FEBRUARY BOOK

February's book will be Thinking (https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Science-Decision-Making-Problem-Solving-Prediction/dp/0062258540), a collection of pieces edited by John Brockman, who runs the Edge.org website.  Whether you subscribe to cogito ergo sum or bibo ergo sum, put on your thinking caps and drinking chaps and join us at the cozy Sylvia Hotel dining room (not the lounge) on Tuesday, Feb. 5.  Festivities commence at 7pm and new members (and old) are always welcome.

         

From the bestselling authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow; The Black Swan; and Stumbling on Happiness comes a cutting-edge exploration of the mysteries of rational thought, decision-making, intuition, morality, willpower, problem-solving, prediction, forecasting, unconscious behavior, and beyond. Edited by John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"—The Guardian), Thinking presents original ideas by today's leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who are radically expanding our understanding of human thought.

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.