the written page

I went to my book club last week and partook in a lovely meal cooked by a wonderful woman named Joyce who owns a little lunch shop in the town where I work. Good food, good company and good discussion about books. I think we talked more about literature when we weren’t discussing a certain book we had read! Each person brought as many recommendations to the table for books to read for the next year as they wanted and I was sure to write down names of all of them to expand my sphere of reading. I was so impressed with these women, they started whipping out book reviews and articles from the Tribune, etc. about books that caught their eye.

Below are the books we are reading, some I am not very excited about, others seem interesting. Two of my suggestions were taken (Severe Mercy and Nickel and Dimed). A lot of diversity, it seems, between not only fiction and nonfiction but “highbrow” reading and not so much (i.e. March). I ordered the first five books already so that I am prepared and don’t have to try to do crunch time reading before the first of the month. Here are the picks, in no particular order:

Plain Truth – Jodi Picoult
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before – Tony Horwitz
The Attack – Yasmina Khadra
Terrorist – John Updike
Digging to America – Anne Tyler
Everyman – Philip Roth
My Antonia – Willa Cather (which never fails to get me humming My Antonia by Emmylou Harris/Dave Matthews)
The Pursuit of Happyness – Chris Gardner
March – Geraldine Brooks
A Severe Mercy – Sheldon Vanauken
Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

Regarding literature, Corbin started an interesting thread of discussion on his blog regarding the top ten greatest pieces of literature. His discussion is going to take some more time to digest and think about…I might add the Bible and Civil Disobedience (book or essay?) to the list…

One book I know that I am going to get and read because have been putting it off is “Love in the Time of Cholera”. This book first sparked my attention through two different John Cusack movies where he talks about it and it keeps popping up as a “great” piece of literature. Ahhh…so many books, so little time!