Catching Up On Our 2023-2025 Books

After Paul's phenomenal luncheon in July 2023, MBC continued reading and eating, but its online posts went quiet.  Thanks to Larry's initiative, our blog posts resumed last May.  What happened during our hiatus?  Here's a condensed account, with apologies to certain hosts (and authors) for more than a few omitted details:  

September  2023  Host - Larry

We met at Larry's to dine on beef/rice/corn/almonds (yes, those are my notes!) and talk about Ishiguro's (then) latest novel, a prescient tale of AI embodied in a robot named Klara.  Purchased as a companion for a sickly child, Klara develops an intelligence and sensitivity that forces one to ask what it means to be human and to love. As a group, we didn't love the book but we found ourselves deeply affected by its characters and the ambition of its author.  For that, we gave it an 

8.0.

November 2023  Host - Stan

Stan hosted us for our discussion of Geraldine Brooks' novel Horse.  Since our meals are often themed with our books, Stan avoided uncomfortable questions about the provenance of his entrée by serving seafood, not red meat. Once we'd tucked in and begun discussing the book, a clear consensus emerged: no one liked the modern frame story, but everyone liked the novel's inner story.  

The development of American horse racing in the south, as illustrated by the champion Lexington (whose offspring included the famed Preakness), and the role of the enslaved trainers and groomsmen, was a story fascinating unto itself.  What was not fascinating was the forced 21st century story of art, love, and racism.  Nor were we persuaded by the sanitized diction of Brooks' 19th century characters. (The use of the word "slave" is studiously avoided by both oppressor and oppressed.)

If Brooks' intention was to prod her reader into seeing and thinking about a southern economy built on slavery, it certainly worked.  If not for the clumsy framing of an otherwise interesting episode in American history, we might have rated it higher than 6.5. 

December 2023 / January 2024  Hosts - Glenn and Doug

Due to its length, we read Kingsolver's much-acclaimed Demon Copperhead over two months.  In December, 2023 we and our spouses dined in Glenn's barn and shared passing comments about the novel.  But only passing, because Glenn's food and venue were too distracting to allow for more. Then in January, 2024, we retreated to Doug's for a fuller discussion of this 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner.  (We also enjoyed Doug's roast pistachio salmon and his two excellent desserts--a whiskey cake and a toffee cake, the former perhaps a reminder of the substance abuse so central to our story?)

Yes, the novel is long, and yes it's a re-telling of David Copperfield, but it's populated with an unforgettable cast of characters drawn from rural Appalachia (U-Haul, Fast Forward, Maggot, Angus, and of course Demon himself). We found Kingsolver's narrative about the cycle of poverty, domestic violence, and opiate addiction uplifting in spite of its themes.  Our comments said it all: "among my top 5" (Andrew), "did not want it to end" (Jack), "great characters" (Glenn), "fascinating" (Roy), "developed a complex relationship with the book" (Paul, who always develops a complex relationship with our books), and "puts Hillbilly Elegy to shame" (Doug). Our effusive reaction pushed Demon Copperhead to the top of our ratings with an 8.9.

February 2024  Host - Dean

Dean hosted us in February for a discussion of Toni Morrison's 1988 Pulitzer winner, Beloved.  Naturally, we ate as our novel's characters ate--or rather, as they fantasized about eating.  Dean's turkey, homemade bread, butter, and blackberry pie were taken from the meal enjoyed by the novel's protagonists (all escaped slaves) just prior to the arrival of the bounty hunters.

Our enthusiasm waned though when it came time to share our reactions to the book. A rewarding read? Maybe. A painful read? Absolutely.  From the outset, Morrison makes it clear the reader's on an arduous journey.  Her characters suffer almost unendurable trauma, only to realize that freedom cannot exorcise the pain of memory. Morrison's famous line aptly reflects her characters' pain and her white reader's guilt: "...the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay."  Before we set aside our discomfort, we applauded Morrison with an 8.0. 

April 2024  Host - Terry

In April, we gathered at Terry's to share our reactions to Kingdoms of Savannah, a mystery set in today's south but with the legacy of slavery haunting the margins of every page.  Alas, we were not impressed.  But we were impressed by Terry's menu.  With oven-fried chicken, beans, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and chocolate cake, Terry's version of southern comfort food was pitch perfect.

On the surface, Green's novel had the earmarks of a successful southern gothic mystery: a wealthy, landed class bent on protecting its own, a matriarch whose dysfunctional family eventually pulls together, and a murder whose investigation sets fire to it all.  Unfortunately, it had a dime store paperback feel (Jack), plenty of misogyny and twisted characters (Paul), a candy high after our previous titles (Dean), and was overwrought and unbelievable (Doug).  The most interesting plot development (i.e., the revelation that the island targeted for development was the ancestral home of free Blacks who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War) is saved for the end, but by then it was too late for most us.  Our 6.0 rating said it all.

