Our book group choice for October 2008 is Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk. Arlington Park, a modern-day English suburb very much like its American counterparts, is a place devoted to the profitable ordinariness of life. Amidst its leafy avenues and comfortable houses, its residents live out the dubious accomplishments of civilization: material prosperity, personal freedom, and moral indifference.
Our book group choice for September 2008 is What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an
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Our book group choice in August 2008 is Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the
Our book choice for July 2008 is The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Hugely influential on both the SF New Wave of the 60s and the cyberpunks of the 80s, Bester’s second novel is a fast-moving pyrotechnic extravaganza with enough bloodshed for Tarantino and enough social analysis for Marx.
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Our book group choice for June 2008 is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque. It tells the story of a group of young German soldiers who enlist in World War I after being captivated by slogans of patriotism and honor. The novel is narrated by the protagonist, Paul Baumer, who is 20 years old.
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Our book choice for May 2008 is Death and the Penguin by Andrew Kurkov. Viktor is an aspiring writer with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. Death and the Penguin is a darkly comic novel by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov, set in
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Our book choice for April 2008 is The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Summoned to the home of the fabulously wealthy General Sternwood, cynical private investigator Philip Marlowe is hired to deal with a blackmailer shaking down the General’s sensuous, thumb-sucking daughter Carmen.
Our book group choice for March 2008 is December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza. A sultry December evening in Rio de Janeiro. A retired policeman spends a typically alcohol-fuelled night out with his girlfriend, a prostitute.
Our book group choice for February 2008 is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years, from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding, that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms.
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Our book group choice for January 2008 is The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945 by Peter Hennessy. “H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister during the first World War, famously said that the job of Prime Minister “is what its holder chooses and is able to make of it.”
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