Fellow MBC members 2011 BOCCE CHAMPS!!!!!!!!!!

San Marino Mortadellas, winners of the novice division at the St Vincent de Paul fundraiser.
Team Leader: Capt. Dean & Debbie followed by Tom "Mr. Clutch" and Robin (not shown), bringing up the rear,Dan & Penny.
Also in the picture is Father Rossi.

FOR THE RECORD

I have came to the conclusion that 4 martinis and codeine probably is not a good mixture when it comes to transferring your thoughts to words or for even having any thoughts.My apologies for my lame lack of words regarding my views towards the book, Chernobyl and my selections.
The few things that I do remember while in Danland are:
1 Google map sucks
2. I prefer the other vodka
3. John's wonderful attire
4. Russian food without meat
5. I remember dessert but I don't remember what it was but I do remember the dessert
martini. Thanks Garth!
6. Wondering when & where did Peter come from?
7. Larry, hit the nail on the head regarding the book,Chernobyl. But I can't remember what was
said.
8. 2 people would like to read my uncles book and I want to say it's George & Larry?
9. We are reading Kurt's book Breakfast of Champions
10. And finally, if I show up at the party in 1 vehicle and go home in another vehicle(hammered)
does that make me a two bit drunkin old whore?

Breakfast of Champions @ 181 San Marino, June 28 (last Tues of the month)
Please advise which type of milk you prefer with your Wheaties.
I will provide all the fixins...bananas, blueberries or strawberries.

Dan

Amended list for June

Condemned to Freedom/The Bridge of San Luis Rey will remain as one of the selections.

The other two are:

The Ginger Man, JP Donleavy 368 pgs
National Book Award runner up (1959), Also was banned in Ireland until 1970, so you know it's good when you piss off the Irish!!!!

Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut 303 pgs

Twofer June

After digesting what was said regarding some of our recent book selections I will forgo from forcing you to read my uncle's book but rather persuade you to read 2 books (1 being my uncles) the others are award winning authors/books that are under 150 pgs. Therefore the combined number of pages for both books would be under the 500 page rule. We would also meet on the last Tues of June and that would be the 28th.

So here are my selections:

1. Condemned to Freedom by John DeFrank (330 pgs.)
http://askdavid.com/reviews/books/suspense/63
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder (107 pgs)

2. Condemned to Freedom by John DeFrank (330 pgs)
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (144 pgs.)

3. Condemned to Freedom by John DeFrank (330 pgs.)
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (128 pgs.)

No Fries With our Freedom

Acknowledgments
Larry deserves our thanks and praise:  he subbed in for Garth on short notice, put up an eclectic list of titles, and somehow convinced us to pick a novel that grossly exceeded our 500-page limit.  The real surprise is that, after plenty of good-natured grumbling, we appeared at Larry's and propelled Franzen's Freedom to our top five list.  But more on that in a moment.

In addition to dragging Jack back for an evening with the boys, Larry also deserves kudos for setting his table with his own version of Midwest comfort food.  His dry-rubbed ribs were falling-off-the-bone tender and nicely complemented by tossed potatoes and a green salad.  But the best was saved for last.  Larry made a homemade ice cream, a sheet of cookies, and then deftly assembled them into mouth-watering ice cream sandwiches, whose only drawback was their dainty size.  C'mon, Larry.  If you're going for Midwestern fare, then please say no to nouvelle cuisine portioning!

The Book
In Franzen's bestselling follow-up to The Corrections, the dysfunctional Berglund family in Freedom is presented as a crazy quilt of the aspirational upper-middle class.  A single family splinters (over the course of 568 pages) into competing strands of liberalism and neoconservatism, obsession and indifference, choice and passivity, deviance and desire, and more.  Much more.  In the end Franzen ties it up with a bow, but not before making his characters (and the reader) suffer a little.

As Larry noted at the outset, Freedom isn't sustained by an especially interesting plot, but rather (as we all agreed) by its characters.  They're engrossing, outrageous, unlikeable, sanctimonious, pathetic...and ultimately, to a one, unforgettable.  Their largely negative attributes would seem to be a prescription for disaster, and it was enough to make Doug and Stan express an ambivalence that was probably shared by others.

In the end, though, our fascination overcame our distaste and we gave Freedom a heady 7.9 rating.  Even Dean, our usually reliable critic of overstuffed prose, exclaimed how much he looked forward to reading every night.  And I, never objective in my assessment, agreed wholeheartedly.  Freedom was as compelling a love story as I've read in a long time. It's just not quite the love story we're all accustomed to reading.

Next Up
Our selection for next month was clouded by the controversy attending Garth's list of proposed books.  In an effort to tie all of his selections to the current debate over nuclear power, Garth chose three award-winning treatises, each addressing some aspect of nuclear power, and two exceeding our 500-page limit.  In Garth's absence we asked ourselves whether it's appropriate for one theme--especially a politically-charged topic like nuclear power--to dominate a list of titles.  In the end, we picked Voices of Chernobyl, in deference to Garth's wishes and out of curiosity over the subject matter.  But we agreed that, in the future and to ensure that we have a genuine choice of titles (by length, subject matter, and style), a slate of non-fiction titles should be accompanied by at least one novel.  And, if a 500-page tome is proposed, it should complement a list of conforming titles (i.e., be the 4th selection, with the other three all under 500 pages).

With Garth's Rule duly adopted, we'll all look ahead to next month when we can consider whether the current move towards "renewable nuclear" is a wise response to climate change and fossil fuel scarcity.  We'll also ask ourselves if the selection of our first book by a woman is a pardonable breach of MBC rules.