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

If you enjoyed The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home by Denise Kiernan, then you might also like these books mentioned by Kiernan as well as a few books and movies suggested by our discussion group members:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
(Of course all four of these novels have been made into films . . . )
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
Television series The Men Who Built America
Television series Downton Abbey
Documentary The Queen of Versailles

January Not Fiction Book Discussions

We begin the year's discussions with The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home by Denise Kiernan, a history of the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC, that is also a sweeping narrative of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of "the first tycoon," Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, used his inherited fortune to travel, collect art, and ultimately build a lavish home in rural North Carolina, employing the most celebrated architects and landscape designers of his time, to showcase his collection. As a result of world events, personal financial decisions, and changes in tax law, in just three generations, George's portion of the Commodore's fortune had been reduced enough to make Biltmore more of a liability than an asset to his heirs. His wife, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser Vanderbilt, emerges as the real heroine of the story of Biltmore, for it is her social responsibility and careful management that made Biltmore a lasting contribution to the Asheville community, to forestry and conservation, and to her family.

What do you think? Kiernan writes that “[w]alking the halls of Biltmore House for a day is a journey back in time” (p. 297). Have you ever visited Biltmore? If not, visit Biltmore’s official website at Biltmore.com and take a virtual tour of the estate through the site’s photo gallery. She also writes that Biltmore “may not have been in New York or Newport, but if this house didn’t make an impression on the Four Hundred, nothing would, acorns or no.” (p. 66). Is there anything about the house and the grounds that you find particularly striking? If so, what? Have your thoughts and feelings about the house changed as a result of reading The Last Castle? If so, how? Discuss the intentions and feelings George, Edith, and Cornelia each had for Biltmore, as well as the estate's effect on the region socially and economically. During the Gilded Age, being “a son of the Vanderbilt dynasty was to have your every move, dalliance, chance encounter, and passing venture watched and analyzed” (p. 7-8). Why do you think the public is so interested in the lives of the Vanderbilt family? Discuss the impact the constant public scrutiny has on the behavior of members of the Vanderbilt family. Can you think of any modern equivalents that are scrutinized in the same way the Vanderbilt family was in their time? Kiernan mentions many popular and enduring works of fiction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Have you read any of these novels? Kiernan also integrates world history, including two World Wars and the financial crisis of 1929, into the story of Biltmore. How do these references help you understand the story of the Vanderbilts and Biltmore House? In 1873, Mark Twain and coauthor Charles Dudley Warner wrote a book about the age of excess in which they lived titled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Do you think “Gilded Age” is an appropriate title for the time? If so, why? Do you see any comparisons to today’s economy and culture?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, January 8, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, January 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog. And if you haven't already, take a look at the list of titles and dates for this year''s discussions. What connections will you discover?

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

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.

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

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.

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