Saturday, March 31, 2007
Estella's Revenge | April
Readers, writers, and bibliomanes of all sorts should click over and enjoy the new issue of Estella's Revenge. The theme for April is "mysteries." Be sure to check out our column, From the Bookshop....
Friday, March 30, 2007
Book Thirteen
The first novel we have read that was written by Jane Austen is the thirteenth novel we have read this year.
We were slow to sort out who was who, when characters had the same last names, and relations by marriage are referred to as blood. Even once this was fairly sorted out in our mind, we had to pause at the start of each letter and think who exactly is writing to whom?
The epistolary novel is a form that is rather pleasing to us. We often marvel at how much story can be conveyed, and here we felt Ms. Austen did a good job. She is clearly in control of this story, evidenced first by her selection of letters--not all of the correspondence is shown--and her conclusion at the end. Despite the letters that are not included, the events are still easy to follow, showing a skillful composition of the others. What we did not learn--and perhaps we simply missed this information somewhere in our reading--is what happened in Lady Susan's past. If we understand, she has lost her husband and seduced another woman's husband. When characters allude to what happened, though, we do not recall any details being given. The good thing is this does not leave anything out of the story for us. What is interesting and important is not what happens, but how characters react and respond. Ms. Austen has done this, to her great credit.
The letters tend to sound similar in tone and style; if each character had a more distinctive voice, the novel may have been improved. We required an eclaircissement to understand the word eclaircissement. Never heard of the word before, and it seemed to come in this story completely out of left field.
Lady Susan began as sympathetic for us. Through all she remains strong, and never a victim. By the end, when her plots and cabals have been revealed, we feel no malice toward her, but the initial sympathy has bled away. She remains a most interesting character. The novel does not stand like a rock in the middle of nowhere, but gives us one adventure in the life of Lady Susan, and we are convinced that there are many others. Had Ms. Austen lived in these times, we are sure her publishers would have begged for a sequel, and even a prequel.
The novel reminded us of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses. Obviously the form is the same, but the way Lady Susan plotted and tricked and used her wiles to influence and control others is, in a more subdued manner, exactly what the Marquise de Merteuil does. These two characters are absolutely fascinating, and it is a wonder to witness their talents in action, and try to understand how they are able to wield such power over others.
We were not looking forward to reading this, yet were pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed it.
We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.
We were slow to sort out who was who, when characters had the same last names, and relations by marriage are referred to as blood. Even once this was fairly sorted out in our mind, we had to pause at the start of each letter and think who exactly is writing to whom?
The epistolary novel is a form that is rather pleasing to us. We often marvel at how much story can be conveyed, and here we felt Ms. Austen did a good job. She is clearly in control of this story, evidenced first by her selection of letters--not all of the correspondence is shown--and her conclusion at the end. Despite the letters that are not included, the events are still easy to follow, showing a skillful composition of the others. What we did not learn--and perhaps we simply missed this information somewhere in our reading--is what happened in Lady Susan's past. If we understand, she has lost her husband and seduced another woman's husband. When characters allude to what happened, though, we do not recall any details being given. The good thing is this does not leave anything out of the story for us. What is interesting and important is not what happens, but how characters react and respond. Ms. Austen has done this, to her great credit.
The letters tend to sound similar in tone and style; if each character had a more distinctive voice, the novel may have been improved. We required an eclaircissement to understand the word eclaircissement. Never heard of the word before, and it seemed to come in this story completely out of left field.
Lady Susan began as sympathetic for us. Through all she remains strong, and never a victim. By the end, when her plots and cabals have been revealed, we feel no malice toward her, but the initial sympathy has bled away. She remains a most interesting character. The novel does not stand like a rock in the middle of nowhere, but gives us one adventure in the life of Lady Susan, and we are convinced that there are many others. Had Ms. Austen lived in these times, we are sure her publishers would have begged for a sequel, and even a prequel.
The novel reminded us of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses. Obviously the form is the same, but the way Lady Susan plotted and tricked and used her wiles to influence and control others is, in a more subdued manner, exactly what the Marquise de Merteuil does. These two characters are absolutely fascinating, and it is a wonder to witness their talents in action, and try to understand how they are able to wield such power over others.
We were not looking forward to reading this, yet were pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed it.
We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.
[this review is cross-posted in a slightly different form at Slaves of Golconda]
Book Ten
We skipped over describing the tenth book we read so our thoughts would not come out before this month's meeting of the Literary Salon. Now that it has been fully discussed, we will catch up on Mitch Albom's For One More Day.
If you have read any of his other books, you know what to expect: a bittersweet tug at the heartstrings and an enhanced appreciation for living. Again, this is explicitly noted as based on true events, which seems superfluous, for what author's writing isn't?
A failed son, father, and baseball player decides it is time to kill himself. To no one's surprise, he also fails at suicide. But in his post-trauma delirium his dead mother returns, and they get to spend one more day together. He tags along as she meets three people, each one revealing to our failure something he had never known about his mother. Interspersed between these scenes are recollections of childhood, letters from his mother, times his mother stood up for him, and times he failed to stand up for her. He comes to understand that he chased after the love of a father who withheld it, and took for granted the love of a mother who gave it freely. He returns to life and with his newly acquired perspective is able to reconcile with his daughter and redeem himself.
