November December 2017 Book Choice

Our last book for 2017 is  I Am America (and so can you) by Stephen Colbert

“I Am America” describes “heroes” as “people who did not skip ahead” to that speech “but read the book from start to finish as intended.” Heroism aside, to experience the speech in print is to understand what “I Am America” is missing.Mr. Colbert and his staff write for a particular character with impeccable, deadpan delivery, and there is no book-worthy equivalent of what happens when the real McCoy gets near a microphone. The printed speech falls surprisingly flat. Neither this chapter nor the rest of “I Am America” is helped by little red annotations in the margins, though these, too, mimic a tactic that happens to be funny on TV.
mong the funnier sections is the “Higher Education” chapter. It includes what purports to be Mr. Colbert’s college application essay, featuring ripe malapropisms, overuse of a thesaurus (“the apex, pinnacle, acme, vertex, and zenith of my life’s experience”) and the lying claim that his great-great-uncle’s name is on a building at Dartmouth. There are also fake course selections with student annotations, among them “Ethnic Stereotypes and the Humor of Cruelty” (“A professor will tell you a bunch of hilarious jokes, and you’re not allowed to laugh”) and “Dance for Men.” (“Go ahead. Break your mother’s heart.”) Heterosexuality that protests too much is a big part of the official Colbert attitude...If “I Am America (And So Can You!)” had nothing but its title, its Colbert cover portrait and 230 blank pages instead of printed ones, it would make a cherished keepsake just the same."

2007 NY Times book review



Betsy will once again host the Holiday Cookie Exchange end of the year party.

October November 2017 Book Choice

Our late fall book choice is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

"If a Japanese-American writer who is also a Zen Buddhist priest wrote a post-Japanese tsunami novel, what themes might you imagine she would address? Biculturalism, water, death, memory, the female predicament, conscience, the nature of time and tide? Tick. All there. Throw in the second world war, the reader-writer relationship, depression, ecological collapse, suicide, origami, a 105-year-old anarchist nun and a schoolgirl's soiled knickers, and you have Ruth Ozeki's third novel, A Tale for the Time Being.


Ozeki's meditative, era-flipping story starts with a chance discovery by a Japanese-American novelist called Ruth. Ruth lives on an island in British Columbia. Walking on the beach she stumbles on a barnacle-studded wad of plastic bags protecting a Hello Kitty lunchbox. Inside are some old letters and the diary of 16-year-old Nao (pronounced "now") Yasutani, who describes herself as "a little wave person. Floating about on the stormy sea of life"...
Seen from space, or from the vantage point of those conversant with Zen principles, A Tale for the Time Being is probably a deep and illuminating piece of work, with thoughtful things to say about the slipperiness of time. But for those positioned lower in the planet's stratosphere, Ozeki's novel often feels more like the great Pacific gyre it frequently evokes: a vast, churning basin of mental flotsam in which Schrödinger's cat, quantum mechanics, Japanese funeral rituals, crow species, fetish cafes, the anatomy of barnacles, 163 footnotes and six appendices all jostle for attention. It's an impressive amount of stuff." 

The Guardian Book Review March 2013

Kim hosted the Dinner Party

September October 2017 Book Choice

Our September October book choice is Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

"In the most vivid chapter of Ann Patchett’s rich and engrossing new novel, “Commonwealth,” it is 1971 and six step ­siblings ranging in age from 6 to 12 years old have been left to their own devices. Their blended family is on a car trip, staying in a motel near a lake, and the parents — the beautiful, overwhelmed mother of two of the girls and the affably selfish father of two more girls and two boys — have left a note that reads We’re sleeping late. Do not knock. Thus the children eat breakfast at a diner, then gather supplies, including soda, candy bars, a gun and a fifth of gin, and hike to the lake, where they spend several hours swimming and leaping from a high rock.

Patchett wisely underplays the drama — the chapter is a masterly example of showing rather than telling — and the increasingly shocking details speak for themselves.

Her observations about people and life are insightful; and her underlying tone is one of compassion and amusement. If “Commonwealth” lacks the foreign intrigue of “Bel Canto” or “State of Wonder,” both of which took place in South America and contained more suspense, this novel, much of which unfolds in American suburbs, recognizes that the passage of time is actually the ultimate plot. As anyone who has attended a high school reunion knows, people themselves don’t need to have been doing anything particularly interesting in order for their lives to generate interest, so long as you run into them at infrequent enough intervals. Patchett also skillfully illustrates the way that seemingly minor, even arbitrary deci­sions can have long-lasting conse­quences and the way that we often fear the wrong things." 

NY times book review September 2016


Michele hosted the Dinner Party