June 2024  Host - Roy

Our book in June gave Roy the perfect opportunity to display his Japanese culinary skills. Accompanying the freshly-caught panko halibut was an egg custard (Chawanmushi), spinach salad with black sesame (Goma-ae), a cucumber salad (Namasu), and bean sprout with sesame and vinegar (Moyashi). 

His bounty contrasted with the bleak post-war environment depicted in No-No Boy, which chronicled the struggles of Japanese-American men who, while interned during WWII, were given loyalty questionnaires. Those who, for reasons of conscience or principle, answered "No" and refused to serve in the US military were sent to a federal penitentiary.  

We all were deeply moved by the plight of the novel's protagonist, Ichiro, who returns to Seattle after the war and can find neither work nor a place in the Nisei community.  We were also touched by Larry's account of his family's internment experience.  However, we were not impressed by the quality of the narrative: few likable characters (including the protagonist), aimlessly plotted, and an ending without closure. If not for its evocation of a seminal moment in our nation's history, No-No Boy would not have earned our modestly positive 6.9 rating.

August 2024  Host - Tom

When Tom hosted us in August, he served us old-fashioned southern food to aid our discussion of a middle-aged man's return home to Memphis, at the request of his sisters, to deal with his father's infatuation with a much younger woman.  Despite its 1987 Pulitzer Award for Fiction, Peter Taylor's finely-etched story of marital, sibling, and generational conflict failed to interest us nearly as much as Tom's menu for the evening.

The writing was fine in an old-fashioned sort of way, but there was too little to sustain our interest.  As a quiet study of southern manners, the story might have worked.  But when the message is simply that there's no escaping 1) your southern roots, 2) your domineering father, or 3) your own miserable relationship, our response is: 1) it's unsatisfying, and 2) it ain't Faulkner. Garth's comment was the most damning: the book felt like Ambien laced with Thorazine.  

September 2024  Host - Jack

In September Jack introduced MBC to Dennis Lehane and his 2023 novel about family, race, and mob politics during Boston's 1974 school desegregation crisis.  With some criticism for its "beach read" feel and its pat ending, we mostly found Small Mercies to be a worthy end-of-summer escape. 

Primed with Jack's excellent shepherd's pie, we dug into Lehane's murder mystery in South Boston and found ourselves mired in a discussion of the effects of school desegregation in the 1970s. Dean saw it in San Francisco, Roy lived through it in Indiana, and Stan experienced it in Marin County. Tom, on the other hand, noted that his large public high school in Siskiyou County was almost entirely white. With those asides, we concluded that the strength of Lehane's novel (apart from a mystery well told) was its ability to paint the various shades of hate and racism in convincing detail.  For that, we awarded him a 7.5.

October 2024  Host - Larry

In October, we convened at Larry's for a delicious paella and a spirited discussion of Percival Everett's 2001 satirical novel, Erasure.  Any discussion of Erasure is complicated by the nested narratives that Everett clearly had fun assembling.  The reader learns at the end that the story is in fact a movie about a story about a book written by an impoverished academic posing as a Black street kid with an authentic new voice. The whole thing is a send-up, the ultimate meta-narrative. So our comments on the story wandered into and out of the main story and the street kid's story (aptly named Fuck) with mostly appreciation for Everett's cleverness.

Doug chided us for falling into the very trap set by the novel's protagonist, a professor who is so white in culture and upbringing that he has to contrive a ghetto story written by a fictional hoodlum in order to sell his work.  But we didn't mind.  Dean liked the Grateful Dead reference in Stagg R. Leigh's name; Larry appreciated the novel's focus on racial identity and belonging; Paul and Glenn enjoyed the implicit taunt to like the story or be seen as racist; and Terry, always the outlier, suggested that the book had virtually nothing to do with race but was merely about selling a winning formula.  We gave the book an 8.2 for its "novel" approach (Stan's pun), and we excoriated Terry for his iconoclasm.

January 2025  Host - Paul

At 945 pages, and in clear violation of our 500-page limit, Lonesome Dove required an extra month of prep, which meant we met next in January.  The delay was worth it:  Paul treated us to a feast of Old West-inspired fare, with appetizers of crickets in molasses, a single roast dove (lonesome indeed!), and cowboy skillet bread.  The rest of the meal (vegetarian chili, pork adovada, brown and white rice, corn bread, and blueberry cobbler) was almost anti-climactic. Even with our stomachs full, we found much to dissect, share, and ultimately praise in McMurtry's magnum opus.  Despite its flaws and its age, Lonesome Dove's greatest virtue is its storytelling, with characters both convincing and compelling. And with few exceptions, it held us captive for almost 1,000 pages. For that, McMurtry's 1985 novel ascended to the top of our ratings with a 9.0.

