demand, evolving American notions of gender and culture as reflected in our food culture, whether we agree with Kamp that the gourmet trend in American food culture is completely positive, and the relevance of the food revolution to our own lives. We hope you will be able to join us for our discussion, either at the Main Library on Tuesday, April 1, at 7:00 in Meeting Room A, or here on the blog.

Notes from March's Not Fiction Book Discussion

We opened our discussion of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin by considering why this book is so popular, such a word-of-mouth book. We decided that Mortenson's story is inspiring because it proves that one person can make a difference on a large scale and provides hope for a confusing, seemingly insoluble political situation. It is the kind of book that can inspire individuals to take action.

We questioned the purpose of the book, and decided that it is not just a biography or adventure story, but also an advertisement for Mortenson's work through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute. In addition, it provides a convincing argument by example for the "three cups of tea" approach to foreign diplomacy. We compared Three Cups of Tea to The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, which we read last October, and agreed that while both books promote this approach to political relationships, Stewart's book, written in first person, is much more of a personal story, a true memoir.

We enjoyed discussing Mortenson's character, especially his transformation from climbing bum to head of an international nonprofit organization. We admire his ability to connect with people very unlike himself culturally and to learn from them the best way to procede to accomplish their mutual goals. We also marveled at his perseverance and disregard for personal comfort and safety.

And we discussed Relin's writing, his style and choice of point of view. Some reviewers of the book have criticized Relin's style, saying that his prose is occasionally clunky and that some of his metaphors are awkward and exaggerated. While we admitted that this criticism is true, we also agreed that Relin creates a sense of drama and provides some vivid portraits of the people and places Mortenson encountered. We compared Relin's choice of point of view to Tracy Kidder's in his book about Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, which we read last November, and we came away with an even greater appreciation of Kidder's choice to include himself and his reactions to Farmer in the story, acting as a touchstone for the reader's own reaction to Farmer. Relin admits in his introduction that he could not serve as an objective observer but felt compelled to advocate for Mortenson, which caused some of us to question whether we are getting a full, truthful portrait of Mortenson's character. And Relin's choice to use a point of view that provides access to Mortenson's thoughts caused some of us to question to what degree those thoughts were truly Mortenson's, accurately recalled, or Relin's artistic creation.

Overall, we enjoyed Three Cups of Tea and found that it opens up many important political, cultural, literary, and personal discussions. We invite you to join those discussions here on the blog.

Visit these links to learn more about Mortenson's nonprofit Central Asia Institute and to get involved with fundraising through Pennies for Peace.

March Not Fiction Book Discussion

For our March Not Fiction Book Discussion, we will be discussing the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, the story of how Mortenson became a humanitarian who has helped impoverished villages in remote and war-torn areas of Central Asia build over fifty schools for girls. The village of Korphe in the remote Karakoram mountains of Pakistan generously helped Mortenson regain his health after his failed attempt to summit the world's second highest peak,K2, in 1993, so Mortenson promised to build the village a school. The story of how he kept that promise and its far-reaching consequences provides drama, romance, humor, cultural insight, and hope that one person can make a difference. As we discuss Relin's role as narrator of Mortenson's life and work, Mortenson's powerful and sometimes difficult personality, the many challenges of humanitarian work, and the political implications of this book as America continues its military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps we will also come to understand why Three Cups of Tea has become a bestseller, a book for our times. We hope you will join our discussion, either Tuesday, March 4, at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room A of Charleston County Public Library's Main Library or here on the blog.

Notes from February's Not Fiction Book Discussion

Our discussion of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City centered on Pamuk's conviction that "Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am." As one member of our discussion group suggested, Pamuk has embraced his fate and from it created for his readers an almost palpable sense of Istanbul as he knows it, a city of huzun, or shared melancholy, inseparable from his family's life and his interior life as a young artist. Another member of our discussion group, who is a native of Istanbul and an admirer of all of Pamuk's works, asked us whether we felt we could "see" Istanbul after reading Pamuk's memoir, saying that he felt it did a wonderful job of portraying Istanbul but that he was biased by knowing the city and being a fan of Pamuk's writing. We agreed that we do feel we now know Istanbul, but that if we were suddenly to find ourselves in its streets, we would be surprised to see the vibrant, full-color, present-day city rather than the black and white city Pamuk portrays. It is to Pamuk's credit that the city we know so well is the city of his memories.

