tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63676821559707352522024-03-13T07:08:34.440-07:00Man Book ClubWe are a group of men in Marin County, California that meets monthly to discuss books that challenge us...to leave our day jobs behind, to find meaning and enjoyment in literature, and to know each other better in the process.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-57050382107342148642023-07-30T21:12:00.005-07:002023-08-01T10:36:06.483-07:00Paul's Winning Wager: a Spanish Fiesta in the Sonoma Valley<div style="text-align: left;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqcRLKETmcpGNHNAuV5yKh8JcZ6bwCtzJ4h9ASii2p-ir34QLxxGJh4SuG39BzNESYz1F8Pd4-ADfrWFvLKy7hO0Np1rFz5shEiepr2VRv-TtX-I1j6b-iKJd2X7Xc1kIIOZ_dUPVbpgJoCGyq40P4I5Pg6j0IxPVtym_jcqNgGtseqTFG3vboV-7VhJw/s182/The%20Wager.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="120" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqcRLKETmcpGNHNAuV5yKh8JcZ6bwCtzJ4h9ASii2p-ir34QLxxGJh4SuG39BzNESYz1F8Pd4-ADfrWFvLKy7hO0Np1rFz5shEiepr2VRv-TtX-I1j6b-iKJd2X7Xc1kIIOZ_dUPVbpgJoCGyq40P4I5Pg6j0IxPVtym_jcqNgGtseqTFG3vboV-7VhJw/s1600/The%20Wager.jpg" width="120" /></a></div><br />Lunch & Acknowledgments</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A huge thanks is owed to our host, Paul, who went to considerable effort yesterday. Rather than emulate the poor fare served aboard <i>HMS Wager</i>, Paul prepared a meal that would have made Pizarro (the captain of the Spanish galleon targeted by the English fleet) quite proud.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To accomplish that, he enlisted the assistance of his fine friend Paul, an expert in hosting paella parties; he set out plates of delicious Spanish appetizers; and he avoided any food tainted by an association with the Royal Navy. Actually, that's not true. For verisimilitude, Paul included a plate of hard tack next to his 3 types of Spanish cheese, his marinated carrots, his blanched almonds, and his tureen of delicious Andalusian gazpacho. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For an outstanding luncheon of paella and more, for the gorgeous vineyard setting in Glen Ellen, and for the gracious hospitality shown to us and our significant others, Paul has our gratitude. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdakdDk6azAci0hRwF_AeEUW_UpwItiFOmwhk01b2CpqYnhESTzGP3mKP4q5-A-3DBKFLfbPqNOpoq4_VkPVWVNFtDCOMdOkDiQDrt24RslHajghoWg1LcjhLuXiHrlrtGr1NuXaWhAeVp3Sa80KaV5TJ2idYgMIpL0MynmOS8NV3V-rO47G_WSDNhMWM/s3449/Glen%20Ellen%20Wager-1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2455" data-original-width="3449" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdakdDk6azAci0hRwF_AeEUW_UpwItiFOmwhk01b2CpqYnhESTzGP3mKP4q5-A-3DBKFLfbPqNOpoq4_VkPVWVNFtDCOMdOkDiQDrt24RslHajghoWg1LcjhLuXiHrlrtGr1NuXaWhAeVp3Sa80KaV5TJ2idYgMIpL0MynmOS8NV3V-rO47G_WSDNhMWM/s320/Glen%20Ellen%20Wager-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A smaller turnout, but no less convivial<br />l to r: Paul, Jack, Andrew, Tom, Garth, George, Larry, Stan</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>The Wager</i> by David Grann</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We spent several hours at Paul's but could only break away for 25 minutes to discuss our book. No matter. It was a fast consensus: Grann has produced yet another winner in his preferred category of non-fiction (i.e., stories of events poorly remembered and long since sanitized). It worked for him (and for us) with <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, and now with <i>The Wager</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Set in the 1740's during the fabricated War of Jenkins Ear, in which the English sought revenge for Spain's exclusionary trade practices in the Caribbean, <i>The Wager</i> tells the story of a small squadron dispatched from England to cross the Atlantic and round Cape Horn in order to capture a Spanish galleon in the South Pacific. Challenged by harsh weather, rudimentary navigation, and malnutrition and disease, the<i> Wager</i> is separated from the fleet, founders off the coast of Chile, and is shipwrecked on a deserted island. Convinced that the captain is unable to lead the 100 or so remaining crew back to England, 81 of the men mutiny and head back to London by way of Brazil. Fewer than 30 make it. Of the 20 who stay with the captain, two survive with him and they arrive in London the following year.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The journey, the hardship, the mutiny--all of these elements made our reading a pleasure. But many of us were disappointed that the inevitable court martial was devoted to expedience, not justice. Grann teases the reader with the moral and legal questions provoked by the crew's behavior, but then makes no apology for the Admiralty's evasive ruling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of <i>The Wager</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While our reactions were uniformly positive, we split into 3 camps: the 7's enjoyed a terrific story but complained about a narrative too constrained by the official record or simply felt it suffered in comparison to other excellent non-fiction tales of the sea, like <i>Endurance</i>. The 8's felt the story was impressive enough to overcome serious criticism. And the 9's--led by ringleader Stan--were simply out to game the ratings! The result was an impressive 8.0.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: <i>Klara and the Sun</i> by Kazuo Ishiguro</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With a slate focused on the perspectives of children, Larry proposed Doerr's <i>All the Light We Cannot See</i>, McCourt's <i>Angela's Ashes</i>, Zamora's <i>Solito</i>, and Ishiguro's <i>Klara and the Sun</i>. Ishiguro has been on proffer several times and, with <i>Klara and the Sun</i>, we finally get our chance. We'll see in September if his is the version of AI we need to fear.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-56187674848556268932023-06-04T18:16:00.005-07:002023-07-30T21:33:11.562-07:00Tequila, Bourbon, and (White) Powder at Jack's<div style="text-align: left;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lby2Rz7PPJpWOmWzXkGdmy-X5487wTsHT5w-oVMWVBFrVw2YR2qvlfsfbPkfilXsk7rtHlmEjta1N9ZL-GXZZ2qe2NUpid9gwzU9YNeQlypeVFLiWR7kS3Ts-9jngmvSjJVyyeInYPRT3I2z__m1sS9-d0OHDKT1sSx9Z0oNEnVzMwaixXjNKsBKd4Y/s175/Marching%20Powder.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="175" data-original-width="120" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lby2Rz7PPJpWOmWzXkGdmy-X5487wTsHT5w-oVMWVBFrVw2YR2qvlfsfbPkfilXsk7rtHlmEjta1N9ZL-GXZZ2qe2NUpid9gwzU9YNeQlypeVFLiWR7kS3Ts-9jngmvSjJVyyeInYPRT3I2z__m1sS9-d0OHDKT1sSx9Z0oNEnVzMwaixXjNKsBKd4Y/s1600/Marching%20Powder.jpg" width="120" /></a></div><br /></span></div></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Dinner & Acknowledgments</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Last Thursday we met at Jack's and, in a first, practically ignored the dinner he placed in front of us. Instead, our attention was riveted on his selection of appetizers. Well, one appetizer in particular. Since a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, here goes:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOVmGJD6pum2u11s3jJgQgT7EygtJVP_TBfjLTpRM-CCGQua01B_6NEyX0bpcDcvf9Bz-1SwTXHOWYLNLp4hXNTA_BvQYHPzZ-uaSRj7IquLa1r6lR-73DRl9_3PuZbXCMnrehpRemRnkkDXqWLB4KVRySOECwL8LG133Y8tdWiwljw3noC9AMxkSiWw8/s4032/Marching%20Powder.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOVmGJD6pum2u11s3jJgQgT7EygtJVP_TBfjLTpRM-CCGQua01B_6NEyX0bpcDcvf9Bz-1SwTXHOWYLNLp4hXNTA_BvQYHPzZ-uaSRj7IquLa1r6lR-73DRl9_3PuZbXCMnrehpRemRnkkDXqWLB4KVRySOECwL8LG133Y8tdWiwljw3noC9AMxkSiWw8/w150-h200/Marching%20Powder.HEIC" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A fitting appetizer</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, to complement a book about one man's incarceration for drug trafficking, Jack treated us to lines of cocaine and shots of tequila and bourbon. (The liquor was real; I can't vouch for the coke.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>Marching Powder</i> by Rusty Young and Thomas McFadden</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When he proposed his list of book titles, Jack explained that <i>Marching Powder</i> made the list because, while he and his wife were traveling back from Machu Picchu, their train companions were reading the book and touting it as the real-life story of an Englishman ensnared in a byzantine criminal justice system and locked up in a most extraordinary prison. Their comments were enough for us, and our comments during dinner were almost as enthusiastic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Caught leaving Bolivia with a suitcase of cocaine, Thomas McFadden is sentenced to serve 6 1/2 years at the San Pedro prison in La Paz. He learns quickly that San Pedro is unlike any prison in the west. There are few guards patrolling the prison, there are no cells and no curfews, and no food or clothing is provided. Unable to speak Spanish, McFadden almost dies from exposure before he is befriended by another inmate who shows him how to survive (and later thrive) in the self-governing underground economy that is San Pedro.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We were all enthralled by McFadden's story. Much like <i>Among the Thugs</i>, another non-fiction account that aroused our interest (but in the hooligan subculture of British soccer), <i>Marching Powder</i> revealed a world so unlike the one we know (and read about in Bauer's <i>American Prison</i>) that we forgave its repetitive writing and bloated length and were instead absorbed by McFadden's triumphs: his lucrative prison tours to foreign backpackers, his relationship with an Israeli girl who is allowed to live with him, his prison business successes (including a convenience store and a restaurant), and his eventual release two years ahead of schedule.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of Marching Powder</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">McFadden surely would have garnered a 10 if we rated on novelty alone, but we don't and so the book's significant shortcomings yielded it a 6.8. Doug, in a rare act of defiance, refused to read it. Stan, in an all-too-common act of defiance, gave it a 10. Dan didn't finish but promised he would. (Well, did you, Dan?)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: <i>The Wager </i>by David Grann</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Paul put us on track for summer with 3 seafaring titles. We set aside <i>Master and Commander</i> and <i>Captain Blood</i> and instead chose <i>The Wager</i>, David Grann's latest non-fiction blockbuster. We meet next in the lovely town of Glen Ellen, a rather different locale from that depicted in <i>Marching Powder.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-69601713805929152432023-04-16T16:29:00.008-07:002023-05-03T10:18:08.571-07:00An Evening of Ordinary Grace at Tom's<div style="text-align: left;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxK-XAMdSJqptJCsbVKBtNu3v_HOkIQcGYpxDLzb6XQ8wKRD-9Ra_oSop5xE7Bwj6auwWDWb31IXTXrDPAs9fSdw_U4lLEzrav3srYnl-MNcw1887SvhUuNtGWOCP3A99LQj81F9R9DlRqpvnOOzIPRipbmstckEecEr-cxAHaXURbDO081vyBkrr/s186/Ordinary%20Grace.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="120" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxK-XAMdSJqptJCsbVKBtNu3v_HOkIQcGYpxDLzb6XQ8wKRD-9Ra_oSop5xE7Bwj6auwWDWb31IXTXrDPAs9fSdw_U4lLEzrav3srYnl-MNcw1887SvhUuNtGWOCP3A99LQj81F9R9DlRqpvnOOzIPRipbmstckEecEr-cxAHaXURbDO081vyBkrr/s1600/Ordinary%20Grace.jpg" width="120" /></a></div><br />Dinner and Acknowledgments</b><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Krueger's novel about a mid-century Minnesota town featured exactly three meals: Gus' improvised spam and eggs, the boys' recurring bologna and PB&J sandwiches, and Mrs. Drum's tasteless tuna casserole. It also featured one dessert: ice cream. To our relief, last Monday Tom chose the latter for our dessert and ignored the former in favor of a classic American menu: grilled cheeseburgers, homemade potato salad and baked beans, and a mixed green salad. All of it was terrific. Well done, Tom!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our meal was also *graced* by the presence of two MBC alums, Garth and Peter.<i> </i> Both men have been busy and both have been missed. We were genuinely grateful to have them with us for the evening. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>Ordinary Grace</i> by William Kent Krueger</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Set in the summer of 1961, <i>Ordinary Grace</i> is the story of the Drum family's tragic loss, as seen through the eyes of its 13-year old narrator, Frank Drum. Priming the reader for the tragedy ahead, the novel opens with two unexpected deaths: a child is killed while playing on the train tracks, and an itinerant is found dead by the river. As the town grapples with--and gossips about--these two events, Frank introduces us to the members of his family: his Methodist minister father; his beautiful but brittle mother; his stuttering younger brother; and his musical prodigy sister, who is headed to Juilliard in the fall. When death is visited upon one of them, it's the unexpected grace of ordinary moments that helps the rest carry on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our reaction to the book was predictably positive. Yes, the plot was a little derivative according to Doug (thanks for the email!), with echoes of other family saga / coming-of-age tales. Larry called it "Richard Russo light" (Russo's <i>Nobody's Fool</i> still sits atop our rankings) and, with Glenn and Doug, likened it to <i>To Kill a Mockingbird's </i>expose of tragedy and animus in small town America. However, our naysayers found much to enjoy, even if the ending was telegraphed (Glenn) and at least one character's personal revelation was trite (thanks for calling in, George!).