March 2025  Host - Dan

After a string of novels, Dan brought us back to non-fiction with an account of the rise and fall of Venezuela under the Chavez/Maduro regime.  Fortunately, the food scarcity endemic in today's Venezuela had no effect on our meal, as Dan plied us with a delicious all-Venezuelan menu of stew, beans, rice, plus a tasty chocolate cake courtesy of Penny.

As to the book, our discussion languished at times. The problem with discussing non-fiction is that it's rarely interesting to recite facts to others who read the same facts. Facts need context, and Neumann provided some, but mostly he just expanded a series of articles (he was the NYT's bureau chief in Caracas) into a book.  Our takeaways included: yes, the erosion of democracy in Venezuela's early days of Chavismo feels eerily similar to what we see here today; Venezuela's long decline into authoritarianism can be attributed to a national fascination with strong leaders; and Venezuela's massive oil wealth proved to be its downfall. For a narrative both interesting, tedious, and depressing, we couldn't muster better than a 6.7 rating.

Last Night at Doug's, or Percival's Picaresque Parody

Last Tuesday, we met at Doug’s to discuss James by Percival Everett. The novel is a bold retelling of Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this time from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved Black man who, in Twain’s original, serves primarily as a foil to Huck. Everett reimagines Jim as a thoughtful, educated protagonist—a literal father figure to Huck—who has secretly taught himself to read by accessing books in the local judge’s library. He hides his intellect and command of proper English from the white world of pre–Civil War Missouri, revealing his true self only to other enslaved people. This premise allows Jim to steer the decisions he and Huck make on their journey down the Mississippi, while also delving into racial themes Twain avoided, such as blackface minstrelsy, racial “passing,” and the hanging of a slave for stealing a pencil.

Doug hosted and served a delicious dinner of salmon, potatoes, and vegetables. He recommended James both for its literary merit and its fast-paced, adventure-filled narrative. Doug especially appreciated Everett’s sharp ear for the absurd, and like several others, reread Huckleberry Finn as a companion piece. He noted that Everett moved the timeline roughly 20 years closer to the Civil War, intensifying the racial tensions that shape Jim’s experience. Doug preferred James over Everett’s Erasure, which MBC read last year.

Jack was glad the group read James. He felt Everett cleverly turned the Twain narrative on its head by having Jim use proper English. He enjoyed the straightforward storytelling but found the Voltaire references a bit over the top.

Dan powered through the book, finishing it just in time. He drew several movie parallels, questioning the realism of the boiler room explosion and Jim’s flawless English. The reveal that Huck is Jim’s son reminded Dan of the iconic Star Wars moment between Luke and Darth Vader. He also compared the twist about Jim’s hidden eloquence to the surprise in Planet of the Apes when the apes speak.

Tom had recently returned from a 600-mile cruise down the Mississippi, where he read both James and Huckleberry Finn. He tried to envision Jim and Huck on the river, but noted that modern channeling near New Orleans limits the river’s wildness. He enjoyed James as a thoughtful counterpoint to Twain’s novel, praising its writing, length, and Everett’s imaginative take on Jim’s journey.

Terry enjoyed the adventure and valued the reminder of America’s history of slavery. However, he questioned Everett’s decision to portray Jim as “culturally advanced” only through his embrace of Western ideals. Terry wondered why Jim's sophistication and intellect had to be demonstrated though a mastery of white language and philosophy, and whether Everett was simply submitting Jim to the dominant culture rather than distinguishing him from it.

Dean felt the novel started slowly but gained traction once the river journey began. He found the depiction of slavery’s brutality powerful and drew comparisons between Jim and Walter White from Breaking Bad—both men who reach a breaking point and transform. Dean was grateful to Doug for choosing the book.

Glenn also loved the book. Having grown up Jewish, he saw parallels between Oney (the light-skinned minstrel character) and Huck (who learns he is biracial) in their need to “pass” as white—similar to how some Jews passed as Aryan in Nazi Germany to survive.

Andrew appreciated the book and was particularly interested in Jim’s “code-switching” and how Everett flips the expected model: Jim speaks proper English only to other slaves and adopts a slave dialect when addressing whites. Focusing on the boiler room scene, Andrew raised questions about free will and Everett's portrayal of the slave so devoid of agency he's willing to go down with the ship—an impulse conditioned by generations of servitude. 

Larry liked the book, especially the shift in focus from Huck to Jim. However, he ranked Erasure higher due to its self-aware protagonist. Larry drew a poignant connection between Jim’s fear as a fugitive slave and the experiences of undocumented immigrants today—living with the constant anxiety of being detained and separated from family.

Paul found James compelling and centered his thoughts on the power of language. He emphasized how speech shapes identity and perception, and how reading transformed Jim into someone wiser than those around him. After rereading Huckleberry Finn, Paul concluded that while Everett wraps up James effectively, Twain (née Clemens) delivered a stronger ending in his original work.

Overall, MBC rated James in a solid 7–8 range. The book sparked a lively and honest discussion about America’s ongoing reckoning with its history of oppression—whether based on race, origin, or class. James reminds us that behind every face is a deeply human story, and that our first impressions are often misleading when filtered through ingrained categories or biases. 

