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.

january 2018 book

Continuing at the scenic Sylvia Hotel for the New Year!
PLEASE NOTE: We will be meeting on the SECOND Tuesday of the month for January

January's book will be Cat and Mouse, by Gunter Grass
Join us on Tuesday, January 9th - for food, drink and discussion.

The setting is Danzig during World War II. The narrator recalls a boyhood scene in which a black cat pounces on his friend Mahlke's 'mouse'-his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero.

december book

Back to the scenic Sylvia Hotel for December!

December's book will be The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, by Hilary Mantel
Join us on Tuesday, December 5th - for food, drink and discussion.

In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display with stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher will brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way.