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, why did we like it so much? Well, who doesn't like a heroic boy who throws the town bully into a reservoir, ignores his dad's well-intentioned commands, and singlehandedly solves the mystery at the end of the novel? OK, I'm over-simplifying, but Jack was so taken by the narrator's precociousness that he gave the book his first-ever 10. And Dean, who grew up as the younger brother in his family, was charmed by Frank Drum's fearlessness. Ultimately, however, what captivated all of us were the simple moments in the story that uplifted both character and reader simultaneously. Gus making dinner for the boys, the "bad cop" letting Gus out of jail, the "bad Indian" showing gratitude, the wife-beater returning to church, Jake's cathartic rendition of grace, and so on. All of these were the novel's extra-ordinary moments.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of <i>Ordinary Grace</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The blurb on the back of Krueger's affecting novel about mid-century America proclaims that <i>Ordinary Grace</i> won the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. If we categorized our fiction geographically, I have no doubt that Krueger would lead our midwest rankings. But with only our 1-10 numerical ranking available to show our appreciation, we gladly gave Krueger a fulsome 8.0.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: <i>Marching Powder</i> by Thomas McFadden</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Jack gave us a list that included <i>Revolutionary Road</i>, <i>Remains of the Day</i>, <i>Ohio</i>, and Wenner's memoir, <i>Like a Rolling Stone</i>. We turned them all down in favor of <i>Marching Powder</i>, the true story of a British man's incarceration in a Colombian prison for drug smuggling. We'll see next month how closely McFadden's story parallels Stan's youthful escapades in South America.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-54913550613785932872023-02-23T21:37:00.005-08:002023-02-23T22:33:12.254-08:00Up River at Doug's<div style="text-align: left;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsSZCZ2UDEpU3xELOtHK9CpU9ZQf5VAzgK64xIRuqqUDF-X-R1MHTXzhGgu6EfiWLR0NCLXz59Lsl-6_P6cEMZKLK4MapeWOpFaEE86bUS01Ur3sMNbRXF6mipCrJMjmUDaB96jBUYWy-pJ12IeTg4ksOhm2GZzO2yMh3UcCJIArCm5jfhfeN2zlp/s185/The%20River.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsSZCZ2UDEpU3xELOtHK9CpU9ZQf5VAzgK64xIRuqqUDF-X-R1MHTXzhGgu6EfiWLR0NCLXz59Lsl-6_P6cEMZKLK4MapeWOpFaEE86bUS01Ur3sMNbRXF6mipCrJMjmUDaB96jBUYWy-pJ12IeTg4ksOhm2GZzO2yMh3UcCJIArCm5jfhfeN2zlp/s16000/The%20River.jpg" /></a></div>Dinner and Acknowledgments</b><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our dinner on Friday was typical Doug--excellent and understated. From the blackened salmon to the root vegetables to the Ginger Stout Cake, Doug's meal was the perfect mid-winter accompaniment to our discussion. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><u>Note to Doug</u>: You didn't mention it, but I assure you no one failed to grasp the significance of the blackened fish. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><u>Note to MBC</u>: Doug's Ginger Stout Cake recipe was courtesy of now-defunct The Marrow and its celebrity chef Harold Dieterle (winner of the first season of <i>Top Chef</i>). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With us for dinner was one of MBC's two Nevada exiles, George, who came from Scottsdale by way of Reno. George, you earn bonus points for your visit and for your unfailing ability to keep up with the reading. Good to see you again in person!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Tktis1133nqLhZrtgkqKM6gJSNfQc9CJtTa-z4C5wdMsFBFlrqgcUHcJic2noOULvlPBzed32r0K_onMKzv5Ce6I5OjDtk1Uuu0maTMCuAVdOqF5tu-nOOybMCRHDYWvjAVw0Fo8O-wbsQA6hRbxDFy3tDIJVPrRvlchbHWyyDTSxIW7tyXHoJ4Y/s4032/Dougs-1.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Tktis1133nqLhZrtgkqKM6gJSNfQc9CJtTa-z4C5wdMsFBFlrqgcUHcJic2noOULvlPBzed32r0K_onMKzv5Ce6I5OjDtk1Uuu0maTMCuAVdOqF5tu-nOOybMCRHDYWvjAVw0Fo8O-wbsQA6hRbxDFy3tDIJVPrRvlchbHWyyDTSxIW7tyXHoJ4Y/w200-h150/Dougs-1.HEIC" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doug's hand-carved fish. RIP Wynn!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Discussion of <i>The River</i> by Peter Heller</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Written by Peter Heller (author of a prior--and very fine!--MBC selection, <i>The Dog Stars</i>, and fellow <i>Outside </i>magazine<i> </i>contributor with Hampton Sides, who penned our October read, <i>Hellhound on His Trail</i>), <i>The River</i> tells the story of two Dartmouth students who take the fall quarter off and head to Canada for a canoe camping trip. During their final two weeks there, Wynn and Jack simultaneously find themselves in the path of a rapidly approaching forest fire, carry out a badly injured woman, and fight with other men on the river. The story's climax is the death of one man and its denouement the crippling guilt of another.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What does it mean when everyone (ok, everyone but Roy) thinks the story is terrific but finds fault with one detail or another? I'll catalog the faults; you can identify their proponents:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The writing is a bit like a poor man's Hemingway</li><li>Heller tries too hard to showcase his own expertise on the river</li><li>Why would Wynn and Jack leave all their provisions behind with the bad guy?</li><li>Bah! A Texas hat doesn't symbolize evil!</li><li>The ending was rushed (3x)</li><li>Impulsively taking the motorized canoe wasn't believable (2x)</li><li>Simplistic in an "upper level Young Adult" way [<i>Which is it, Terry? It's either YA or it's not YA</i>.]</li></ul></div><div style="text-align: left;">Much like our reaction to <i>The Dog Stars</i>, we appreciated Heller's skill in spinning a classic adventure tale. He populates it with good guys and bad guys, he infuses it with a palpable sense of foreboding, and he deftly builds suspense towards an inevitably violent climax. But he also distracts his reader with a few too many stray details to make it all work seamlessly. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of <i>The River</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our 6.8 rating doesn't do justice to the quality of our conversation or our enjoyment of Heller's novel. With the exception of Roy, this was a story that we all found engaging and well worth the time we gave it. (Again, much like <i>The Dog Stars!</i>) Interestingly, <i>The River</i> was the all-time favorite selection of Doug's wife's book group--an all women's group! </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: <i>Ordinary Grace</i> by William Kent Krueger</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We had a very eclectic list of titles to choose from (including memoirs from Matthew McConaughey and Mike Rowe, Coelho's <i>The Alchemist</i>, and Mason's <i>Bad Muslim Discount</i>). We opted for Krueger's <i>Ordinary Grace</i>, a novel about murder and its effect on a small town.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-1058944367873500232023-02-17T17:24:00.003-08:002023-02-17T17:30:18.069-08:00Ski Weekend 2023!<p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimxOsEoLvqlDrSVZWma-2BWa5etnzFIYCnaavuE0CR0cSRsPhXyaXWpkFP048omkOfiTZnUve9aCXSTBIJqktaO0EnNwUPe3-sVnySof__PNWhXt7PyP6_0h3mBgcYdbk5VkSLuX9oc6xxwHMC68QPRr8Fb5lFoEUxdYHgxzmsp8V494_qUj4NYzX7/s1438/IMG_1851.heic" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1438" data-original-width="1400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimxOsEoLvqlDrSVZWma-2BWa5etnzFIYCnaavuE0CR0cSRsPhXyaXWpkFP048omkOfiTZnUve9aCXSTBIJqktaO0EnNwUPe3-sVnySof__PNWhXt7PyP6_0h3mBgcYdbk5VkSLuX9oc6xxwHMC68QPRr8Fb5lFoEUxdYHgxzmsp8V494_qUj4NYzX7/w195-h200/IMG_1851.heic" width="195" /></a></div><br />After a 4-year hiatus (thanks first to drought, then to Covid + drought), we finally made it back to Tahoe earlier this month for our annual ski weekend. Thanks to the historic storms in December and January, there was plenty of snow. In fact, our departure on Sunday was threatened by a classic Sierra storm that dumped 6 inches overnight. The details are in the pictures below....</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTJPlDIBeZht9CVrRy8LRAOjwgrE6uB4yUY-cIlPOVXoXK3XakTlrN0F45Yj2FaQFVHbcTLOQdUUc6mtqRlrixx-H9FoxKNDShPWBPSgoaDas3Pqj4EoIRwUqZOJU-vaIL0IrKD0PCjg69o3LxfBTpWMSGe-EcWBRuwGJdQTd7Oa5ubxJxg6oYohE8/s4032/IMG_0187.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTJPlDIBeZht9CVrRy8LRAOjwgrE6uB4yUY-cIlPOVXoXK3XakTlrN0F45Yj2FaQFVHbcTLOQdUUc6mtqRlrixx-H9FoxKNDShPWBPSgoaDas3Pqj4EoIRwUqZOJU-vaIL0IrKD0PCjg69o3LxfBTpWMSGe-EcWBRuwGJdQTd7Oa5ubxJxg6oYohE8/w150-h200/IMG_0187.HEIC" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John strikes a pose in new boots and skis</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Larry, Doug, and I skied Northstar on Friday, and the only distressing thing about the short lift lines, perfect weather, and abundant snow was the $166 advance ticket price! The next day, Doug paired up with John at Homewood so one of them could pose for a classic lake shot. Not everyone skied, of course. Tom persuaded Dan to drive to his cabin near Sierra City so he could instruct Dan on the finer points of snow removal. We understand it involved Tom directing and Dan shoveling. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRInFPyp6_HGx1uRwlZt_HFj-rLm86Y3BR2LRf5IodfPwQWGuSOwwZRxJP_MJU4G54p3mvtDhtXS-_xMbDxmuvoKP-tbnC8Vc-AkCC-S3z_kJ2xPKcYjrklJD_8mLSFxWia12kw3sy7_MzRrsS7ZrcPa9bzy8WhU_iMTqU_3QRE94y9osccHMmMQ8d/s4032/IMG_1875.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRInFPyp6_HGx1uRwlZt_HFj-rLm86Y3BR2LRf5IodfPwQWGuSOwwZRxJP_MJU4G54p3mvtDhtXS-_xMbDxmuvoKP-tbnC8Vc-AkCC-S3z_kJ2xPKcYjrklJD_8mLSFxWia12kw3sy7_MzRrsS7ZrcPa9bzy8WhU_iMTqU_3QRE94y9osccHMmMQ8d/w150-h200/IMG_1875.HEIC" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No ice on the deck...easy!</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">While they labored, Larry and I swam laps in the outdoor pool. Despite the snow around the deck, the blue skies and warm water made for perfect conditions. Perfect enough to justify a trip into Truckee for a Dark Horse special (and a search for just the right blender--thanks again, Paul!). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0MgqI0WgcoTF8BLw8Kkh4ckSiC7HZxscfILOfCX4dSa_nEcWF_I9xne--GJg_iafj0sLApThhUjtpuTZ3_XagSFnLqng1lfkDUFPEDiUeM1QCn40OmPme3-HvVKz31dlXevF_uSn4jl_Gndb60_QrdV7WwdwQQ9wURuhM6gD7ioj8Ousv0oylqhZ/s3088/IMG_1865.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3088" data-original-width="2316" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0MgqI0WgcoTF8BLw8Kkh4ckSiC7HZxscfILOfCX4dSa_nEcWF_I9xne--GJg_iafj0sLApThhUjtpuTZ3_XagSFnLqng1lfkDUFPEDiUeM1QCn40OmPme3-HvVKz31dlXevF_uSn4jl_Gndb60_QrdV7WwdwQQ9wURuhM6gD7ioj8Ousv0oylqhZ/w150-h200/IMG_1865.HEIC" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sun and snow</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">Apart from skiing and swimming, there was the obligatory hiking. I promised everyone an arduous snowshoe trek...and no one was game. Instead, we avoided the knee-deep snow and stuck to groomed trails. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVVvoa7V1K7KK3y2AXwDH18oe2vVEkrdPcqgQeqXfLEMD6CJMIfAC0obKxdwfWm7qKLlZOlDSbPWiVQdxtETP9HEmDj-NfblPMpTr72ZlrccvKPzpz_Isw9BMe6F8l9AtrX8JnKg41lyp0VUMFmt_UXzncFm3leGU7EyqqmON9P1vNfWSfirE7yE-z/s4032/IMG_1855.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVVvoa7V1K7KK3y2AXwDH18oe2vVEkrdPcqgQeqXfLEMD6CJMIfAC0obKxdwfWm7qKLlZOlDSbPWiVQdxtETP9HEmDj-NfblPMpTr72ZlrccvKPzpz_Isw9BMe6F8l9AtrX8JnKg41lyp0VUMFmt_UXzncFm3leGU7EyqqmON9P1vNfWSfirE7yE-z/w200-h150/IMG_1855.HEIC" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tom's lasagna never disappoints!</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">With plenty of calories expended during the day, our evenings were focused on food (and drink). Tom's world famous lasagna was served our first night, followed by Paul's butternut squash soup and my baked salmon the next night. Dan reputedly made Manhattans (none was offered to me) and, of course, the finest varietals from San Marino Cellars were poured each night.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBagLwvCqZAqA32AL-9CIILr2A3XLa84PjIdHDCLqi1hqae-gWB-TtMqHQcSNPnMDsWJCSoqAHb7IEm9exKiFEM06ajrCtT3YjSbERWEFFc-2MNYEH3mBgXNQyhs1lXz7PnF4jX2aBl38Q_xqpr9v8vneSxPaFgi-xc1IaUYeEytKWNTSFpx1slO9/s4032/IMG_1043.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBagLwvCqZAqA32AL-9CIILr2A3XLa84PjIdHDCLqi1hqae-gWB-TtMqHQcSNPnMDsWJCSoqAHb7IEm9exKiFEM06ajrCtT3YjSbERWEFFc-2MNYEH3mBgXNQyhs1lXz7PnF4jX2aBl38Q_xqpr9v8vneSxPaFgi-xc1IaUYeEytKWNTSFpx1slO9/w150-h200/IMG_1043.HEIC" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFq5gQiNLLBByyDxEmLkuVHka1uaqb22tZz-ZxVdueMJL09xWcZubxXdojqvQ4ZQ5pVdOkGzXnhCEmsOifKHMhGwgkkr81W8kdq45zWezvZI2C9ZrkyfR07W-qWaXlog5nmIPUfdPoV3s7DNAYNqw5HTPYXh9itPgT_Gq2A0FwF5cy8Yjx57VqwtWh/s2517/IMG_1887.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2517" data-original-width="1271" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFq5gQiNLLBByyDxEmLkuVHka1uaqb22tZz-ZxVdueMJL09xWcZubxXdojqvQ4ZQ5pVdOkGzXnhCEmsOifKHMhGwgkkr81W8kdq45zWezvZI2C9ZrkyfR07W-qWaXlog5nmIPUfdPoV3s7DNAYNqw5HTPYXh9itPgT_Gq2A0FwF5cy8Yjx57VqwtWh/w101-h200/IMG_1887.heic" width="101" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We left Sunday morning, but only after Paul and Dan dug out a track for our vehicles. Tom showed his management skills one more time by directing me on the installation of a new wine fridge. Thanks to all of you for a fine weekend!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-53610951072685831092022-12-06T22:48:00.007-08:002022-12-09T13:34:09.805-08:00Captains All at Roy's<div style="text-align: left;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaBTMQKN4389xjw2kGmnYvj8DdkqYCVQXS63UGyGM5mx-OyyxW5RSJivseNf9dfSlMQWFLj0HGHxmZk31AlnwYvpr8xhaFyDWWzZf6yoSoGm2Xr7H-NM39iiInwDwiS665kVaLEGZCBSzrop2PA4btMAjgm6Wgrt-Vr_JuY6wLt7JGsgog6JjQu5Q/s350/Captains%20Courageous.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="207" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaBTMQKN4389xjw2kGmnYvj8DdkqYCVQXS63UGyGM5mx-OyyxW5RSJivseNf9dfSlMQWFLj0HGHxmZk31AlnwYvpr8xhaFyDWWzZf6yoSoGm2Xr7H-NM39iiInwDwiS665kVaLEGZCBSzrop2PA4btMAjgm6Wgrt-Vr_JuY6wLt7JGsgog6JjQu5Q/w118-h200/Captains%20Courageous.jpg" width="118" /></a></div><br />Dinner and Acknowledgments</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Last Thursday evening, Roy's ocean-to-table commitment was evident from start to finish. Inspired by the fishermen in Kipling's story, Roy's own fishing was the basis for our entire meal. The appetizer table held plates of yellowtail and bluefin, along with smoked salmon, halibut, and ahi poke. And the dinner table featured trays of roasted Dungeness crab, paired with side salads and bread. A meal entirely of seafood and entirely from Roy's own catch. Kudos to our captain!