We'll miss Doug's gracious presence and the rare privilege of meeting in the house that helped inspire singer/songwriter Al Stewart, memorable for his iconic Year of the Cat.

--Larry

Up River at Doug's

Dinner and Acknowledgments

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.  

Note to Doug:  You didn't mention it, but I assure you no one failed to grasp the significance of the blackened fish.  

Note to MBC: 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 Top Chef).  

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!

Doug's hand-carved fish. RIP Wynn!

Our Discussion of The River by Peter Heller

Written by Peter Heller (author of a prior--and very fine!--MBC selection, The Dog Stars, and fellow Outside magazine contributor with Hampton Sides, who penned our October read, Hellhound on His Trail), The River 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.

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:

• The writing is a bit like a poor man's Hemingway
• Heller tries too hard to showcase his own expertise on the river
• Why would Wynn and Jack leave all their provisions behind with the bad guy?
• Bah! A Texas hat doesn't symbolize evil!
• The ending was rushed (3x)
• Impulsively taking the motorized canoe wasn't believable (2x)
• Simplistic in an "upper level Young Adult" way [Which is it, Terry? It's either YA or it's not YA.]

Much like our reaction to The Dog Stars, 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.  

  

Our Rating of The River

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 The Dog Stars!) Interestingly, The River was the all-time favorite selection of Doug's wife's book group--an all women's group!  

Next Up: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

We had a very eclectic list of titles to choose from (including memoirs from Matthew McConaughey and Mike Rowe, Coelho's The Alchemist, and Mason's Bad Muslim Discount).  We opted for Krueger's Ordinary Grace, a novel about murder and its effect on a small town.

Doug and His Sympathizers

Dinner and Acknowledgments

Our meeting last Thursday was another fine example of Doug's excellent hospitality. He could have laid out an assortment of banh mi and washed it down with iced coffee and sweetened condensed milk and no one would have complained. But that would have been predictable.  So Doug eschewed tradition and went with a nicely-done London broil accompanied by...everything.  Not to be missed was his chocolate cake made with Guinness Stout and his gigantic chocolate chip cookies.  (The latter were, alas, too large to sneak into my jacket pocket for the trip home.)

Our Review and Discussion of The Sympathizer

Of the 14 titles Doug offered us last month, Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was not the shortest nor the easiest. But it was arguably the most thought-provoking.  Framed as a first-person confession, Nguyen's unnamed narrator takes the reader on a perilous journey from the fall of Saigon to the Vietnamese diaspora in Orange County and back again to the reeducation camps of the Viet Cong and the flight of the boat people.  Along the way, we're treated to a funny, satirical, and at times harshly critical study of America, its values, and their effect on the Vietnamese experience here and abroad.

Doug expected I'd like the novel, with its insights on Asian-American assimilation and identity (Doug, are you profiling?), but we both wondered if others would. The answer came quickly. Though straddling two dinner tables, the group joined together in lauding Nguyen's inventiveness and adroit use of the English language (there's that profiling again!).  Many (Mando, Paul, and Tom) enjoyed the story on historical merit alone; others (Larry and John) were impressed by the novel's cultural ambitions, including its send-up of the entire Vietnam war film genre.  We didn't spend much time comparing it to The Quiet American, although the parallels were obvious since Nguyen's narrator repeatedly alludes to Graham Greene's Saigon.

By the end of the evening, time was our undoing.  We just didn't have enough of it to do justice to Nguyen's richly layered tale of war and its aftermath.  At my insistence, we spent a moment enjoying the significance of the characters' names (e.g., French colonialism and American naivete are conflated in the CIA agent, "Claude"; the despised William Westmoreland character is "Richard Hedd"; the purest of Vietnamese characters, whose death is sadly inevitable, is appropriately named "Bon").  At Doug's instigation, we also tussled with the "meaning" of the book and its narrator's epiphany that "nothing" is the answer.

Rating The Sympathizer

When it came to rating the book, all but one of us was effusive.  Dan was the holdout. He complimented the "great" writing, but felt cheated by the filmmaking scenes and gave it a miserly 5.  Even Stan, who agreed that the scenes in the Philippines slowed the story's progression, was able to muster a 7 for what he felt was extraordinary writing. Dan's dim view didn't prevent The Sympathizer from impressing the rest of us and garnering a formidable 8.2.

Next Up:  The Sellout by Paul Beatty

For our next title, we vacillated between the Patty Hearst story in American Heiress and the summer's most talked-about novel of race relations, The Sellout.  We opted for the latter (persuaded in part by page length) and we'll soon see if the story of one man's cheeky reintroduction of slavery helps us dig deep into America's "original sin."