Readers who enjoyed Pamuk's family stories and honest portrayal of his inner life as an artist will enjoy reading his Nobel Lecture, My Father's Suitcase, in which he presents a poignant story about his relationship with his father as well as his view of the role of literature in today's politically sensitive world.

February Not Fiction Book Discussion

For our February Not Fiction Book Discussion, we are reading Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk, who won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, tells us in his first chapter, "Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul, never left the houses, streets, and neighborhoods of my childhood. . . . My imagination . . . requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am." Thus his book is a memoir of a city as much as it is a memoir of a self, offering readers a lushly detailed cultural, social, political, and religious history of Istanbul as well as a startlingly honest portrait of this artist as a young man. Pamuk has enriched his text with evocative photographs of his family and the city, enhancing his presentation of the sensibility of huzun, or melancholy, he feels he shares with all Istanbullus as a result of living in this lost empire. Our discussion should be rich as we explore Pamuk's literary allusions, compare and contrast his memoir with Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir, discuss the idea of a shared cultural sensibility, and share favorite passages, so we hope you will join us, either Tuesday, February 5 at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room A of the Main Library on Calhoun Street or here on the blog.

To hear an interview with Orhan Pamuk and learn more about Istanbul, visit this link to Public Radio International's program The World, which recently featured a week of programming about this city titled Istanbul: A Past and Future City.

Notes from January's Not Fiction Book Discussion

We began our discussion of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir with a question asked by book reviewer William Leith of the London Evening Standard: "Is this the most cheerful book I've ever read, or the saddest?" We all agreed that Bryson does a wonderful job of conveying the parallel currents of optimism and paranoia that defined the 1950s--the excitement of space travel and television and the fear of communist spies and nuclear war--and he also succeeds at evoking the hyperbolic enthusiasm of childhood and the nostalgia of adulthood.

We disagreed with critics who feel that Bryson is not much of a memoirist. We decided that some readers might not understand Bryson's purpose in writing this book--to recreate the feel of childhood in a particular time and place rather than to provide a psychological evaluation of himself and his family. Bryson confirmed his intentions in a September 2006 interview with Emma Brooks of the Guardian: "This is not a deeply analytical book. The points it makes are pretty obvious points. It is not a huge intellectual exercise. It's really just a book about what an interesting state childhood is and what an interesting and promising place the United States was 50 years ago and how I think it's kind of gone wrong. . . . I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don't tell you anything about me. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family."

We all enjoyed reminiscing about our own childhoods, prompted by the humor and lyricism of passages such as this one: " . . . I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. . . . I knew the cool feel of linoleum on bare skin and what everything smelled like at floor level. I knew pain the way you know it when it is fresh and interesting--the pain, for example, of a toasted marshmallow in your mouth when its interior is roughly the temperature and consistency of magma. I knew exactly how clouds drifted on a July afternoon, what rain tasted like, how ladybugs preened and caterpillars rippled, what it felt like to sit inside a bush. I knew how to appreciate a really good fart, whether mine or someone else's." However, just as Bryson's book strikes a balance between cheerful and sad, so we found ourselves drawn to reflect, just as Bryson does in his melancholy last lines, "What a wonderful world that would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won't see its like again, I'm afraid."

To view an animated VidLit clip of a passage from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, click here!

If you have read Bryson's memoir or simply want to reminisce about your childhood, we hope you will add your comments here. What passages of the book were humorous to you? What memories of your childhood did the book bring back for you?

January Not Fiction Book Discussion

We will open our 2008 Not Fiction Book Discussion with Bill Bryson's memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Unlike many recent memoirists who describe remarkably troubled childhoods, Bryson tells us that "My kid days were pretty good ones, on the whole. My parents were patient and kind and approximately normal." He describes in vivid and humorous detail growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa, capturing the optimism of America in that decade. His remarkably normal childhood led him to a writing career that has produced such best sellers as A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything. Capturing the tone of Bryson's book, Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday says, "[Bryson's] mix of exquisite detail and inspired exaggeration all add up to truth with a capital T that rhymes with G that stands for out-loud guffaws." We hope you will be able to join us, either Tuesday, January 8 at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room A of Main Library on Calhoun Street or here on the blog, for what should be an entertaining discussion!