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzQISycNevG0cxwp9tJSxc3CR12EAj6zLMP9UxrPT4m2mCv6UrECKSGl5eyS8VtrET5iKvDfwehuBNKlky0p88hlCZdVVgxo_C8wxpDz2Zg79ufce_dQQcfflspXDkSGq8DX6dGV90Wp2PeVuxqCeJT1WPY9LTeq8C64e-DhcIbzwN0y3NPS85aVvG/s3934/IMG_1368%20(1).heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2204" data-original-width="3934" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzQISycNevG0cxwp9tJSxc3CR12EAj6zLMP9UxrPT4m2mCv6UrECKSGl5eyS8VtrET5iKvDfwehuBNKlky0p88hlCZdVVgxo_C8wxpDz2Zg79ufce_dQQcfflspXDkSGq8DX6dGV90Wp2PeVuxqCeJT1WPY9LTeq8C64e-DhcIbzwN0y3NPS85aVvG/s320/IMG_1368%20(1).heic" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sushi, salmon, poke, and a cheese selection</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Discussion of <i>Captains Courageous</i> by Rudyard Kipling</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Better known for <i>The Jungle Book</i>, <i>Kim</i>, and short stories about colonial India, Rudyard Kipling wrote his novella, <i>Captains Courageous</i>, while living in Vermont. The story is simple: spoiled rich kid (Harvey) falls off an ocean liner bound for Europe and is rescued by a fishing boat crew. The captain refuses to return to port and instead puts Harvey to work. In short order, Harvey drops his dandified ways, blends in with the crew, and when the boat returns to Gloucester, Harvey impresses his parents with his newfound maturity and work ethic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If it weren't for the impenetrable writing, we might have given Kipling his due for churning out a passable coming-of-age story for young readers. But Kipling's strange blend of nautical terms, sailors' argot, and Anglo-American elocution created one head-scratching paragraph after another. Glenn was shocked how long it took to read all 107 pages; Stan and Dean simply gave up. For some of us, the Horatio Alger parallels (Doug, me) were obvious, but less interesting than the insights on 19th century fishing practices (Larry, Roy) and the hardships of a fishing town like Gloucester, dependent on a single, high-mortality industry (Paul, Terry). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of <i>Captains Courageous</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Had we been asked to rate Paul's boyhood abridged version, we might have been more generous. But the full-length Young Adult edition written in 1897 by an Indian-born expat Englishman in Vermont about a polyglot crew of American fishermen made for a trite and at times undigestible adventure story. Rating: 5.5--our lowest in 5 years.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: Ski Weekend in January</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In January we'll decamp for the high Sierras and hope for deep powder. With no book assigned for January, Doug proposed Claire Keegan's <i>Small Things Like These</i> as our collective holiday read. Short, inspiring, and--yes!--well-written, too. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-24144378944019981062022-10-29T15:40:00.022-07:002022-11-14T11:09:02.258-08:00A Hell of a Meal at Dean's<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCM-CTmkK3r7BfO1fXEKPaDbuZQxmu5wzPoHECZa7Ycj5X937mS_VxLOIyOB0mvEBbdJ-5ag3E3mY-H_BWfHmyYr55YKtMKADJgkVaa6hoyCTDQmGIifYNMLZJJ92xX4Q0owN6QuE0V9A8f8iSHist9I9CMFBXWkOL-uiaG1qRPvQ2XqcO_umUd8V/s350/Hellhound.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="227" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCM-CTmkK3r7BfO1fXEKPaDbuZQxmu5wzPoHECZa7Ycj5X937mS_VxLOIyOB0mvEBbdJ-5ag3E3mY-H_BWfHmyYr55YKtMKADJgkVaa6hoyCTDQmGIifYNMLZJJ92xX4Q0owN6QuE0V9A8f8iSHist9I9CMFBXWkOL-uiaG1qRPvQ2XqcO_umUd8V/w130-h200/Hellhound.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><b><br /></b></div><b>Dinner and Acknowledgments</b> <div><br /></div><div>In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s southern roots, last Tuesday Dean laid on an evening of southern-style cooking that rivaled any other meal he's prepared for us. After a starter of "Memphis treats" (courtesy of Dick Cohn), Dean served up pulled pork, black-eyed peas, collard greens, and corn bread, followed by an apple crumble dessert. The clamor for seconds was proof that Dean exceeded his already-high standards. If it weren't for Dean's vintage 30.06--the same model used to kill King--we might have walked out with all of his leftovers. [Ed. note: a tasteless reference, to be sure, but see below graphic.] We might also have absconded with Stan's classic 1934 roadster, since it was blocking Dean's driveway!</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW-lo1GyueS3E6KcnwW4VgjWxqJptIVmHAbh40sMDKfiUxVfhG1hcjHU-BVG4yZalO7PJft06CWxf6JVpkBFrAT9ZdUTM4SyI3GfkVfTPLTvG0jnkqd5KjmRgL5ACyIFVF5s35z6PNUxk4gnbpTpIIvA-MdEpjwXm-b3QKwAablpJomxwCvaUZrKa/s1366/Dean's%20rifle%20(v2).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1283" data-original-width="1366" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW-lo1GyueS3E6KcnwW4VgjWxqJptIVmHAbh40sMDKfiUxVfhG1hcjHU-BVG4yZalO7PJft06CWxf6JVpkBFrAT9ZdUTM4SyI3GfkVfTPLTvG0jnkqd5KjmRgL5ACyIFVF5s35z6PNUxk4gnbpTpIIvA-MdEpjwXm-b3QKwAablpJomxwCvaUZrKa/w320-h301/Dean's%20rifle%20(v2).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dean sighting his Remington Gamemaster</span></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho2gpi6v1xWL1X8pNLsKkyO_JZpMuLSzR9V7KfFIEoHGPT3lvCu3olyoO9ViGd09J8Y0xtn08esjHPKWBS73BYGS-NRANFqpfzlrr6P6fSti754zm8LAL5nwC5eHey74OSBVD9aIqm3Ku1bw_Oai9UORqHRGXbxU7Yvyu9wbA3Y6DDsEkuO4KFovIW/s1498/Stan's%20roadster%20(small).jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1087" data-original-width="1498" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho2gpi6v1xWL1X8pNLsKkyO_JZpMuLSzR9V7KfFIEoHGPT3lvCu3olyoO9ViGd09J8Y0xtn08esjHPKWBS73BYGS-NRANFqpfzlrr6P6fSti754zm8LAL5nwC5eHey74OSBVD9aIqm3Ku1bw_Oai9UORqHRGXbxU7Yvyu9wbA3Y6DDsEkuO4KFovIW/w320-h232/Stan's%20roadster%20(small).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Stan's 1934 Ford</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div><b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>Hellhound on His Trail</i> by Hampton Sides</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>While the focus of Sides' story is the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.--which, as Doug noted, occurs exactly at the midpoint of the book--the reader is treated to a split narrative leading up to that fateful moment. In alternating chapters, we learn about King and his controversial arrival in Memphis and James Earl Ray's circuitous journey from "Jeff City" to the Lorraine Motel. After the shooting, the pace quickens as the nation's law enforcement apparatus (including, as Tom noted, 3,000 FBI agents!) spends the next two months identifying and tracking Ray while the country convulses and the civil rights movement grieves.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite the lack of conclusive answers to questions that still linger for the conspiracy-minded (Did Ray act alone? Was the FBI complicit?), we all enjoyed and felt enriched by Sides' meticulously-researched account of King's assassination and the ensuing manhunt, especially as so many details were new to us. As I noted, most of us were too young to appreciate the events at the time yet too old for those events to find their way into our school curricula. And others pointed out that Ray's actions were usually (and rightfully) a mere footnote in the broader history of King, the SCLC, and the civil rights struggles of the 1960's.</div><div><br /></div><div>While the first half of the book came in for criticism (George called it choppy; Paul called it filler), the latter half vindicated our (and Sides') efforts. Larry likened the story's arc to that of <i>The Feather Thief</i>, where after the climax the author entertains the reader with a well-researched thesis on how the crime was committed. In this case, Sides convinced most of us that there was no conspiracy afoot and that, as Roy put it, a "total misfit loner" did indeed shoot King, while he was under constant police surveillance, and then eluded national and international authorities for months as he tried to make his way to Rhodesia.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Our Rating of <i>Hellhound on His Trail</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>Sides doesn't simply tread old ground with his account of Ray's movements and motivations; he pulls gems from an exhaustive record to offer the reader more insight on an unlikely assassin. From Ray's $200 nose job (Terry's favorite) to his prison escape in a bread box (Dean's) to his aborted jewelry store heist in London's Paddington neighborhood (a stone's throw from my old flat!), Sides shares vignettes that entertain and inform. For that, he lands in our current Top Ten with an 8.2 rating.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Next Up: <i>Captains Courageous</i> by Rudyard Kipling</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Roy presented us with an unusually eclectic list of titles, including (gulp!) Homer's <i>The Odyssey</i>, Strayed's <i>Wild</i>, Martel's <i>Life of Pi</i>, Torday's <i>Salmon Fishing in the Yemen</i>, and Kipling's <i>Captains Courageous</i>. Kipling eked out a win over Torday, so in December we'll see if a 15-year old railroad scion stranded at sea piques our interest as much as King and Ray did this month.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-75301938939714127712022-09-24T12:13:00.468-07:002022-12-21T12:07:27.337-08:00A Wake for the Dead in Glenn's Barn<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRAM8NcXLiQenw1HB7JRH9WPuziu7LPNNkNl_vY33qaYyqWhnltl0DXm5Qjv_dYuLMvIcss9ldHK6aJqUsy-6VnIPkEq8LPzMdF_Bd49OUrKjPHVC9Q1w2m79pVAAz40vDuUsvVDJjcCjUsNzHctjkc85wDILjFaD7Q5BVOPqbC5IkTl6Y4Fsg1uT/s350/Dead%20Wake.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="227" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRAM8NcXLiQenw1HB7JRH9WPuziu7LPNNkNl_vY33qaYyqWhnltl0DXm5Qjv_dYuLMvIcss9ldHK6aJqUsy-6VnIPkEq8LPzMdF_Bd49OUrKjPHVC9Q1w2m79pVAAz40vDuUsvVDJjcCjUsNzHctjkc85wDILjFaD7Q5BVOPqbC5IkTl6Y4Fsg1uT/w130-h200/Dead%20Wake.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><b><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div>Lunch and Acknowledgments<br /></b><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was a small but convivial gathering last Saturday at Glenn's. Eschewing our usual weeknight dinner, Glenn treated us to lunch <i>al fresco</i> and used the Cunard Line's menu from 1908 as his inspiration. With duck pate, anchovies, stilton cheese, mixed nuts, and smoked salmon for appetizers, Glenn followed with roast beef and browned potatoes for the entrée and apple pie for dessert. As we ate in Glenn's beautifully-restored 100-year old barn, we couldn't help but think of the Lusitania's passengers, dining on the same food at the very moment their ship was struck by a German torpedo. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU8IcPmJU8NcIJYOET7mxiYNW5Hz6H6zPaj_arerqudNopSaIxLOYPen4dQiGpMJqwjGIu6aRAu2fhus5V1NgVb4en_FxKZozyD-e_R1NgDprSEBf-4tYCqLbghuzpJUofaZt3MWJ-30XMNrDY9BmRwylx1JOIjZediAPgfH60Kc8uHt7rkS2_ugXx/s4032/Lusitania-3.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU8IcPmJU8NcIJYOET7mxiYNW5Hz6H6zPaj_arerqudNopSaIxLOYPen4dQiGpMJqwjGIu6aRAu2fhus5V1NgVb4en_FxKZozyD-e_R1NgDprSEBf-4tYCqLbghuzpJUofaZt3MWJ-30XMNrDY9BmRwylx1JOIjZediAPgfH60Kc8uHt7rkS2_ugXx/s320/Lusitania-3.HEIC" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Glenn's copy of the Lusitania's 1908 lunch menu</span> </td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXqbF6uRnYk9duTjXIVeaboUyCp6fetjcmSzwJCaGXo-KpgPIxV5EOMbaJvwtubnO01P1BHio58AvaSx67dnHNAKjlCq0MPon6mCpNrfdKfwbbH96gaIfEzqOt68BSR5hJOo_uF3uBIHq7GdE2-5zuR_rB8kkowtvNl3PXrd-NPlsIlHsK3fsBNf5/s4032/Lusitania-4.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXqbF6uRnYk9duTjXIVeaboUyCp6fetjcmSzwJCaGXo-KpgPIxV5EOMbaJvwtubnO01P1BHio58AvaSx67dnHNAKjlCq0MPon6mCpNrfdKfwbbH96gaIfEzqOt68BSR5hJOo_uF3uBIHq7GdE2-5zuR_rB8kkowtvNl3PXrd-NPlsIlHsK3fsBNf5/s320/Lusitania-4.HEIC" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dining with Captain Glenn</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>Dead Wake</i> by Erik Larson<br /></b><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Although not as infamous as the Titanic's sinking, Germany's 1915 attack on the Lusitania is known by every student of history as an important reason American sentiment began to shift away from isolationism and in support of the Allied Powers against Germany. With that as background to our discussion, Tom answered our most pressing question in the affirmative. Yes, despite the book's obvious climax, <i>Dead Wake</i> keeps its reader in suspense throughout. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Like most books we've read, it's strength of story that wins us over. And that's where Larson's book shines, with an account both informative and gripping. We learned that Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania were thought to be unsinkable. As the fastest ocean liners in the world, they operated at twice the speed of Germany's fastest U-boats. So why was the Lusitania vulnerable? It was traveling at reduced speed to save Cunard money; its hull was lined with empty coal bunkers which, when filled with sea water after the torpedo explosion, forced the ship to list precipitously; and, most damningly, the English (who'd broken the German Navy's code) knew of the U-boat's presence but refused to alert or escort the Lusitania for fear of compromising their codebreakers or risking their destroyers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our admiration for story notwithstanding, Glenn's biggest quibble was ours as well: for a sinking that took only 18 minutes, the reader is fed an awful lot of detail, especially about passengers more colorful than significant, in the course of the book's 353 pages. (That said, who wouldn't want to know about the passenger who survived being ejected from an underwater smokestack? Or the passenger torn between saving his original sketches by William Thackeray or his copy of <i>A Christmas Carol</i> with handwritten annotations by Charles Dickens?) </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Our Rating of <i>Dead Wake</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our enjoyment of a good story was tempered by the sobering statistics we learned while reading <i>Dead Wake</i>. Although the ship sank in calm weather, with ample lifeboats and within sight of the Irish shore, almost 1,200 of its 2,000 passengers died. Fearing more U-boat attacks, the British Navy ordered its nearby cruiser to withdraw, so a flotilla of fishing trawlers and civilian boats was all that was available to perform search and rescue. The Lusitania was prized as a target, not because of its military importance, but because U-boat captains were recognized for the tonnage of their kills. As one of the largest vessels afloat, the Lusitania was an irresistible trophy. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Recognizing a good story, but one weighed down by an excess of detail, we gave Larson a solid 7.4.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Next Up: <i>Hellhound on His Trail</i> by Hampton Sides</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Dean gave us an interesting list of contemporary classics (<i>Where the Crawdads Sing</i>, <i>Beloved</i>, <i>A Visit from the Goon Squad)</i> plus the controversial <i>American Dirt</i>. The voting was close, but we rejected all of them in favor of <i>Hellhound on His Trail,</i> Hampton Sides' account of James Earl Ray's assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the manhunt that consumed a nation.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-54851073417269944492022-07-01T06:30:00.001-07:002022-07-01T16:23:13.885-07:00Feather Thieves and Salmon at Dan's<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcXYn80-2vi1r4Vd8mwZKsGv9zEqOj43ixv_q8Um3WurEYJ59qArtQJNafwcm8atsJ77b7sG9YIN1kKjiru3FggVOg9kv3WevWP6CAMyKQofLyO37yBuGC3R6tU8T5DEQkhAw7i3frjH88buewGq3wJDlFVbH2N3hqQIClMqtBJBUyQMrrIdArfwbT/s183/Feather%20Thief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="120" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcXYn80-2vi1r4Vd8mwZKsGv9zEqOj43ixv_q8Um3WurEYJ59qArtQJNafwcm8atsJ77b7sG9YIN1kKjiru3FggVOg9kv3WevWP6CAMyKQofLyO37yBuGC3R6tU8T5DEQkhAw7i3frjH88buewGq3wJDlFVbH2N3hqQIClMqtBJBUyQMrrIdArfwbT/w131-h200/Feather%20Thief.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><br />Dinner and Acknowledgments</b><div><b><br /></b><div>Last Wednesday, Dan's challenge was to prepare a meal themed around a story about the theft of centuries-old bird skins. He nailed it. With help from Roy, Dan started us with gravlax and then served freshly-caught cedar plank salmon and roasted chicken, pan-fried corn, salad, and french bread. To close, he put out a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies and a chaser of aquavit. </div><div><br /></div><div>The salmon was a nod to the "salmon flies" at the center of our story, and the chicken stood in for the many feathered species so prized by Edwin Rist and his fly-tying community. Bravo, Dan! </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>
<b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>The Feather Thief</i> by Kirk Johnson</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Until Dan proposed the title, few of us had heard about the theft of bird skins from London's Natural History Museum in 2009. Moreover, it seemed a slender premise for a book. But once we started reading, most of us were quite taken by Johnson's non-fiction account of young Edwin Rist and his brazen heist.</div><div><br /></div><div>Johnson opens with a history of rare and exotic birds in South America and Southeast Asia. He explains that Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace's acquisition and study of birds in the Malay Archipelago led him to formulate a theory of evolution ahead of Charles Darwin. His work also resulted in the donation of over 125,000 birds to the Natural History Museum, which now boasts the largest ornithology collection in the world. </div><div><br /></div><div>As Wallace was collecting birds, women's fashion turned to bird feathers for hats and coats. At the same time, the gentry in England developed a passion for fly-tying, including so-called "salmon flies," the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of fishing flies. As with women's hats, the more exotic the bird, the more desirable its feathers, even though most salmon flies weren't actually used for fishing. </div><div><br /></div><div>All of this was prelude to the theft at the heart of Johnson's story. By the 1990's, making and collecting salmon flies had regained popularity, but the same problem bedeviled current collectors: where to get exotic feathers whose sale was banned by international law? Enter Edwin Rist, who while studying at the Royal College of Music to become a flautist broke into the Natural History Museum and stole 299 bird skins. His capture, trial, and the subsequent search for the missing skins are Johnson's focus in the latter half of the book. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>
<b>Our Rating of the <i>The Feather Thief</i></b> </div><div><br /></div><div>Ok, we liked the book, but with some big caveats. First off, several guys (Dean, Terry) noted the parallels to our prior book about Teddy Roosevelt's 1913 exploration of the Amazon (<i>River of Doubt</i>), as Wallace's first ornithology expedition covered similar terrain with as punishing an outcome. But after building a strong back story, Johnson disappoints following Rist's criminal trial. As Doug noted, Rist faced no accountability by receiving a suspended sentence. And as Paul, Jack, Larry, and Roy all observed, once Johnson begins his own search for the missing skins, his failure to find them makes for a deeply unsatisfying ending. Even our non-fiction devotee Glenn, who likened the obsession with faux fishing flies to the Ming vase obsession, was disappointed by the ending.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite our reservations about the ending, we gave Johnson a healthy 6.8 for a fascinating peek into the history of birds and their fly-tying antagonists. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Next Up: <i>Dead Wake</i> by Erik Larson</b>
</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>We read <i>The Devil in the White City</i> years ago, and have several times suggested other Larson titles, but to no avail. Finally, we get another chance. In August, we'll convene at Glenn's to discuss a U-boat, an ocean liner, and a World War.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-8546941311326379532022-02-28T06:00:00.089-08:002022-05-27T16:15:47.247-07:00Larry's Southern Luncheon<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGG98Wqi5-I4gyWaa-iLoyuextt7Mg2HakMoUaPYTrAEzLKkk4KQyd-TMfgJ3lf4XmFX3hR4C6579qmFmf74XZKpr_7p3zO1Ac8mLdk8RTqBO7j0rKpTNqxSWkXwK_SUKutLlT3gbPp-uT3RilhTLwTeKlFHjf11HEcM1X55AM5todL64GeiLZL0oa/s350/Great%20Santini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="221" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGG98Wqi5-I4gyWaa-iLoyuextt7Mg2HakMoUaPYTrAEzLKkk4KQyd-TMfgJ3lf4XmFX3hR4C6579qmFmf74XZKpr_7p3zO1Ac8mLdk8RTqBO7j0rKpTNqxSWkXwK_SUKutLlT3gbPp-uT3RilhTLwTeKlFHjf11HEcM1X55AM5todL64GeiLZL0oa/w126-h200/Great%20Santini.jpg" width="126" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This month’s book was a work of fiction that offered us a
trip back to 1960s America in the South.
The book focuses on a boy coming of age within a strict military family,
specifically a Marine Air Corps family stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina. The book’s title refers to the family’s
patriarch, Colonel Bull Meechum (nicknamed the Great Santini), who commands his
family as though they are another group of young pilots he must whip into
Marines. The book is a thinly-veiled account
of Pat Conroy’s own childhood growing up in such a family. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">MBC’s comments focused on Ben Meechum, Bull’s teenage son
facing the age-old conflict of children finding their place and voice within a
strong patriarchal family. The book
seemed to hit home with MBC as all us are old enough to have grown up in those
times. And all of us are sons and
fathers. The book should be read within
the context of the era the book was written/published – 1976 – well before many
of the “tell all” Mommy Dearest genre books arrived and the book’s stark
description of black life and policing in the South were not common. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Larry hosted this first MBC gathering of 2022 at his home yesterday. The weather cooperated and we were able to dine in Larry’s backyard on a beautiful Marin Sunday afternoon with a Mt. Tam backdrop. And while no mint juleps were seen, Larry did his best to provide a taste of the South with BBQ steaks, grits topped with collard greens, and finishing with homemade pecan pie topped with just churned vanilla ice cream. The Meechums of the book would have been right at home. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The book was generally well received by MBC and reflected the old writers’ adage of “write what you know.” Or in this case write what you lived through, for Ben Meechum reflects the experience of adolescent Pat Conroy. In several cases the MBC members were able to relate specific aspects of their own childhoods to those of the fictional Meechums. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Doug loved the story but found Conroy’s writing a bit prosaic and dull. Andrew found the trip to the 60’s triggered memories of his own father’s parental style – who grew up in the south and attended West Point. Paul enjoyed it, especially where all the children pile on to stop Bull from bullying their mother. He found the book to have a sense of humor and a nice character study. Tom also enjoyed the character development particularly Bull Meechum – a real piece of work. He found the story well written and readable. Dean thought the book was well written and saw the book as a series of vignettes built around the family’s dynamics. He wondered how we would deal with similar situations today – interfering in a basketball game and dealing with an abusive alcoholic father. Dean also related to the Catholic family and found MaryAnn, the daughter, as compelling a character as Ben. Having recommended the book, Larry also identified with the itinerant nature of military life having grown up near an Air Force Base and seeing how some military kids were forced to uproot their lives every few years to move to the next posting. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the end, the scoring reflected the consistently positive responses among the MBC, with an average rating of 8.1. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">--Larry</div><p></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-74610802362266263112021-07-10T16:23:00.006-07:002021-07-15T16:32:50.044-07:00Lost and Found at Armando's Table<p style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w0kQHnPnFNc/YOoqCJqhntI/AAAAAAAAA88/RWuF_0WP2qE8SVaQeg4iON16lWvg9IhHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s183/Field%2BGuide%2BGetting%2BLost.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="men's book club review rating Solnit A Field Guide" border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w0kQHnPnFNc/YOoqCJqhntI/AAAAAAAAA88/RWuF_0WP2qE8SVaQeg4iON16lWvg9IhHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Field%2BGuide%2BGetting%2BLost.jpg" /></a></span></b></div><b>Dinner and Acknowledgments </b><br /><br />Last Wednesday was only our second dinner together since 2020 and, like our meal in May at Tom's, it was worth the wait. Mando served up a series of classically French dishes whose ingredients had the imprimatur of none other than Claude Monet and our very own <i>Le Comptoir</i>. From the opening cheese selection to the roast chicken, from the potato casserole to the apple pie, c'etait tout magnifique! <br /><br /><b>Our Discussion and Review of Solnit’s <i>A Field Guide to Getting Lost </i></b><br /><br />Rebecca Solnit’s <i>A Field Guide to Getting Lost</i> is a collection of essays on a seemingly endless variety of topics—from the plot of <i>Vertigo </i>to the travails of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca to a heroin overdose by a close friend—all connected (sometimes flimsily) by the notion that true self-discovery occurs only after one has lost one’s way.<br /><br />When we picked <i>A Field Guide</i> from Mando’s list of titles last month, we naively thought that we were finally going to understand why it’s better to put away the map. We didn’t expect that Solnit’s path was going to be more metaphysical than literal. Yes, there were the obligatory references to Thoreau's road less traveled and to early explorers relying on maps with too little topography and too much <i>terra incognita</i>. But Solnit’s emphasis on geography was simply to get us in the mood for more serious soul-searching. And that’s where our problems began.<br /><br />Most of us felt Solnit’s essays were, ahem, all over the map (thanks for the pun, Dan). Her ideas and associations move quickly and at times randomly. Some guys couldn’t follow the thread and others simply lost interest. Worse, her commentary is surprisingly uneven for such an accomplished writer, with trenchant observations and clever asides followed by more than a few clunkers. To paraphrase Paul, Solnit's ideas were fascinating and frustrating, erudite and interesting, but with no obvious lesson to be drawn from the collection. (I'm tempted to also paraphrase Dean, who characterized Solnit's stories as David Sedaris writ noir, but my notes don't do his wit justice!)<br /><br /><b>Rating <i>A Field Guide to Getting Lost</i></b><br /><br />With her intentionally discursive style, Solnit doesn’t make the reader’s task easy. And so we complained, predictably. But she earned our grudging admiration nonetheless. She provoked us with her impressive range, she made us consider our place and our potential, and (for most of us) she had us thinking long after we’d finished the book. So, despite our various disappointments, we gave her effort a respectable 6.1.<p></p><p style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next
Up: <i>Deacon
King Kong</i> by James McBride</span></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></p>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Doug offered us an
excellent list of titles to choose from.