The First Trimester of 2015: No Snow But Some Diverting Reads

Like last year, January’s ski trip was a bust.  Too little snow too early in the season canceled our Sierra excursion. Instead we met in February at Tom’s to see if Irving Stone’s 1938 work of biographical fiction (think The Agony and the Ecstasy, only much earlier and mercifully shorter) justified its selection as our first title of 2015. The verdict on Sailor on Horseback:  with a middling 6.4 rating, it didn’t quite deliver the goods. It certainly wasn’t the subject matter, as we all have a soft spot for local favorite and hero of Tales of the Fish Patrol, Jack London.  (Indeed, Irving Stone himself was a San Francisco native.)  Maybe it was the dated writing, the clutter of detail, or—as Stan put it—the fact that Stone “kept droning on,” but no one was actively applauding when the votes were tallied (except perhaps Tom, our resident Jack London fan).  No matter.  All in attendance enjoyed Tom’s food and wine pairings.  (Was it really Mondavi, Tom?)

March had us only two years removed from Sailor, as we brought back another local writer and past MBC author, John Steinbeck, but this time on an adventure down to Baja with his 1940 travelogue, The Log from the Sea of Cortez.  With fellow traveler and field biologist Ed Ricketts providing some of the narration, Steinbeck took cover from the furor over The Grapes of Wrath by embarking on a collecting expedition to Baja California with a notebook in hand.  His descriptions of marine life were frequently interrupted by a variety of philosophical and humanistic meditations.  Stan called them rants, and for once I had to agree.  While I criticized his constant riffing as self-indulgent and repetitive, others were much more forgiving. Larry and Glenn found the digressions refreshing, and Paul who likened these digressions to those in Moby Dick found enough to keep himself reading the interesting parts.   All of us, however, enjoyed Armando’s stories of his field work in the Sea of Cortez and especially the slide show of his most recent trip just a week before our dinner.  As an added touch, Armando’s main course (blue fin tuna) was caught, cleaned, and packed in the very locale described by Steinbeck. For that we gave Mando a huge thumbs-up and Steinbeck a very respectable 6.8.

For April, Doug convinced us to give short form fiction a try, and he sealed the deal when he offered to prepare and email us a packet of short stories with a combined page count of less than 100!  Not only were we engrossed by his selected stories (George Saunders’ Sea Oak took top honors in the length-of-discussion category), but every one of us claimed to have done the reading (impressive, even if some were embellishing a little).  With selections from Jess Walters (Anything Helps), Tom Perrotta (The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face), Dennis Lehane (Until Gwen), Steve Almond (Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched), and others, there was something for everyone.  With such impressive writing, I had high hopes our next selection would be from one of these men, but George tortured us and then steered us back to Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recall, we read News of a Kidnapping) and the work that sealed his Nobel Prize, Love in the Time of Cholera. In June, we'll find out whether a 50-year deferred romance in the Caribbean piques our interest as much as Bernie's lost appendages did in Sea Oak.

2013 Redux

In June we gathered at Roy's, ate well from his table loaded with food from Sol, and discussed Michael Ondaatje's second-most famous novel, The Cat's Table. Recalled from a much later vantage point, Ondaatje's narrator describes his journey as an 11-year old from Ceylon to England.  Ostensibly an account of 21 days aboard ship, the novel proved to us to be so much more.  Ondaatje gave us a beautiful examination of wayward youth, lost innocence, misplaced recollections, and the pain of  friendships also misplaced. With no one dissenting, we happily awarded Ondaatje an 8.1 for a story so well told.

July arrived and, instead of simple afternoon cocktails at Doug's, we dined and discussed Dave Eggers' A Hologram for the King.  Surprisingly, we were to a man slightly underwhelmed by a novel that otherwise boasted so many of the elements necessary for our approval.  Eggers' protagonist, Alan Clay, an American businessman in his mid-fifties, has bottomed out financially and is desperate to redeem himself with a sales commission on a deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  The product:  a holographic telecommunications system.  The client:  King Abdullah.  The setting:  a speculative city waiting to be built in the desert. With a huge nod to Waiting for Godot,  Eggers' story of ambition and failure, of a father's love and a spouse's betrayal, of a disappearing old economy and a mystifying new economy unfolds in a series of reflections and diversions as Clay waits and waits for the King to appear for a promised presentation of the hologram. We found Clay alternatingly pathetic and sympathetic, and perhaps because none of us has suffered so keenly the emotional toll of middle age, we couldn't quite forgive Clay his inability and unwillingness to move ahead.  A mildly pessimistic novel tempered our optimism and produced merely a solid rating (6.5).  Like Eggers' protagonist, our rating could and should have been better.

