JANUARY BOOK

Belated ritual solstice greetings and a Happy New Year to all!

January's book will be Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (https://www.amazon.com/Hotel-Du-Lac-Anita-Brookner/dp/0679759328), a short read for the holiday season.  Note:  we have moved the meeting to Tuesday, Jan. 8 to avoid a conflict with New Year's Day.  Join us for an evening of good food, good drink and lively conversation in the Sylvia Hotel dining room, starting at 7pm.  (We no longer meet in the lounge.)  New members (and old) always welcome.  Happy reading to all in 2019!

         

In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a pseudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to restore her to her senses.  Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.

DECEMBER BOOK

December's book will be The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (https://www.amazon.com/Story-New-Name-Neapolitan-Novels/dp/1609451341).  Join us at 7pm on the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 4 in the dining room of the Sylvia Hotel.  (Yes, that's right, we've abandoned the lounge; the new live music format tends to overwhelm the conversation.)  As always, new members are more than welcome.

         

Soon to be an HBO series, the follow-up to My Brilliant Friend in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy's most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times)

NOVEMBER BOOK

November's book will be A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (https://www.amazon.com/Month-Country-Review-Books-Classics/dp/0940322471?crid=PYULGVYJVGRT&keywords=a+month+in+the+country+by+j.l.+carr&qid=1540679394&sprefix=a+month+in%2Caps%2C346&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1 ).  Join us on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 6 for some literary shenanigans and tomfoolery in the Sylvia Hotel dining room (not the lounge), beginning at 7pm.  New members always welcome.

Nota bene :  We will be moving over to the Sylvia's dining room as the lounge has begun featuring (loud) live music                               on Tuesday evenings.

           

In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.

OCTOBER BOOK

October's book will be Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316767727/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536551169&sr=8-1).  Join us at 7pm on Tuesday Oct. 2 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge as we bid adieu to summer while indulging in a few beverages and some literary chitchat.  New members and curiosity seekers always welcome.

         


        

In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.


The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

OCTOBER BOOK

October's book will be Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316767727/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536551169&sr=8-1).  Join us at 7pm on Tuesday Oct. 2 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge as we bid adieu to summer while indulging in a few beverages and some literary chitchat.  New members and curiosity seekers always welcome.

         

In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsupressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

SEPTEMBER BOOK

NOTE:  No meeting in August, as we take our traditional summer break.

 

September's book will be Ferocity by Nicola Lagioa (https://www.amazon.com/Ferocity-Nicola-Lagioia/dp/1609453816).  Join us at 7pm on Tuesday, September 4, for a lovely evening of literature and libations at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge, grandly overlooking English Bay.  Newcomers are always welcome to stop by for a test drive.

         

 

Part of the excellent Europa Editions line of continental European fiction in translation (My Brilliant Friend, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, etc.), Ferocity is at once an intimate family saga and a cinematic portrait of the moral and political corruption of an entire society. It is an ambitious, stylish work by one of Italy's foremost novelists.

Bari, southern Italy. On a stifling summer's night, on the outskirts of town, a young woman named Clara—the daughter of the region's most prominent family of real estate developers—stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Her death will be deemed a suicide. Her estranged half-brother, however, cannot free himself from her memory or the questions surrounding her death, and the more he learns about Clara's life, the more he reveals the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence.

Ferocity combines suspense, psychological acuity, and contemporary realism in a feat of storytelling. It is fierce and relentless in pursuit of its characters' psychological truths, yet lyrical and moving as it describes the natural splendor of Italy ravaged by greed and regulatory negligence.

JULY BOOK

Next month's book will be To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (https://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-Virginia-Woolf/dp/0156907399/ref=sr_1_1/143-4956879-9226542?ie=UTF8&qid=1528579229&sr=8-1&keywords=to+the+lighthouse+virginia+woolf).  Join us on Tuesday, July 3 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge at 7pm.  What better way to spend a fine summer evening than overlooking English Bay with a cool beverage, while trading bon mots with your fellow bibliophiles?  How very civilized!  As always, new members, curiosity seekers and miscellaneous literati are welcome to join the proceedings.

