Book Update from BT

The Gathering was stunning with the critics comparing the narrative tone to Joan Didion's "furious, cool grief" and James Joyce's Dubliners. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. Another review said "Entrancing, unflinching and insightful....a haunting look at a broken family stifled by generations of hurt and disappointment, struggling to make peace with the irreparable." I liked this summary best: Anne Enright's fiction is jet dark--but how it glitters."

Am thoroughly enjoying Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle) and it seems like may a couple of you recommended that? As you recall, Glass Castles was autobiographical and Half Broke Horses is about her grandmother and is sprinkled with sepia-tone photos. I just love her style. -BT

The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg

There are books that make you think, and then there are books that are just light and fun to read. Elizabeth Berg's books fall into the second category. I like to read her books after I've read something that might be a tad dark or depressing. So this was the perfect thing to pick up after finishing Cutting for Stone. And it's a very quick read. This story is about a group of individuals preparing for their 40th high school reunion. Over half of the book is spent presenting the characters and their angst over this reunion. The rest of the book is the actual reunion itself and how it doesn't necessarily play out the way the characters had planned. But as always, Berg's characters end up wiser and happier than they were at the beginning. A fun, quick, easy, mindless read. -June

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese

This book received many rave reviews. The characters are great, and the setting in Ethopia is fascinating. Although I really liked it, I felt there were times it could have been condensed somewhat... the book is over 600 pages! Surgeries are described in minute detail, and I found myself skimming right over those parts. Perhaps if I had a medical background, those sections would have more meaning. But read it to know the characters. I think they will stay with me. -June
P.S. This turned out to be a great book to read and then discuss. My book group spent the entire time talking about it. Very interesting!

Comments from BT

I just read the latest by Michael Chabon (autobiographical): Manhood for Amateurs, The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son. (He also wrote, among others, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay--fabulous book for which he won the Pulitzer for fiction a few years back)
Sample paragraph:
"This is an essential element of the business of being a man: to flood everyone around you in a great radiant arc of bullshit; one whose source and object of greatest intensity is yourself. To behave as if you have everything firmly under control even when you have just sailed your boat over the falls. "To keep your head...when all about you are losing theirs." (Rudyard Kipling) but in reality, the trick of being a man is to give the appearance of keeping your head when, deep inside, the truest part of you is crying out, Oh shit!" It was good.

I LOVED Amazing Adventures but couldn't get into The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- story of a Jewish settlement (60 years after seeing refuge following WWII) in Sitka, Alaska. I read 1/4 and may return to it because the reviews were superb...

And I think I already wrote that House Rules is very, very good--although I may have had an extra interest because of the extraordinary insight into Asberger's Syndrome.