We declared a bye in August and reconvened in September at George's house for a fine German dinner, with schnapps from Roy and a drinkable Malbec (with an Urban label!) from Doug.  We had to decide whether we erred in selecting The Book Thief as our reading for the month.  Amid criticisms that Zusak's novel was written for young adults, boasts a female protagonist, and exceeded our 500-page limit, we nevertheless concluded that it was well worth the extra pages.  Set during WWII in Munich, and told from Death's perspective (yes, Death is the first-person narrator), Zusak's story centers on young Liesel Meminger, a girl whose poverty combined with her fondness of reading compels her to steal books.  With heartbreaking commentary on Jews, Jesse Owens, hunger, schoolyard bullies, bombs, Nazism, heroism and selflessness, and above all parental love, Zusak had us early in his story.  We all but admitted that our 7.7 rating would have been higher but for the book's YA designation.  Shame on us!

We met at Jack's in October and, with mouthfuls of tri tip and roasted autumn root soup, we dug into The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint.  Written by Brady Udall (to us baby boomers, better known for his relationship to Reps. Morris and Stewart Udall), Edgar Mint is about as bleak a novel as we've read to date.  Yes, there is redemption and closure (of sorts) at the end, and more than a little black humor en route, but Edgar's journey is filled with so much pain that the reader can only cringe as the obstacles mount. His story begins when, while living with his alcoholic mother, his head is run over by a mail truck.  He is taken to a hospital where his only solace is--you're not going to believe it--a urinal puck! Thence to an Indian reservation reform school where bullying and beatings are routine and supervision absent.  And then to the dysfunction of an adoptive Mormon family.  And all the while, in the background lurks the strange and seemingly predatory surgeon to whom Edgar owes his life.  We argued over the transitions between first and third person POV (Doug and Stan), we agreed that Udall is wildly imaginative (Paul and Larry), we found in Edgar the consummate survivor (John), and generally marveled at the co-existence of stereotypes and eccentrics in this coming-of-age/survival/nativist tale.  Udall really made us work for it, so we gave him a solid 6.8 for his and our combined efforts.

We bypassed November and met at Paul's in December. In recognition of Dashiell Hammett's role in the development of the noir genre (both book and film), Paul's menu went berserk.  Starting with a black truffle brie and black olives, then to an entrée of black rice, black beans, and blackened chicken, Paul had us wash it down with sips of Johnnie Walker Black. Dessert, naturally, featured blackberries.  Way to go, Paul!  As for Hammett, his The Maltese Falcon managed to stand up to the passage of time.  But since the entire genre has been co-opted, adapted, and reinvented many times over, the novelty was absent.  Dean felt it read a little like a Law & Order episode.  Moreover, the dry, potboiler writing felt stilted when compared to the sharp dialog we recalled from the movie.  Several of us (Larry, Tom, and Paul) found ourselves mentally toggling back and forth between Hammett's original tough-talking Spade and Bogart's archly classic cinematic version. All of us, though, enjoyed the 1920's San Francisco backdrop, from old street and hotel names to the city's colorful and checkered history as a port of embarkation to the far east.  As a quick read and a sentimental mood piece, we favored TMF with a 6.9 rating.

A Make-Up for 2012

As club secretary, I must fall on my sword for my repeated failure, over the last year or more, to regularly post summaries of our meetings. I blame Tom A. for initially stepping in to save me, only to later step out and expose my lack of constancy. With that mea culpa, herewith a very quick summary of our meetings since January's A Sport and a Pastime.

In February, Paul fed us victuals from the Kashmir as we considered the story of the 1999 expedition that discovered the remains of legendary British mountaineer, George Mallory.  In Ghosts of Everest, Hemmleb et. al. chronicle their successful attempt to re-trace Mallory's fateful route in 1924 in order to figure out what exactly happened to Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine.  Less successful was the manner in which Hemmleb and his co-authors joined their account with Mallory's.  The story of each expedition was fascinating, but the book's split narrative was awkward and resulted in a modest 6.7 rating. Maybe it was the intimidating presence of our guest and published author/teacher, Andy, that made us extra critical.

In March, we convened at Stan's (yes, another outstanding meal of grilled meat and roast potatoes!) to consider Sherman Alexie's modern-day account of life on the rez in Reservation Blues.  We split over the dream sequences and mystical moments, but were taken by the honesty with which Alexie paints his characters.  Alternatingly sympathetic and scathing, Alexie depicts life on and off the reservation (and his characters' infatuation with music) with a remarkable vividness, especially for those of us for whom the BIA is just another acronym.  The 7.0 rating understated the generally positive tenor of our discussion.

Armando hosted us in April with an ethnic feast that complimented Robert Laxalt's beautifully drawn memoir set in pre- and post-war Nevada.  As men of a certain age, perhaps we were predisposed to fall hard for Sweet Promised Land and its elegiac re-telling of a quintessentially father-son story.  The father, Dominique Laxalt, is a hard-working immigrant (herding sheep in the foothills near Carson City) whose sons achieve fully the American dream (one as a US senator, another as a university professor) but whose heart can't quite forget the family he left behind in a small town in the Pyrenees.  His return home with his younger son is both reunion and closure. Several guys commented that this story continued to resonate long after the pages were turned.  It certainly did for me.  For that reason, it earned an 8.3 rating and climbed into our current Top 5.