We chose James McBride’s recent novel, but we paused to consider <i>Days Without End</i> (Barry), <i>The River</i> (Heller), and <i>The Splendid and the Vile</i> (Larson). We’ll decide in August if McBride’s novel
about New York in the late 60’s is worth the acclaim it’s received.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-51720155206629580382021-07-09T21:30:00.006-07:002021-08-13T11:11:17.567-07:002021 Redux<p> A summary of unposted titles from Spring 2021....</p><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j-C0HuJxXHk/YKl-qLFiFaI/AAAAAAAAA6o/vH2ecLORrJUOnJVSXepol6cNbhZB2nM5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s180/Tiger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j-C0HuJxXHk/YKl-qLFiFaI/AAAAAAAAA6o/vH2ecLORrJUOnJVSXepol6cNbhZB2nM5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Tiger.jpg" /></a></div> <i>January 2021 </i></span>Host - <span style="font-family: inherit;">Roy </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Subtitled <i>A True Story of Vengeance and Survival</i>, John Vaillant's account of a man-eating tiger in Russia's Maritime Territory gave us a fulsome education on the wrenching poverty that afflicted Russia's far east after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the endemic corruption that has devastated the tiger's habitat, and the history of the Siberian tiger and its brethren in Africa and the Indian subcontinent. What it didn't offer was a concise story. After a promising start, in which we learn about and applaud the tiger's killing of a local poacher, Vaillant veers off into lengthy digressions about Soviet-era politics, the Russo-Japanese war, the consumer economy in China, the plight of early man in sub-Saharan Africa, etc. After occasional updates on the activities of the marauding tiger, Vaillant does return in the final 30 pages to finish the story of how the tiger was eventually tracked and killed. He doesn't, however, answer the question implicit in the subtitle, as we are never quite sure whose survival is at stake in this most bleak of environments. </span>Rating: 7.2</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qup-55SaGAQ/YKl-xLIHUrI/AAAAAAAAA6s/lw27XRpULcoOzsFIrkrsbJsSLsDCFgDEACLcBGAsYHQ/s156/News%2Bof%2Bthe%2BWorld.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="156" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qup-55SaGAQ/YKl-xLIHUrI/AAAAAAAAA6s/lw27XRpULcoOzsFIrkrsbJsSLsDCFgDEACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/News%2Bof%2Bthe%2BWorld.jpg" /></a></div> <i>February 2021 </i></span>Host - <span style="font-family: inherit;">Peter </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">While Peter did offer <i>News of the World</i> for our consideration, we clearly disappointed him by not opting for one of his more substantial titles (<i>Far From the Tree</i>-Solomon; <i>The Known World</i>-Jones; <i>Necessary Lies</i>-Chamberlain; and <i>The Return</i>-Matar). At 208 pages, Paulette Jiles gave us (and Hollywood, since it was recently made into a film starring Tom Hanks) a short, endearing story about a Civil War veteran who's agreed to escort across Texas a young girl recently freed from Indian captivity. The book contains all of the ingredients needed for a successful movie: a sympathetic protagonist bound by a sense of duty, menacing bad guys (and few good ones for contrast), an arduous but successful journey, and a bond created during that journey that produces the novel's climax. OK, so it was predictable and at times corny, but it proved an enjoyable read. Indeed, that was the most common adjective used during our Zoom discussion. Misgivings aside, we liked the Civil War and Reconstruction history, Captain Kidd's livelihood as a reader of news in a time of deep political polarization, and the brief but sympathetic treatment of Joanna's captors, the Kiowa, and their Comanche allies. Rating: 7.4</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cus9nZ7xLlM/YKl-4CkDjNI/AAAAAAAAA6w/Otvp2uT-v9U1P6ZuA_83K6VqVtdmHP7lACLcBGAsYHQ/s181/Night%2BBoat%2Bto%2BTangier.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cus9nZ7xLlM/YKl-4CkDjNI/AAAAAAAAA6w/Otvp2uT-v9U1P6ZuA_83K6VqVtdmHP7lACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Night%2BBoat%2Bto%2BTangier.jpg" /></a></div><i>April 2021 </i></span>Host - <span style="font-family: inherit;">Andrew </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div>Kevin Barry's novel about two aging Irish gangsters waiting expectantly one night at the Port of Algeciras has been on everyone's list of books to read. And it's been on ours as well. Offered but rejected in the past, I resurrected it alongside <i>Homeland Elegies</i> (Akhtar), <i>The Abstainer</i> (McGuire), <i>The Splendid and the Vile</i> (Larson), and <i>Fortune Smiles</i> (Johnson). For most, our selection was vindicated by an appreciation for Barry's poetic dialog, his unforgettable characters, and the building suspense he creates out of a series of flashbacks. Were it not for our American ears, we might all have given it a full thumbs-up as Doug did. But the fact that Barry had us running for the Irish-English dictionary slowed many of us down. While I found pleasure in reading quickly and ignoring the unfamiliar references, I was in the minority. All of us, however, were engaged by the gangsters' back story and intrigued by the significance each of the two men places on the elusive Dilly (for whom they are waiting) and her mother (whose death they both grieve). Rating: 7.8</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MjuLFP1i0_U/YKl-_e77SII/AAAAAAAAA64/klYP6JS-xmsYhrvZlf0wFFEdHQjHMUijwCLcBGAsYHQ/s180/Cook%2527s%2BTour.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MjuLFP1i0_U/YKl-_e77SII/AAAAAAAAA64/klYP6JS-xmsYhrvZlf0wFFEdHQjHMUijwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Cook%2527s%2BTour.jpg" /></a></div>May 2021 </i></span>Host - <span style="font-family: inherit;">Tom </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div>When Tom told us we were finally going to dine in person, and he offered us a choice of Krueger's <i>This Tender Land</i>, Weiner's <i>The Geography of Bliss</i>, Proulx's <i>Bad Dirt</i>, and Sides' <i>Hellbound on His Trail </i>to accompany our meal, he figured he'd also toss in a book about food just for kicks. And that's how we ended up with Anthony Bourdain's book about his televised quest for the most compelling meals in the most exotic places around the world. After a 14-month hiatus, with only Zoom meetings to sustain our reading, the promise of real food and a discussion of same proved irresistible.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's dispense with the book first. It featured interesting locales and passable writing, with a few compelling stories intermixed with just as many forgettable ones. What was most memorable about the reading were the occasional anecdotes--his time in France with his brother, his reflections crossing North Africa, his depression in Indochina--that foretold Bourdain's subsequent suicide. While many of the dishes were enticing (and some utterly repelling), Bourdain's travelogue was bittersweet from start to finish. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our dinner, on the other hand, was a pure pleasure from start to finish. With 15 guys in attendance (including our good friend Mark), and a table groaning with BBQ chicken and ribs and assorted sides, we spent less time on the book and more time simply eating and catching up. Fully-vaccinated and guided by the latest from the CDC, our dinner was the first large indoor gathering most of us have enjoyed since the onset of Covid. What a terrific way to return to normalcy! </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-19349319635479217772020-11-27T22:00:00.019-08:002021-07-10T18:41:53.979-07:00Dean's Tree Huggers Unite (via Zoom)<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzsSSZqdgqw/YKlEx9X-WZI/AAAAAAAAA4c/Zy6jr6eVXe8NszJI1uw2CafkgGEbgAlQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s180/Overstory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzsSSZqdgqw/YKlEx9X-WZI/AAAAAAAAA4c/Zy6jr6eVXe8NszJI1uw2CafkgGEbgAlQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Overstory.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last Sunday was time for another Zoom distanced meeting of the
Man Book Club. And while it would have
been appropriate to have each of us Zoom-in while embracing or seated in our
favorite tree, given this month’s book – <span style="font-style: italic;">The Overstory </span>by Richard Powers,
we eschewed the outdoors for the comfort of our manmade arbors of dens, dining
rooms, and back bedrooms.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reading the entire 500+ page book was, like trying to hack
through the book’s redwood trees, a daunting task for several of our
members. But even those who had
completed only the first half of the book agreed that <i>The Overstory</i>
was well written and compelling - especially the Chestnut story, which
intertwined the Hoel family immigrant saga and gave new meaning to a “family
photo album”. Indeed, the Chestnut story
was MBC’s favorite of the several disparate stories with which Powers begins
the book. The outlier (and there always
is one) was Terry, who also liked Mimi Ma’s, daughter of Chinese immigrants,
story.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In general MBC found the last part of the book wanting (or
per Doug, it needed an editor) – reflecting Powers’ not completely successful (in
our opinion) attempt to weave the disparate stories and nine main characters from
the book’s first half into a cohesive west coast redwood forest climax and
then, as an epilogue, short chapters intended to tie up a few loose story
arcs Even with those shortcomings, Powers’
ability to create a richly detailed and diverse narrative about trees struck a
sentient and anthropomorphic chord among the MBC, confirming <i>The Overstory</i>’s
2019 Pulitzer Prize award.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The book inspired MBC members to reminisce about their time
spent in forests -- The Great Smokey Mountains (Stan), Plumas National Forest
(Andrew). Others paused to reflect on
logging as an extractive industry that places little value on the health of
the overall ecosystem (Tom and Dean) and how several characters were obviously
based on the real life experiences of people like Julia Butterfly, who was
willing to live in the real redwood trees to protect them from loggers (Paul)
or Professor Suzanne Simard, whose research tenacity led to radical insights
into tree and forest ecosystems (Larry).<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Otherwise, the members of MBC continued their dogged
determination to get through 2020. Even
as 2021 is on the horizon, we already can see events like MBC ski weekend being
cancelled (and with it the annual slip and slide car contest down Andrew’s iced
driveway). But we are grateful that
COVID has not impacted any of us or our families. We look with bated breath (behind masks of course)
to a time in 2021 when MBC can again meet in person.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next month’s book continues the forest theme but
with a decidedly more predatory bent – <i>The Tiger</i>,
by John Vaillant, a non-fiction lesson teaching us that humans (and even bears)
are not always at the top of the food chain.
Roy hosts in January. Bring your
pith helmets.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">--Larry</span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-82392640516023329492020-11-20T10:37:00.003-08:002021-07-10T18:43:34.388-07:00Ask Jeeves (Larry Did)<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-acpxuX_tUXo/X7gMZ7QQjfI/AAAAAAAAAz4/fOnt7s8TeqkNCRqbDxYIAPIl1fM1nQ4fQCLcBGAsYHQ/s180/Code%2Bof%2Bthe%2BWoosters.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-acpxuX_tUXo/X7gMZ7QQjfI/AAAAAAAAAz4/fOnt7s8TeqkNCRqbDxYIAPIl1fM1nQ4fQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Code%2Bof%2Bthe%2BWoosters.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Many of us knew the Oakland based search
engine/question-answer website Ask Jeeves (now just Ask.com) was related to an
English gentleman’s personal valet, but the MBC’s September book – <b><i>The
Code of the Woosters</i></b> by <b>P.G. Wodehouse</b>—as Zoom hosted by Glenn provided a path to the “Jeeves” origin.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p>The book provides a humorous account of British aristocracy
in the lates 1930s, a time when the sharp “Upstairs, Downstairs” line between
the aristocracy and the working class begins to fade. The Code of the Woosters
follows the escapades of English gentleman Bertram “Bertie” Wooster and his
manservant, Jeeves. The beauty of Wodhouse’s book is that it is told through
Bertie as narrator who believes it is “he” who is controlling the action, while
the reader quickly surmises the real brains of the duo lies with Jeeves. The book then leads the reader on a romp through
the daily social pratfalls of the British upper class where, like Seinfield,
nothing of substance occurs.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For a short and humorous work, there was a surprisingly wide
set of opinions among the meager number of MBC Zoom attendees. Several including Tom and Glenn found the book
enjoyable and a fun read as each chapter unfolds with Bertie dealing with one
predicament after another only to be left at chapter’s end in another social
“pickle”. Glenn and Paul appreciated
Wodehouse’s ability to turn a phrase in the King’s English. I was in the middle
of the pack – liking the lighthearted storyline but only by skipping over some
of the 1930s idioms to keep the book moving. Jack found the book a light farce with unredeeming
characters, yet found himself rooting for several of them anyway. Andrew (for the part he read) and Dean found
the book uninteresting and repetitive with each chapter structured beginning
with the protagonist extracting himself from a sticky wicket left hanging at
the end of the previous chapter, only to be thrust into a new tight squeeze by
chapter end.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the big news of the month was the nuptials of Glenn and
Gamin, which was celebrated in this time of COVID through a slightly disjointed
webex meeting via the Sonoma County Clerk’s office. Congratulations to the couple from all of
MBC. Unfortunately, we were not able to throw
Glenn the kind of bachelor party that Bertie threw Gussie in the book. In other news, the Tom/Dan/Dean winery group
is well into their 2020 crush with 2 ½ tons of varietals in process. Tom reported that the crop did not suffer smoke
damage from the fires as of the initial press. Overall MBC members continue to
grapple with the vagaries of COVID, wildfires and the election. One member recounted how their parent
contracted COVID and survived but with lingering aftereffects. We do count ourselves lucky, however, as none
of us is an essential front-line worker – although Glenn is now married to one.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Up for October is Dean’s recommendation and 2019 Pulitzer
Prize winner, <b><i>The</i></b> <b><i>Overstory</i></b> by Richard Powers. After reading this, you will not look and
feel for trees in the same way. </span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">--Larry</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-69605196677334824542020-08-17T18:33:00.033-07:002021-07-10T18:43:54.457-07:00Dan Gives Us Our Last Orders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U4CHkv5vnVA/YKcP0bCguhI/AAAAAAAAA4E/wG4KJlO3tEYAiHwV3GlrV0wf4JVdt3VIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s197/Last%2BOrders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="197" data-original-width="120" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U4CHkv5vnVA/YKcP0bCguhI/AAAAAAAAA4E/wG4KJlO3tEYAiHwV3GlrV0wf4JVdt3VIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Last%2BOrders.jpg" /></a></div><br />Another month, another Zoom meeting for the otherwise gregarious Man Book Club. Yes, last Tuesday continued the MBC virtual saga, except for the Dan/Tom/Dean Covid-19 Social Bubble - hunkered down in Dan’s garage, aka the Man Cave. <br /><br />And Dan’s garage was an appropriate place to start this month’s Zoom meeting as Dan was this month’s host and book recommender/vote counter/date decider. Indeed, this month’s book, Last Orders by Graham Swift opens with a similar motley crew of regulars holding forth in an East London pub.<br /><br /><div>The book goes on -- in repeated flashbacks and from different points of view -- to detail the lives of the various protagonists and their interactions. The common thread being the recent death of their friend, Jack Dobbs and their road trip to fulfill Jack’s desire (Last Orders) to have his ashes spread at the Margate pier/quay (as depicted in Paul’s Zoom background).<br /><br />MBC members generally felt the book was well written and a worthy Man Booker winner – George gave it the “best MBC book ever”. Swift certainly wove an intricate story around and among his characters – Jack, Vince, “Lucky” Ray, Lenny, Vic, Amy and Mandy. Indeed, one criticism was trying to keep the characters straight, especially at least in the beginning. Another small criticism was a lack of insight into Amy’s (Jack’s wife) feelings and what her plans are – stop visiting her daughter, move to Margate, hook up with Ray? Terry commented that he would have liked to have a better wrap up to the story. I felt Swift needed to move Amy aside so he could write a “buddy” story.<br /><br />The other theme that emerged from our evening was the feeling that the book speaks to men of our age and stage in life as Swift’s male characters are, except for Vince, about the age of the MBC. Several members mentioned that the book gave them pause to reflect at this point in their life’s journey, just as Swift’s characters reflect on their lives, secrets and mortality. Doug specifically said that the book’s impact was different today than when he first read it a decade earlier. Each member also was asked where they wanted their body buried or ashes scattered. The answers varied – Colma, Vermont, the Golden Gate Bridge, in his own cemetery, out the car window, and on the farm.<br /><br />Otherwise it was your typically unsatisfying, tech plagued, but well attended Zoom meeting with Andrew appearing to be under a food warming heat lamp at an all you can eat Hometown Buffet, Glen needing a bit more bandwidth than was available from one of his student’s Chromebooks, and Jack sporting his Puget Sound college tour T-shirt.<br /><br />In what nearly became life imitates art, we were surprised to hear that three MBC members nearly had their own “Jack Dobbs” moment last month as they all found ways spend a couple of days in the hospital – one via helicopter. While all of them are back home and looked their chipper selves, it is a sobering reminder that we will either be “Jack Dobbs” or the ones carrying out “Last Orders”. A positive note was sounded with news that Garth is on the mend and aside from not being able to eat spicy foods, is back enjoying life.<br /><br />BREAKING NEWS: Winning the best excuse for repeated absences, Armando emailed that his prolonged absence from MBC is due to the small matter of being appointed the new Director of State Parks. Wow, when can we get San Simeon renamed the MBC Clubhouse?<br /><br />Next month’s book continues the British theme – did Andrew vote twice again so he can tutor us with another UK geography lesson? – with The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. Glen hosts with hopefully more bandwidth at a date and location – the barn?