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"Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."—Eudora Welty, from the Introduction.The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.

JULY BOOK

Next month's book will be To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (https://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-Virginia-Woolf/dp/0156907399/ref=sr_1_1/143-4956879-9226542?ie=UTF8&qid=1528579229&sr=8-1&keywords=to+the+lighthouse+virginia+woolf).  Join us on Tuesday, July 3 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge at 7pm.  What better way to spend a fine summer evening than overlooking English Bay with a cool beverage, while trading bon mots with your fellow bibliophiles?  How very civilized!  As always, new members, curiosity seekers and miscellaneous literati are welcome to join the proceedings.

         

"Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."—Eudora Welty, from the Introduction.The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.

JUNE BOOK

Next month's book will be Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (https://www.amazon.com/Go-Went-Gone-Jenny-Erpenbeck/dp/0811225941/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526250782&sr=8-1&keywords=jenny+erpenbeck+go+went+gone).  Join us at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge on Tuesday, June 5 at 7pm for a rambling, no-holds-barred discussion and a beverage or two (not to mention that wonderful chicken and corn chowder).  New members always welcome.

 

Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, "one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation" (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes. Exquisitely translated by Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone addresses one of the most pivotal issues of our time, facing it head-on in a voice that is both nostalgic and frightening.

May 2018 Book

MAY BOOK

Next month's book will be The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (https://www.amazon.com/Long-Goodbye-Raymond-Chandler/dp/0394757688/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1523940453&sr=8-1).
Join us on Tuesday, May 1st at 7:00 pm for discussion and beverages (and perhaps some chicken & corn chowder) at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

                    


Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

april book

Next month's book will be Manhatten Beach by Jennifer Egan
Join us on Tuesday, April 3rd at 7:00 pm for discussion and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge. 

The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have been murdered.

Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan’s first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.

march book

Next month's book will be The Universe Within by Neil Turok.
Join us on Tuesday, March 6th at 7:00 pm for discussion and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge. 




























A visionary look at the way the human mind can shape the future by world-renowned physicist Neil Turok. Every technology we rely on today was created by the human mind, seeking to understand the universe around us. Scientific knowledge is our most precious possession, and our future will be shaped by the breakthroughs to come. In this personal and fascinating work, Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, explores the transformative scientific discoveries of the past three centuries -- from classical mechanics, to the nature of light, to the bizarre world of the quantum, and the evolution of the cosmos. Each new discovery has, over time, yielded new technologies causing paradigm shifts in the organization of society. Now, he argues, we are on the cusp of another major transformation: the coming quantum revolution that will supplant our current, dissatisfying digital age. Facing this brave new world, Turok calls for creatively re-inventing the way advanced knowledge is developed and shared, and opening access to the vast, untapped pools of intellectual talent in the developing world. Scientific research, training, and outreach are vital to our future economy, as well as powerful forces for peaceful global progress.

february book

February's book will be The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
Join us on Tuesday, February 6th - at the Sylvia Hotel for food, drink and discussion.

Sherman Alexie’s celebrated first collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, established its author as one of America’s most important and provocative voices. The basis for the award-winning movie Smoke Signals, it remains one of his best loved and widely praised books twenty years after its initial publication.

Vividly weaving memory, fantasy, and stark reality to paint a portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian reservation, this book introduces some of Alexie’s most beloved characters, including Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the storyteller who no one seems to listen to, and his compatriot, Victor, the sports hero who turned into a recovering alcoholic. Now with an updated introduction from Alexie, these twenty-four tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet they are filled with passion and affection, myth and charm. Against a backdrop of addiction, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between men and women, Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, and, most poetically, modern Indians and the traditions of the past.