We met next in June at my house and enjoyed plenty of sushi and sake as we considered Louis Zamperini's unforgettable odyssey from Torrance, CA to the Berlin Olympics to a POW camp in Japan.  Laura Hillenbrand is a shameless crowd-pleaser whose recreation of the Zamperini story engendered questions from us (and others) about its authenticity of detail. That aside, most of us felt uplifted and exhausted by Zamperini's extraordinary resilience and will to survive.  Our conclusion was to forgive the sometimes tedious and occasionally hyperbolic passages and celebrate--with a 7.4 rating--an amazing story of survival.

In July we declared a bye and instead appeared with spouses and no books at Doug's house for his second annual summer party.  After commiserating with him over his recent burglary, we tucked in and stuffed ourselves.  Thanks again, Doug.

Our last meeting was delayed to September, when Glenn hosted us at Roy's house.  With food from Sol, we were all ears as Ralph Leighton regaled us with stories about Richard Feynman, the Nobel physicist who was also his father's colleague at CalTech.  Glenn had proposed and we picked Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, unaware that Ralph Leighton was Roy's brother-in-law.  The book was filled with the infectious humor and antics of a renowned physicist who related his personal story to Leighton in a series of recorded conversations over the space of several years.  From those recordings, Leighton produced this delightful memoir.  Even those of us with little interest in applied physics found in  Feynman (via Leighton) a riveting storyteller indeed. 

The Battle of Grand Avenue

The core of what it is to be human: your life is wondrous, and it won’t last forever.(The Cellist of Sarajevo, paraphrase, page 5)
ONE
Streaming in from scattered daytime haunts, surrounded by a warm, welcoming home full of the smells of good food, the group shares chosen details of their lives, large and small. They pause to remember a local high school baseball player in critical condition at a hospital. Some absent group members are grappling with health issues too, their parents’ or their own. Three around the table share stories of pride in their daughters on memorable and momentous trips: national ski championships in Oregon, a life-changing month in Thailand and the Philippines, continued community-building in a small town in Mexico. Southeast Asia provides the lightest badinage, wandering down the byways of elephant riding, swarming beach vendors, baby back ribs made from real babies (?), and dwarves.
TWO

There is always more than enough good food and good drink. This night, it’s three kinds of lasagna (pesto, artichoke, and “boeuf”, all somehow evocative of woodlands), two kinds of salad, several wines, slivovitz plum brandy, rakia peach brandy, and Karlovacko, a Croatian pilsner in 20-ounce bottles. Later, delicious cakes appear. The men “eat until their stomachs can hold no more” (as characters in the book can only dream of - page 188). Doug, the host, clearly outdoes himself.

THREE

Talk drifts to the book, Stephen Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo. The once harmonious group separates into two distinct camps, like the men in the hills and the people down in the streets. The men in the hills see the book as a finely-wrought work of art, viewing it from above and outside, admiring its technique and its essential distillation of the thoughts and emotions of civilians trapped inside a war. The men in the streets long to inhabit the story and know its characters, resisting its abstract qualities and wishing it had more real history and fully-formed people. Some find themselves passing between the two camps, agreeing with both the lofty praise and the trenchant criticism.

An army of one, sticking to his guns, loaded or not, Stan first reviews another book, one he had advocated choosing a month earlier, like a Serb partisan rehashing Prince Lazar's crushing defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The others avert their gazes, unmoved even by vivid tales of flaming buttocks. But Stan's criticisms of the book that was chosen hit home for many (save Doug, who, flabbergasted, finds Stan's approach somewhat "irrational"). Though they may not find it "weak on almost every point", as he does, his assessments of its style and characters clearly set the tone for most of the discussion that follows.

Up in the hills, Armando says, “It fits this time in my life; it’s perfect”, and “I like that it isn’t clear on the history.” Andrew thinks it “extraordinary”, finding the character development “terrific” and saying, “My breath was taken away.” Paul (by email) thinks that “Galloway does a great job of evoking emotions ranging from desperation to hope” and finds Arrow’s end moving. He believes it’s “one of the best crafted and most compelling books [he’s] read in a number of months, and probably the best that [he’s] read of the club selections in the past year.” [Editor’s note: This contrast of "months" vs. "years" seems to indicate that Paul either 1) thinks his non-MBC reading is better than our book club selections, or 2) doesn’t read many of our club’s selections.] Larry (also by email) sees fiction as “exactly the right vehicle” to describe the experience of the siege of Sarajevo. He and Tom A. both point out the nuanced use of dilemmas. Is it better to cling to the past or accept the present? Is it better to die quickly or slowly? At the same time, Larry dislikes the characters' resignation and the book’s lack of resolution, finding Arrow’s final choice especially unconvincing (as does Roy). He wishes the snipers in the hills had been given voice and faces too. Doug praises the book but acknowledges that the structure and occasionally “heavy-handed” writing become obstacles at times.