</div><div><br /></div><div>--Larry</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-28766205364492744872020-08-09T21:54:00.001-07:002021-05-22T11:07:14.293-07:00Courtesy of Terry and George, We Zoomed With a (Executive) Hoodlum<p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HZbZpKLcXsY/XzDQOl4Z5OI/AAAAAAAAAyE/j6gOaqrZvnsHHJdCXFXKtx4YSwRhAr_pgCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/Executive%2BHoodlum.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="164" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HZbZpKLcXsY/XzDQOl4Z5OI/AAAAAAAAAyE/j6gOaqrZvnsHHJdCXFXKtx4YSwRhAr_pgCLcBGAsYHQ/w110-h164/Executive%2BHoodlum.jpg" width="110" /></a></p>For MBC’s July meeting, we were treated to an hour Zoom “sit down” with John Costello, the author of our latest book, Executive Hoodlum: Negotiating on the Corner of Main and Mean, an “inside baseball” autobiography of growing up in a mob connected family and straddling the line between the corporate world and the underworld.<br /><br />John graciously answered our questions about his life, the book, and what it was like to be a regular guest at the Playboy Mansion – and yes, it sounds a lot like the party scene from movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. At the end of his hour, we all felt a bit more braggadocious. But all posturing aside, John admitted that writing the book – which took over 5 years – was a cathartic process -- to come clean with his corporate friends about his not so savory Chicago family’s roots. While he has lived “large”, the loss of many family members and childhood friends to addiction, the judicial system, and “questionable circumstances” has taken a toll. Perhaps John’s life is best described by the old adage that what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. But the flip side is what does kill you, kills you. <br /><br />John also said the book was a legacy for his young children (two sets of twins) and in the end how the birth of his children helped him move away from his Chicago mob ties. Finally, he hoped the book would serve to help those feeling trapped in their place in society based on their family’s history see that there is a way out.<br /><br />Frankly many of us coming into this meeting were ready after reading EH, to give it a mediocre score based on Costello’s writing style. But after an hour with him, we knew John and the book were the real deal. Maybe Costello is not the greatest literary talent MBC has read, but certainly he is the most straightforward and fascinating author we have encountered. Of course it helped that John’s Zoom hour with us felt like being in an afterhours lounge bar with John regaling us with story after story of his upbringing around Chicago’s organized crime figures to his eventual success in corporate America. His verbal retelling of several passages from the book were so much better than his words on the written page. John’s willingness to give us an hour of his time and his engaging responses to our questions earned EH an extra point on the MBC 10 point rating scale – a first in MBC history. It might have even been two additional points had we had access to cigars and whiskey snifters.<br /><br />John ended his portion of the MBC program with a teaser about a possible sequel. We won’t give away any details about the second book except to say it involves more family members and the US Attorney for the Sothern District. John – an unsolicited suggestion from the MBC is to include your experiences with making a TV deal based on the book around control, monetary considerations (points, percentages) and all the people in between (book publishers, agents, producers etc.). We think that would make for fascinating reading.<br /><br />John -- The MBC appreciates you taking the time to talk with a bunch of privileged hot tub soaking, white wine drinking Marinites. And a big shout out to MBC George for using his college rowing connections to entice Costello to attend. <br /><br />Attendance at July’s MBC meeting was light with only eight or nine attendees. Terry, the MBC host for July, who recommended EH, set another MBC first by not showing up to tout his own selection for 45 minutes. There was some concern that his absence was harbinger of a “no knock” Fed raid on our Zoom meeting with Terry ending up in a witness protection program in Spain, but show up he did, tardy and as far as we can tell, not wearing a wire. Tom attempted a phone Zoom connection from Grey Lodge but was “disappeared” after asking John Costello a question. Jack, in his faux Zoom library, learned he could join Dan’s Saturday early AM golf fivesome by strolling out his back gate. George and the pugs attended from Nevada having just escaped the latest COVID upsurge in Arizona.<br /><br />Otherwise no major changes in the status of the attending members. <br /><br />Dan, next month’s host, signed in late from the “man cave” and with his excuse -- aside from not reading the book -- the plethora of Zoom meetings he already attended that day and then having to “pick up the dog”. Which, by the way is a great segue to the next MBC meeting on August 10th, method of attendance TBD. Next month’s book and 1996 Man Booker (now just Booker) Prize winner is “Last Orders” by Graham Swift, which, according the accounting firm of Dan, Dan and Dan won with a total of five votes. With so few votes, one wonders if Andrew somehow stuffed the ballot box again resulting in another English writer/(Man) Booker winner on MBC’s reading list? P.S. Don’t watch The Last Detail, the 1972 movie. While a fine Jack Nicholson flick, it is not based our next book.<br /><br />Hope to see/view more of you in August.<br /><br />-- LarryUnknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-61502056056646743452020-06-02T21:10:00.000-07:002020-06-04T17:35:27.118-07:00Stan Talks Pretty, Larry Edits, and We Listen In, all Virtually of Course<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">[<i>Editor's Acknowledgment: Larry took it upon himself to prime the blog with this guest post. I am deeply grateful. Enjoy and be gentle in your comments.</i>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tuesday May 19</span><sup style="font-family: inherit;">th</sup><span style="font-family: inherit;"> saw, or more accurately Zoomed,
the second MBC virtual meeting. It still
feels a bit strange that neighbors literally next door to each other have to
see each other on a computer screen in a recreation of the old Hollywood Squares
game show. And you know how exciting our
lives are when the highlight of the evening was Terry’s new toilet!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In truth, these virtual meetings provide all of us a means
to see friends and catch up on our lives.
And it was good to hear about lives moving along outside of our own cloistered
homes. For the most part those updates
are mundane – children (really young adults now) moving in and out of our
lives, the bottling of the 2019 vintage at the Tom/Dean/Dan home winery, Terry
moving back into his newly refurbished home, Paul preparing for his first Airbnb guests, Glen starting a new program at Madrone (San Rafael) High,
Stan’s embarking on his itinerant life on the road with an MB Sprinter licensed
in Hood River OR, and Andrew (along with COVID-19) bringing back the drive-in
movie. There were also a few sad
updates – finding out that a couple of friends are battling cancer and how it
is not advisable to have a shipping container drop on your foot (with live
video of the recovering shoe and foot).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, yes, there was a book/audio book to be reviewed. In the only instance in memory in which the
host, Stan, did not only fail to finish reading his recommended book but also attempted
to distance himself altogether from said book. Stan explained how, had “we” voted for </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The
Story of a Goat</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, its rating would have been Trump “incredible” as opposed to the
“6” rating received by the chosen book – </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Me Talk Pretty One Day</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> by David
Sedaris. We quickly reminded Stan, that
it was HIS vote that broke the tie between the two books, leaving us to rate
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">MTPOD</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> not </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Story of a Goat</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Other than Andrew’s effusive “I laughed so hard,
I almost totaled the Land Rover”, the rest of MBC thought the book was like
reading/listening to a self-effacing stand-up comedian – great in small doses
but harder to appreciate during a longer reading/listen. Not a Pulitzer contender, but certainly an enjoyable
diversion during the sequestration. The
book brought to the fore how a “book” can be perceived differently in its audio
versus paper formats. The members that
both read and listened to <i>MTPOD </i>agreed that Sedaris has a particular audio
cadence that is hard to recreate on the written page – like trying to read a
Seinfeld script and having to imagine how Jerry, Elaine, George & Kramer
would deliver their lines. Each member,
like watchers of Seinfeld, had their favorite story from the Sedaris book – the
speech teacher, David’s father, the visit from neighbors back home, learning
French, and living in France.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We had
additional discussion about how this compared to Sedaris’ other books. The general agreement here was that <i>MTPOD </i>was
not one of his stronger books and felt somewhat dated. Certainly, none of the stories in this book
matched the author’s reading of his <i>Santaland Diaries</i> story – now an annual
NPR holiday staple. So, while scoring
only a mediocre “6” on the MBC rating scale, MBC agreed that <i>Me Talk Pretty One
Day</i>, in whichever format, was a wonderful diversion during these
Shelter-In-Place times.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Larry</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-52619929955909212292019-06-02T21:14:00.001-07:002019-06-03T13:23:42.680-07:00Roy's Success<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dinner and Acknowledgments</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When it comes to preparing our group's dinner, Roy sets an exceedingly high bar...for himself. With few exceptions (a delivery from Sol Food comes to mind), he's always worked from scratch and aimed for something a little different. Remember his Dungeness crab? Manhattan-style sandwiches? Anzac biscuits and dirty rice balls? Well, last Tuesday was more of the same.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To accompany Shteyngart's financier-on-the-run escapade, and with the protagonist's <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">$30,000 Japanese whiskey firmly in mind, </span>Roy started us with a Caesar salad followed by a bouillabaisse stuffed with local halibut. His main course was a delicious <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">pasta seasoned with mentaiko (buttery fish roe), Korean chili threads, and shiso leaf. For dessert, he served his own</span> kumquat ice cream over son David's citrus cake. To wash it down, Roy laid out shot glasses of home-distilled brandy. If it was all too rich and too much, we didn't care; we had a book about excess that needed pairing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our Review and Discussion of <i>Lake Success</i> by Gary Shteyngart</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In his latest novel, the gilded ego of Gary Shteyngart's New York is contrasted with America's wholesomeness west of the Hudson River. Well, sort of. The novel opens with an introduction to Barry Cohen, a hedge fund manager ("hedgie") whose fund's assets ("AUM") are declining rapidly, whose recent trades are under investigation, whose young child is autistic, and whose wife is looking elsewhere for affection. Facing such challenges, Barry does what any red-blooded American would do: he skips town in a Greyhound bus in search of a long-ago college girlfriend. This being a journey of self-discovery, Barry gets to learn about himself while the reader learns about automatic watches, Greyhound buses, and--oh, yes--today's America. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's the trite summary. Thankfully, Shteyngart's writing is not nearly so trite. But neither is it free from criticism, at least from us. Shteyngart commits the cardinal sin of saddling his reader with a repugnant main character. As host Roy noted, Barry is both unlikable and implausible. Glen called him a narcissist and a sociopath; George described him as irredeemable. Paul said he fits nicely into almost any Woody Allen film (in a twisted, misogynistic way, of course). Terry charitably noted that Barry merely voices the thoughts many have but are afraid to express. Regardless, Barry's antagonizing presence in the narrative spoiled what should have been an amusing 21st century take on the <i>Gatsby</i> story. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Our Rating <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">of </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Lake Success</i></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If it weren't for Doug, we might have ended our discussion still moaning about Barry's shortcomings. But Doug, with his usual insight, pushed us to appreciate Barry's quest for an ideal (love? success? contentment?) that is every bit as elusive for the other, more sympathetic characters in the story. In fact, whether it stems from his own autism, his certitude about success and money, his luck of Kokura, or just native resilience, Barry returns to New York and his perch atop Wall Street a far cry from the man who fled in the middle of the night. Because he challenges us to question everything we thought we knew about success and failure, we partially forgave Shteyngart his Barry Cohen and coughed up a grudgingly positive 5.8.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next Up: <i>The Devil's Highway</i> by Luis Alberto Urrea</span></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Again we were presented with a Jack London doubleheader (<i>Call of the Wild</i> and <i>White Fang</i>) and again we resisted. We also turned down <i>Bad Blood</i> and <i>The Devil in the White City</i> (second time) so we could instead read Luis Alberto Urrea's Pulitzer-nominated account of 26 men, an unforgiving frontier, and an immigration policy that continues to defy partisan solutions. Next month we'll discuss whether anything has changed along our southern border in the last 18 years.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-54338799630342137042019-05-04T21:30:00.000-07:002019-05-06T12:24:52.245-07:00Peter Celebrates the Flower Moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Dinner and Acknowledgments</b><br />
<b></b><br />
April's book selection took us back to 1921 and told us, in unsparing detail, what lay at the end of the Trail of Tears for the Osage Nation. As our host last Tuesday, Peter had to devise a menu that referenced, without trivializing, the subject matter of <i>The Killers of the Flower Moon</i>. Our consensus: his fry bread tacos were the perfect accompaniment to our book.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now common to Native American tribes throughout the southwest, fry bread was concocted by the Navajo during their forced relocation to New Mexico. The Navajo used the only ingredients <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">offered by the US government </span>(flour, salt, lard) to sustain them on land too poor to grow their traditional foods. Fry bread tacos later became part of the southwestern indigenous cultures that spanned the border with Mexico. (Note: no big beautiful wall then existed.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Preceding the fry bread tacos was a tasty Three Sisters Stew, another Indian recipe and an overt reference to the three Osage sisters whose murders open Grann's story. Dessert was a bowl of strawberries and brownies topped with <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">vanilla ice cream</span>. Delicious, yes. Subtle, no. No one missed the symbolism of white over red and brown. Well done, Peter!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>The Killers of the Flower Moon</i> by David Grann</b><br />
<b></b><br />
Thanks to the popularity of <i>The Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, Grann has successfully reminded Americans of a painful, long-forgotten chapter in American history. During the decade following World War I, two notable events occurred on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma: the discovery of large deposits of oil made the Osage enormously wealthy, and a series of Osage homicides began and persisted with the connivance of local authorities. Grann's non-fiction account sifts through trial transcripts, newspaper articles, first-person accounts, and other primary sources to re-tell the disturbing story of how prominent whites not only exploited the Osage but--to bypass the "headrights" of the Osage--also killed them.<br />
<br />
Grann also describes how the then-named Bureau of Investigation was called in to find the killers after the efforts of the county prosecutor and state attorney general were deemed corrupt by the Osage and others. The personal involvement of J. Edgar Hoover and the convictions obtained by his agents and federal prosecutors are the climax of Grann's narrative.<br />
<br />
Despite our differences, we all found the story of the Osage fascinating. We were, to a man, appalled by the treatment of the Osage by otherwise upstanding white citizens. At every opportunity, the white establishment stole the wealth and dignity of a tribe that was, by the 1920's, greatly reduced in population and forced to survive on land whose spectacular oil wealth had already begun to diminish by the time the FBI concluded its investigation. As Peter noted, Grann's book takes direct aim at the myth of American exceptionalism. And, as Larry and Dean pointed out, the suffering of the Osage was the logical result of the westward expansion foretold in <i>Undaunted Courage</i>.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our Rating <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">of </span><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Killers of the Flower Moon</i></span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