Dean, and many of his comrades down below in the streets, thinks grayness has seeped too much into the book’s bones. (Oddly, a similar bleakness was also a theme of last month’s Bad Land.) Larry questions whether any of the writing rises to true greatness, finding no passages truly memorable. Several members find the style suffocating and the characters flat, aptly described by George as “caring about the situations but not the characters.” Garth suggests that had he heard a recording of the Albinoni Adagio before reading the book, its remembered sounds might have served as a welcome embellishment to the text’s spare language. He wishes the unrelenting terror (something that Tom J. found to go on far too long) had been combined with more about the war itself. Terry thinks the book is overwrought, verging on maudlin, as if “written by a 15-year-old girl”. Finally, several members point out that, though the book is called The Cellist of Sarajevo, the cellist is little more than a plot device, a cipher.

Later, looking back at passages while writing his summary, the scribe of San Rafael finds more in Kenan and Dragan than he’d remembered. When Dragan sees surprising strength in Emina, when Kenan banters with his wife about buying cakes, when Dragan chooses to believe in a future and says “Good afternoon” to a stranger, or when he realizes he doesn’t wish that he were in Italy - these are choices to remain human. Perhaps these short and rare passages aren’t enough, maybe the ghosts of what the people once were are the ghosts of what the book might have been. But the strongly held and sharply divided opinions about The Cellist of Sarajevo clearly make for a more lively and interesting discussion. As pointed out by several, its modest length also helps, since, for the first time in recent memory, nearly everyone actually finishes the book.

FOUR

For next month, the group chooses life, hope, and excitement, as embodied in Steven Levitt's and Stephen Dubner's SuperFreakonomics, rumored to be the story of an exercise routine accompanied by Rick James music.

Doug Wins Our Verdict

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Doug for his gracious hospitality last night. He resisted the temptation to feed us along party lines (i.e., Italian for the right wingers and Thai for the left leaners) and instead heaped mounds of non-partisan poultry and beef on platters and invited us to make our selections. That, combined with twice-baked potatoes and far too many dessert choices, may have encouraged gluttony over moderation. (At least it did for this intemperate centrist.)

While we enjoyed Doug's beautiful home, we sympathized with the inordinate investment he's made behind the walls. Doug, at least you have Al Stewart’s haunting melodies to motivate you as you make his home yours.

The Book
The Nine, Toobin’s recent expose of the Supreme Court, prompted more vigorous discussion than I ever imagined. In a gathering of 13 men (with only 2 lawyers to keep us honest), I assumed that the court’s personalities and issues would barely keep our attention. I was wrong.

Doug provoked us from the start by asking if we could identify Toobin’s sources and therefore his sympathies. We all chimed in with some obvious candidates (Breyer, Kennedy) and concluded that since he was most sympathetic to O’Connor, he must have spent a lot of time in Phoenix. Since Toobin writes with no attribution, Doug’s question forced us all to recognize the limits of Toobin’s reporting.

The unabashed politics of the Supreme Court aroused some comment. For people with life tenure, the members of the court show themselves surprisingly reactive to the events of the day. Larry echoed Toobin’s observation that O’Connor, while less beholden to precedent, usually sought to broker a compromise that provided guidance to the lower courts. Jack wondered whether the court, having grown more conservative since O’Connor’s departure, would soon be marginalized by more liberal executive and legislative branches. Glenn seemed taken with the notion that the court, regardless of its politics, moves more slowly in order to temper Congress’ gyrations.

Peter questioned the representative authority of an institution that repeatedly takes its members (and its clerks) from the same half dozen elite law schools. Perhaps in response to Peter’s understandable ignorance (and our poor memories), Tom pulled out his daughter’s 8th grade US History text and held forth on the constitution and each of its 27 amendments. Get ready for a quiz at the next meeting, fellows. I hear Tom is a sucker for questions on the scope of the 14th Amendment….

We gave this book a 6.5, a solid but unspectacular rating. The subject matter kept most guys interested, but Garth lamented the formulaic chapter transitions, John described the narration as tedious, and I yearned for a little more substance.

Next Up
George introduced a twist in our usual book selection process. Instead of starting with proposed titles, he offered us three possible dinner menus for our next meeting. To a man, we opted for the African stew paired with aphrodisiacal gazelle horns (as opposed to the short ribs or the enchilada stacks). When presented with the literary counterpart for each menu, we abandoned our palate in favor of our funny bone. Yes, gentlemen, my prediction came true: you eagerly raised your hands for Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up and you rejected a title from Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) as well as an African coming-of-age story (Beah’s A Long Way Gone).

George’s clever departure from our selection criteria was worthy of Chief Justice Earl Warren. No strict constructionist, George (like Warren) made new MBC law when he elevated Steve Martin to the level of Cormac McCarthy. Well, we can only hope that Stan rediscovers our original intent upon his return from Brazil.