While <i>The Killers of the Flower Moon</i> features a compelling story, many of us faulted Grann for trying too hard. After selling us on the shocking killings that rocked the Osage Nation, Grann then tries to convince us that Hoover's legacy and today's FBI were both forged in the crucible of the ensuing investigation. (They weren't.) If that weren't enough, he devotes the final pages of his narrative to his own investigation in which he purports to discover innumerable additional victims along with suspects never charged in their deaths. (We weren't persuaded, as the sources he relies on had already made similar claims.) Partly for these reasons, and partly to revoke Grann's poetic license (Paul and I complained about his occasional, awkward lyricism), we pulled back from a stronger rating and awarded Grann a still-healthy 7.3.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next Up: <i>Lake Success</i> by Gary Shteyngart</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For May, Roy offered us <i>The Overstory</i> by Richard Powers, <i>The Signal and the Noise</i> by Nate Silver, <i>Rules of Civility</i> of Amor Towles, and <i>Lake Success</i> by <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Gary Shteyngart. In the end, Roy's desire to reprise Shteyngart (after our enjoyment reading <i>Super Sad True Love Story</i>) broke a tie with <i>The Overstory</i>. We will see if Shteyngart's latest novel about Wall Street hubris lives up to his growing reputation as an American satirist.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-73225273870906954052019-02-14T15:20:00.000-08:002019-04-02T13:39:57.297-07:002019 Ski Weekend--Edited!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VT0mNM25F_w/XKEd0LjoukI/AAAAAAAAAq8/-AwBSiVL92od8inVrNbsWamK6ffPb8_EACEwYBhgL/s1600/2019-02-09%2B20.44.30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VT0mNM25F_w/XKEd0LjoukI/AAAAAAAAAq8/-AwBSiVL92od8inVrNbsWamK6ffPb8_EACEwYBhgL/s320/2019-02-09%2B20.44.30.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stan prefers Squaw to Lahontan</td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">[Editor's Note: What follows is Larry's overly generous, somewhat snarky take on our ski weekend. Naturally, I've added my own annotations to counter Larry's exuberance.]</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A big thanks to Andrew for opening up his new <strike style="line-height: normal; overflow-x: visible; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">cottage</strike>, <strike style="line-height: normal; overflow-x: visible; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">cabin</strike>, mansion to us this weekend. While my room felt a bit like being back at summer camp, especially when bunking with John and Dan, upscale resort living was the theme of the weekend. Although we had to dig out of snow drifts a couple of times, nobody complained when we were forced to stay an extra day living the aprés-ski life. <i>[Ed. Note: I would have complained were it not for Dean's tasty Sunday dinner.]</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As has become standard for these weekends, the meals were MBC calorie-and-cholesterol-be-damned masterpieces. Dean's lamb (and lamb-less) curry, Tom's lasagna, and Paul's crepes were highlights along with the seemingly endless supply of great wines. <i>[Ed. Note: Don't forget Terry's breakfast feast, your own lunches-to-go, and Dan's soothing Manhattans.]</i></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aA47-MH5aZY/XKPFf8KFMyI/AAAAAAAAArc/0g9t-p6SzBoqKloAcnJJftShK9FT0W1xQCEwYBhgL/s1600/2019-02-07%2B21.21.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aA47-MH5aZY/XKPFf8KFMyI/AAAAAAAAArc/0g9t-p6SzBoqKloAcnJJftShK9FT0W1xQCEwYBhgL/s320/2019-02-07%2B21.21.32.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Larry's almonds, a few cookies, and an empty bottle...dinner's over</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Entertainment is always an attraction of these weekends and this weekend was extra special once we determined how to access Andrew's Pay-Per-View account. It was money well spent as we focused on the most highbrow of movies: </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Clash of the Titans</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Venom</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. It was also a good weekend to watch golfers of our vintage at Pebble show the young Turks how it's done -- thanks Phil Mickelson and Bill Murray! That said, Andrew, we need a bigger screen next year with a better aspect ratio. I'm partial to the one in this URL </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br9yftCP9Mg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br9yftCP9Mg</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (just saying). </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">[Ed. Note: If you buy it, I'll install it.]</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When we were forced into direct conversation due to numerous lapses in Andrew's high-tech entertainment system, we found ourselves engaged in manly topics such as pickup trucks (see related WSJ article <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/detroits-latest-offering-big-pickups-at-bigger-prices-11549886400" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">https://www.wsj.com/articles/detroits-latest-offering-big-pickups-at-bigger-prices-11549886400</a>), driving in snow, and our favorite -- what ails you? <i>[Ed. Note: Well, that was mostly what ails Stan, since he's endured every possible sportsman's trauma in the last couple years.]</i></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r3y6TpNDjlA/XKEZbPX5T6I/AAAAAAAAAqI/B-oWvWgUDSA04uGp4Z8L9GyqcHQPsxxPQCLcBGAs/s1600/2019-02-10%2B09.26.25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r3y6TpNDjlA/XKEZbPX5T6I/AAAAAAAAAqI/B-oWvWgUDSA04uGp4Z8L9GyqcHQPsxxPQCLcBGAs/s320/2019-02-10%2B09.26.25.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The driveway that defeated Tom's 4-wheel drive</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The highlights of the weekend were several forays into the wild to search out the local coffee scene. One trip required a carpool to town where we learned from one of our members how to chat up a 20-something barista using poetry (who knew?). Another required breaking a trail through thigh deep snow, only to be rewarded with $9 cappuccinos. The last, however, was truly MBC perfect. We were treated (i.e., as in they were free) to custom made espresso drinks and affogatos by Andrew's affable neighbor, who's an espresso aficionado, whose equipment and knowledge rival the best San Francisco restaurants (hint -- bean uniformity), and whose home is the one Andrew should have built. <i>[Ed. Note: Yes, John and Nancy's company, their coffee bar </i></span><i>(viva Tinito Rose Café!),</i><i style="font-family: inherit;"> and their stylish new home were all lovely.]</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So THANK YOU AGAIN ANDREW for a truly memorable MBC weekend in a new and wonderful place. Of course Andrew will need to top this next year, so I can't wait to claim my comped room at the Ritz Carlton-Northstar (or can you at least figure out how to directly access the Martis lift from the cabin?). <i>[Ed. Note: If Stan or George won't trade up to Martis Camp, maybe Doug will negotiate access rights for us.]</i></span></div>
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<i>[Ed. Postscript: The abundant snow at Northstar made for a terrific ski day--terrific, that is, if one ignores the 30,000-vertical-foot goal that Dean scripted for those foolish enough to hang with him. The overnight snowfall forced Tom to put chains on at the bottom of the driveway and buried Dan's car at the top. But the worst was Stan's treacherous drive back to Squaw Valley: what should have taken 20 minutes took 2 hours. We can only hope for this kind of snow next year....In the meantime, a brief photo gallery below.]</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A simple walk proves chancy...thanks to John </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H4BqXv6WAI4/XKPFhdIs1fI/AAAAAAAAArk/gPtp_f97UIEYjlEUAGDyY1LuC35ERfbBQCEwYBhgL/s1600/2019-02-10%2B09.37.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H4BqXv6WAI4/XKPFhdIs1fI/AAAAAAAAArk/gPtp_f97UIEYjlEUAGDyY1LuC35ERfbBQCEwYBhgL/s320/2019-02-10%2B09.37.21.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still cold, but spectacular weather</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j8AWGsfPZ9M/XKEZol3QBfI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/g638Ef98EXckMpkIvzzg10heT_TbqY93gCLcBGAs/s1600/2019-02-10%2B10.23.00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j8AWGsfPZ9M/XKEZol3QBfI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/g638Ef98EXckMpkIvzzg10heT_TbqY93gCLcBGAs/s320/2019-02-10%2B10.23.00.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dan's car, covered by a snow angel</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When brushing in the dark, Terry errs</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking down the Martis run from the top of Lookout</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John digs out</td></tr>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-39558748415105047162018-11-04T19:56:00.002-08:002018-11-09T09:37:23.128-08:00Larry Puts A Bug in the River<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "inherit" , serif; margin: 0px;">Dinner and Acknowledgments</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Glenn,
who picked </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">our previous two books set in Africa, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">served us
Ethiopian food (</span><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Dark Star Safari</i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">) and Vietnamese food (</span><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Heart of
Darkness</i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">). Last Tuesday, Larry aimed for a different kind of authenticity. He eschewed our novel's
references to French food, Indian curry, and American fast food, and instead
opted for the native food disdained by Naipaul's fastidious narrator.
Yes, Larry served us insects. BUGS!! Accompanied by a delicious Ethiopian
chicken paired with skewers of beef, couscous, and rice, Larry used
high-protein cricket flour for his appetizers and dessert. Although
FDA-approved, his main ingredient was nevertheless milled crickets. Larry,
thanks for the reminder that we are only a few notches up the food chain from
what we eat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We must
also acknowledge George's presence at our dinner. He drove down from Reno
expecting our hospitality and instead ended up in a hotel room. Next
time, George, don't be so coy in your emails. Ask for a place to
stay! Or, even better, drive down with John and shack up in the Bambi. </span><br />
<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; margin: 0px;">Our Review and Discussion of <i>A
Bend in the River</i> by V.S. Naipaul</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none;">Its author a noted fixture of post-war British fiction and purveyor of post-colonial anxiety, </span></span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">A
Bend In the River</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">'s narrative about a recently-independent African country
showcased a well-crafted story (Doug), a fascinating geographic setting (Tom),
and memorable images of people and places (Terry). Those </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">were the
positive comments. For most of us, though, Naipaul's writing served up a
series of interesting vignettes punctuated by lengthy introspection. Too
lengthy, for some (Dan).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Set <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">in
the 1960's, Naipaul's protagonist, Salim, moves from his family's home on the
coast inland to the "town at the bend in the river" where he sets
himself up as a local merchant. The town, and its country, go unnamed but
the details in the story and the timing of Naipaul's writing suggest the setting
is Zaire (formerly, and once again, the Congo) during the rule of dictator
Mobutu Sese Seko. Salim, a descendant of Indian settlers and therefore a
perpetual outsider, bears witness to the upheaval caused by the Big Man's
consolidation of power in the face of tribal unrest and a
persistent colonial influence. He observes--with irony and
detachment--the African "culture" overlaid on European-funded aid
projects, the Big Man's increasing cult of personality, and the shifting
allegiances within the local population, including among his friends.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Naipaul's
novel has all the earmarks of a Great Novel: family and politics, race and assimilation, money and violence, plus lots of literary
acclaim. And yet, as a group, we mustered more respect than affection for
Naipaul's storytelling. We enjoyed the history lesson (Dean), compared it
to our own experiences in Africa (Stan, Paul, Tom), and yet still found it
wanting. Paul's headline review (schizophrenia, annoyance, misogyny,
conflict) was almost as damning as Dan's refusal to read beyond the halfway
point. In the end, our patience was tried more by Naipaul's style (a colonial languor seems to infect his writing) than his substance. Too
bad, because a good story definitely lurks within the book's four long
chapters. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Our
Rating of </span><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">A Bend in the River</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Despite all the kvetching, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px; margin: 0px;">when it came time to rate Naipaul, we gave him the
benefit of the doubt with a very decent 6.5. Notably, our ratings were all within a 5-8 range, which indicates a closer consensus than our comments
suggested when we sat down for dinner. Larry, thanks for pushing us to
read a title we had previously rejected but clearly found of interest last Tuesday. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 17.33px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "inherit" , serif;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Next
Up: </span><i style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">American Prison</i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> by Shane Bauer</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">Stan could not have
argued for a more eclectic set of titles. He gave us three options:
1) </span><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;"><i style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">The Old Man and the Sea </i>paired with </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Animal Farm</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">, which
we rejected as two titles with nothing in common except their length; 2) </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">The
Swerve</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;"> (Greenblatt's prizewinning historiography), which Doug warned us
would be slow going and some suspected might be just another </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Sapiens</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">
(you know, the Convenient-Theory-That-Explains-It-All kind of book); and 3) </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">American
Prison</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">, whose author infiltrated a for-profit prison and then wrote about
it in </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Mother Jones</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">. We picked the last option and will steel
ourselves for the polemic we know is coming (this did appear in </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Mother Jones</i><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.33px;">,
after all).</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-10955004721076684222018-01-31T21:26:00.000-08:002018-06-25T09:50:59.385-07:00At our 100th, Tom's the Gentleman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-85FB3lIMu9s/Wx324PkOZ-I/AAAAAAAAAoc/MfniJpLhbPEBTZmBHfPiUFA2LaXkKkeUACLcBGAs/s1600/Gentleman%2Bin%2BMoscow%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="120" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-85FB3lIMu9s/Wx324PkOZ-I/AAAAAAAAAoc/MfniJpLhbPEBTZmBHfPiUFA2LaXkKkeUACLcBGAs/s1600/Gentleman%2Bin%2BMoscow%2B2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dinner
and Acknowledgments</span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tom had a choice to make last night: he could have focused his efforts on the cuisine of the fictional Metropol Hotel or he could have commemorated the Man Book Club's 100th book. To our delight, he chose both. For dinner, we enjoyed his slow-cooked rendition of beef stroganoff--which proved a worthy competitor to the Tyler Florence version Dan served when we read <i>The Fixer</i>. His stroganoff was accompanied by a "Russian" salad. How Russian was it? I'm not sure, because I was too focused on what came before and after.</span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For an appetizer, Tom teamed up with Roy, who harvested fresh caviar from an 80-lb sturgeon he caught in San Pablo Bay. (Naturally, the caviar was paired with Russian vodka.) And for dessert, Tom made a delicious carrot cake topped with candles celebrating our 100th book. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">S</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none;">pasibo, t</span>ovarisch Tom!</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cake, caviar, and vodka...all for our 100th book</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
Review and Discussion of <i>A Gentleman in Moscow</i> by Amor Towles</span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The conceit behind Towles' latest novel is simple: a young Russian aristocrat, who is sentenced to "house" arrest five years after the Bolshevik Revolution, learns what it means to be a true gentleman in a society bent on ending class distinctions. During his decades of confinement in the Hotel Metropol, Count Rostov mingles with party loyalists, foreign diplomats, KGB agents, and--most importantly--the hotel staff. It is his relationship with the staff, and his adoption of an orphaned girl, that hastens Rostov's conversion from aristocrat to gentleman. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most of us discovered a very enjoyable story in Towles' surprise bestseller (although Dean and Jack found it slow going, and <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Dan actually disliked it</span>). What we didn't discover was a traditional historical novel. For those hoping to learn more about the Bolsheviks, Stalinism, or the rise of Nikita Khrushchev, few of those details seep into the narrative. It is, as Larry described it, more akin to <i>Eloise at the Plaza</i> than conventional historical fiction. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether the upcoming paperback edition might get pitched to Young Adult readers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Towles' narrator begs our indulgence by addressing the reader directly and through occasional wordy footnotes. While most of us found these asides amusing, Stan did not. Pedantic and condescending were his words. By contrast, Paul (who loved the book) found gems scattered throughout the novel, including references to two of our prior titles (<i>The Tender Bar</i> and <i>The Maltese Falcon</i>). And Terry, who listened to the audio book, was entranced by the narration and not distracted by the commentary. He called it one of his favorite books of the year. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Our
Rating of </b><b><i>A Gentleman in Moscow</i></b></span></span><span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Tom asked us to read Towles' novel because, after hearing about it from his wife, he was convinced we would enjoy it--all 462 pages of it.</span> With a respectable 7.4 rating, he was vindicated in his choice (and in listening to his wife). </span></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">Next
Up: </span></b><b><s><span style="line-height: 107%;">Ski Weekend</span></s></b><b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"> <i>The Lost City of the Monkey God</i> by Douglas Preston</span></b></span><br />
<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strike>We meet next on the ski slopes around Lake Tahoe. No book has been assigned. Instead, George and I look forward to playing host and repeating the fun we had last year.</strike></span><br />
<div style="text-decoration-line: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></div>
<div style="text-decoration-line: none;">
<i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Editor's Afterword</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">: To
correct the record...the ski trip disappeared when the snow disappeared.
So we convened at my house in February to discuss an old favorite--<i>The Great Gatsby</i>--at
the request of our friends at Nutopia. We meet next in March to discuss
Mando's suggested title about the recent discovery of an ancient city deep in
the rain forest of Central America.</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration-line: none;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-88036766924087935492017-12-17T21:52:00.000-08:002018-08-23T09:55:17.398-07:00The Road to Roy's<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Roy_x6BG-zk/WxVgJMa5i1I/AAAAAAAAAn8/idIsA6c2tWkHIvoxspcYq2EArbx1ObJKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Narrow%2BRoad%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Men's book club Review of The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan" border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="120" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Roy_x6BG-zk/WxVgJMa5i1I/AAAAAAAAAn8/idIsA6c2tWkHIvoxspcYq2EArbx1ObJKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Narrow%2BRoad%2B2.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<div style="height: 0px;">
<b><br /></b>
<b>Dinner and Acknowledgments</b></div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When our book is <span style="font-family: inherit;">about starvation in a World War II POW camp, our dinner prospects dim
considerably. Last Thursday, some may well have been tempted to eat
beforehand. Had they done so, they would have missed a deliciously eclectic meal</span>.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Roy took <span style="line-height: 120%;">inspiration from the Australian prisoners' working-class food fantasies
(fish and chips) and their </span><span style="line-height: 120%;">daily</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> camp rations (</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">a single ball of </span><span style="line-height: 120%;">rice) and presented us with excellent versions of each. Along with the fish and chips and the "dirty"
rice balls (</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">see</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> below), we were treated to home-made sushi and a very commendable
re-creation of <i>Anzac</i> biscuits for dessert. (Who but Roy and Peter knew there were cookies named for Australian soldiers from WWI?) Roy's Aussie-Japanese cuisine was washed
down with quinine-fortified gin and tonics and beer from both countries
(courtesy of Paul)</span>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XfIDTFmYC2o/WxVhR16yxCI/AAAAAAAAAoI/Ql_yn_DcUTAVGxQIonAcLa0PjRxZRPLywCLcBGAs/s1600/2017-12-14%2B19.07.52.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XfIDTFmYC2o/WxVhR16yxCI/AAAAAAAAAoI/Ql_yn_DcUTAVGxQIonAcLa0PjRxZRPLywCLcBGAs/s200/2017-12-14%2B19.07.52.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ready for the jungle: rice balls, quinine, and lager</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Our Review and Discussion of <i>The Narrow Road to the Deep North</i> by Richard Flanagan</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Flanagan's <span style="line-height: 120%;">Man Booker Prize-winning novel features a </span><span style="line-height: 120%;">protagonist</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> riven with internal conflict. Born in
poverty but made respectable by his training as a physician, Dorrigo Evans
joins the army at the outbreak of hostilities with Japan. After
officer training, he ships out--but only after he's simultaneously: 1) proposed to Ella, the
daughter of a doctor; and 2) had a passionate affair with Amy, the wife of his
uncle. His unit is captured and sent to a POW camp in Burma, where most of the men (led by Dorrigo) starve or die of disease as they lay train tracks in the jungle. After the war, Dorrigo returns to Australia where--to his dismay--he is hailed
as a war hero and, later, regarded as one of the country's leading physicians</span>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In our discussion, we found much to like and a little to complain about. As to the latter, most of the complaints were about Amy. While central to the story (she's Dorrigo's lifelong obsession), her character felt unfinished and her climactic re-appearance late in the story improbable. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We were willing to excuse Flanagan's clumsiness with Amy because so much of the
rest of the novel was superb. Everyone remarked on the exquisite writing.
From the characters' names to the language they use, Flanagan masters the idiom
of time and place. In addition to the writing, it is Dorrigo's struggle with
love and loss and his doubts about the man he's become that enriches Flanagan's
novel. All of his (male) characters—from fellow inmates to camp
guards—play strong supporting roles in an unforgettable story about war and its
aftermath.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Our Rating of <i>The Narrow Road to the Deep North</i></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Flanagan's prize-winning effort polled an 8 in our ratings. Our enthusiasm
for a beautifully written story was tempered by our collective desire for more
or, at least, for closure. Dorrigo's life ends abruptly but not before
the reader appreciates that his public accomplishments mask a deep sense of
unfulfillment. It's too bad, as George noted, that his unfulfillment
becomes ours, too</span>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Next Up: <i>A Gentleman in Moscow</i> by Amor Towles</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With all of January set
aside for reading (and nothing but skiing in February), we accepted Tom's
request that we read this year's book club favorite, <i>A Gentleman in
Moscow</i>. At 500+/- pages, it approaches our page length limit but also promises to lift our spirits in time for the new year</span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-33713730980989208612017-11-12T13:32:00.000-08:002018-02-14T09:08:44.934-08:00Peter's Take on an American Classic<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rO4PMU32Ozg/WoMQ_KonQ1I/AAAAAAAAAmw/TsWh6yg4hNci_dd3GoWRM29uhOGO9FpUwCLcBGAs/s1600/K-129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="men's book club group review k-129 josh dean" border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="120" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rO4PMU32Ozg/WoMQ_KonQ1I/AAAAAAAAAmw/TsWh6yg4hNci_dd3GoWRM29uhOGO9FpUwCLcBGAs/s1600/K-129.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">Dinner
and Acknowledgments</span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">I’m sure Peter puzzled over his meal
choices.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="float: none; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">What to serve when the story at hand is about
submarines and deep-sea mining vessels?</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="float: none; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">A
natural choice would have been a tasty deep water fish.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="float: none; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">But lanternfish are hard to come by, even
here on the west coast.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="float: none; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">So Peter pivoted to patriotism and last Thursday
showed his adopted flag by treating us to an all-American classic, the
hamburger.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="float: none; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">Combined with steak fries and salad, and ice cream
afterwards, our meal was the perfect accompaniment to a quintessentially
American story about ingenuity, money, and an engineering challenge fueled by
the anxiety of the Cold War.</span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">Our
Review and Discussion of <i>The Taking of K-129</i> by Josh Dean</span></b></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1968,
the Soviet ballistic submarine </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">K-129</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> went
missing.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Unbeknownst to the Kremlin, it suffered
a catastrophic event and sank along the International Date Line north of
Hawaii.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shortly thereafter, the Americans learned of
the loss and, using submerged acoustical beacons, discovered the sub’s
location. With the CIA overseeing the mission, the race was on to devise a means
of raising the sub before the Soviets realized it had been located.</span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The focus
of Dean’s story is the engineering challenge posed by retrieving a 1,500-ton
sub from a depth of 16,700 feet. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Complicating
the mission was the requirement that the nature of the work be kept secret.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This required the construction of the Glomar
Explorer, the world’s largest deep sea mining ship, equipped with a submersible
barge (to carry the sub back).</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It also
required the secret cooperation of the Howard Hughes Corporation, which provided
the CIA with its cover story:</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the Glomar
Explorer would explore the seabed for manganese nodules! </span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Project
Azorian was a partial success. Only a portion of the sub was retrieved, as the
remainder broke apart during the lift process.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The story helped us understand America’s mood in the late 1960’s:</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">its confidence was high but Sputnik and
Vietnam had punctured its post-war belief that anything was
possible.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Much like the Apollo mission,
Project Azorian tested and confirmed America’s engineering prowess.</span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
</span></span>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">After
expressing our appreciation for a story so little known, we took turns faulting
Dean for inserting one unnecessary character after another.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Glomar Explorer had 178 sailors and
engineers, and it felt like we were introduced to each one.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The narrative was also far too long.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What should have been long-form journalism,
according to Larry, was instead expanded into a full-length book.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Both Jack and Roy skipped entire chapters and
still came away with the story intact.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>John
was pleased to learn more about the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and I was tickled
to learn the origin of the CIA’s “neither confirm nor deny” response to press
inquiries.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But neither was necessary to
Dean’s story. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
Rating of <i>The Taking of K-129</i></span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our below-average
5.7 rating reflected our impatience with Dean but belied our enthusiasm for the
subject matter.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Indeed, some of us had a
personal connection to the story.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>George
worked for the Hughes Corporation in the 1970’s and got to tour the secret
offices used by the CIA.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Mando and others
recall boating around the Glomar Explorer after it was mothballed in Suisun
Bay.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And Larry’s uncle worked on
submarines at Mare Island and took several out on shakedown cruises.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px;">Next
Up: <i>The Narrow Road to the Deep North</i> by Richard Flanagan</span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</span></span><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Roy proposed three novels for next month, each reflecting the theme of
love and war.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We turned down Doerr’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All the Light We Cannot See</i> and Cleave’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everyone Brave Is Forgiven</i> and
instead opted for Australia’s most recent winner of the Man Booker Prize, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Narrow Road to the Deep North</i>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We’ll learn in December if Flanagan’s story
of POWs on the Burmese Railway justifies all the attention it’s received.</span></span></div>
</span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367682155970735252.post-25153707163712509412017-09-17T17:09:00.000-07:002018-08-23T10:00:10.858-07:00Dean's Dystopia<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m3uqyrs84GU/WoCk9k4vICI/AAAAAAAAAl0/ZyaRECF4Iy4jgLiY-79FvLmZLnz6xuqPQCLcBGAs/s1600/1984.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="men book group review rating 1984 by george orwell" border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="120" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m3uqyrs84GU/WoCk9k4vICI/AAAAAAAAAl0/ZyaRECF4Iy4jgLiY-79FvLmZLnz6xuqPQCLcBGAs/s1600/1984.gif" title="" /></a></div>
<b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dinner
and Acknowledgments</span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our dinners are often staged by the
host to reflect the characters or events in the book under discussion.
Last Thursday, Dean faced an especially difficult challenge in preparing a meal
that would be edible yet reminiscent of the dystopia in George Orwell's
best-known work. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As he has
in the past, Dean rose to the challenge. His genius was in recognizing that
there was nothing worth eating in the bleak wartime environment of <i>1984</i>. So instead he mined <i>the year of</i> 1984 for his recipes. We were served grilled steaks in pepper sauce, scalloped potatoes, and stewed vegetables--all
reputedly popular in 1984! Dean made sure we got the point by
setting his Pandora playlist to 1984, resulting in background tracks from
Prince (RIP!), Kenny Loggins, Tina Turner, and others. In a nod to
Orwell, though, Dean did offer us a dessert of genuine chocolate bars washed
down with cups of Victory coffee. Bravo, Dean!</span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
Review and Discussion of <i>1984</i> by George Orwell</span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Written
in 1949, and set in a bombed-out London of the future, <span style="margin: 0px;">Orwell’s iconic novel</span> describes a world that has devolved into
three warring superstates, one of which (Oceania) is ruled by the remote but
all-knowing Big Brother. The novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, is
presented as a conscientious party member who becomes disaffected, is caught
and tortured, and later finds solace in his relationship with Big Brother.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While
most of us were familiar with the story, we were nevertheless struck by the parallels
between our reality and Orwell’s fantasy.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Dean compared the doublespeak
practiced by Winston’s Ministry of Truth to the “alternative facts” touted
by the current White House. Paul was more intrigued by how today’s technology
(CCTV, facial recognition, bodyworn cameras, GPS tracking) has become as
pervasive in our lives as Orwell’s “telescreen” is in Winston’s. If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1984</i> was meant to warn us about the
perils of technology in the hands of a totalitarian government, Terry worried
that the warning may be lost on today’s youth, who appear too willing to trade privacy for convenience.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Orwell’s depiction
of the concentration of government power and the rise of an elite class of
party members caused Larry to muse that, unlike the state in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1984</i>, it is the technology behemoths
that exert so much control in our daily lives. Larry’s commentary about the
rise of Silicon Valley led John to complain that our knowledge-based economy is
contributing to the development of an underclass that rejects education and advancement,
much like the “proles” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1984</i>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
Rating of <i>1984</i></span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our discussion would have continued but for the
late hour.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At rating time, we all acknowledged
the continuing relevance of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1984</i> even
if we were less impressed by its plot and, in Peter’s view, its dated writing. For
his prescience, if not his storytelling, Orwell pulled down a respectable 7.4.</span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next
Up: <i>The Taking of K-129</i> by Josh Dean</span></span></b><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"></span><span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thanks to Dutton’s generosity,
we received advance copies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Taking
of K-129</i>, Josh Dean’s account of America’s covert effort to retrieve a
Soviet nuclear sub that sank in international waters. Next month, we will leave
the social paranoia of the early Cold War and turn to the US-USSR military tensions
of the early 1970s.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4