This is the second book to be discussed at the Salon, and it is many times better than the Nora Roberts book. Mr. Albom writes well, controls his point-of-view, and uses excellent details to provide his story with verisimilitude unmatched by Ms. Roberts, discounting her elements of fantasy. He fully supports his premise that there is no love as pure as a mother's. We come away with a few vague possibilities as to the meaning of his statement that every family is a ghost story, but ultimately are left to wonder precisely what is meant.
The wrap-up at the end is kind of flat. One person in the Salon was mostly unmoved by the book, and wouldn't recommend it, although he would recommend The Five People You Meet in Heaven. If you fight with your mother and don't care to see her ever, you might not appreciate the sentiments in this book. If you get along well with your mother, and if you have already lost a beloved parent, you may find yourself having to pause every few chapters to wipe away the tears. For One More Day is a book that seems to do exactly what the author wanted, no more and no less. If one wants a break from A la recherche du temps perdu, this book can easily be enjoyed in one sitting, with little intellectual strain.
We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.
If you have read any of his other books, you know what to expect: a bittersweet tug at the heartstrings and an enhanced appreciation for living. Again, this is explicitly noted as based on true events, which seems superfluous, for what author's writing isn't?
A failed son, father, and baseball player decides it is time to kill himself. To no one's surprise, he also fails at suicide. But in his post-trauma delirium his dead mother returns, and they get to spend one more day together. He tags along as she meets three people, each one revealing to our failure something he had never known about his mother. Interspersed between these scenes are recollections of childhood, letters from his mother, times his mother stood up for him, and times he failed to stand up for her. He comes to understand that he chased after the love of a father who withheld it, and took for granted the love of a mother who gave it freely. He returns to life and with his newly acquired perspective is able to reconcile with his daughter and redeem himself.
This is the second book to be discussed at the Salon, and it is many times better than the Nora Roberts book. Mr. Albom writes well, controls his point-of-view, and uses excellent details to provide his story with verisimilitude unmatched by Ms. Roberts, discounting her elements of fantasy. He fully supports his premise that there is no love as pure as a mother's. We come away with a few vague possibilities as to the meaning of his statement that every family is a ghost story, but ultimately are left to wonder precisely what is meant.
The wrap-up at the end is kind of flat. One person in the Salon was mostly unmoved by the book, and wouldn't recommend it, although he would recommend The Five People You Meet in Heaven. If you fight with your mother and don't care to see her ever, you might not appreciate the sentiments in this book. If you get along well with your mother, and if you have already lost a beloved parent, you may find yourself having to pause every few chapters to wipe away the tears. For One More Day is a book that seems to do exactly what the author wanted, no more and no less. If one wants a break from A la recherche du temps perdu, this book can easily be enjoyed in one sitting, with little intellectual strain.
We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Book Twelve
The twelfth book we have read is the 2000 translation of Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes, the original 1963 novel that inspired the classic movie starring Charlton Heston.
The book begins with a couple out for a leisure cruise through space, and they come upon a message in a bottle. The manuscript inside is what constitutes the story, and most of the novel. The manuscript has been written by Ulysse Merou, a journalist in the year 2500. He is part of a three-man mission to Alpha Orionis, three hundred light years away from Earth. While the astronauts age two years during their voyage, Earth ages three and a half centuries. In the solar system of their destination, they land on a planet with attributes much like Earth's, which they dub Soror.
If you have never seen the movie, or the remake, the basic premise is that on Soror apes are the "kings of creation," with all of our modern civilization and culture, while humans are speechless animals running around naked in the forest and kept in zoos for amusement. Merou is at pains to prove he is intelligent, and gradually develops a savior complex. At the same time, some chimp scientists are trying to shine light on their civilization's shrouded emergence.
Merou and his spacemates first encounter only humans. Mr. Boulle does a fine job of describing the animalisms of these humanoids, Merou noting they watched as if from "a sort of void, an absence of expression, reminding me of a wretched mad girl I had once known."
The novel has a decidedly different tone, and follows a different path, than the movie. Though Merou is initially hunted, in the way men today hunt deer or fox, there is not really a violent antagonism between him and the apes as there is in the movie. Some oppose him, but when he presents his case at the annual biological conference of apes, he achieves the status of a diplomatic emissary, and he is eventually permitted to assist the chimp scientists in their research. He never loses his capacity for speech--precluding one of the movie's best scenes--though there is an initial language barrier between Ape and French that he must overcome. He learns the truth of much ape prehistory by means of an experiment run by the chimps on a human, a sort of electrically induced hypnosis. This leads him to consider the possibility apes had overtaken a human civilization, in a particularly interesting passage that considers imitation in the place of evolution:
The novel contains the basic elements of both the original movie and one of its sequels. It is a quick read, and fits comfortably into the science fiction genre. What kind of impact must it have had when first published? Was the subject shocking? Were the surprises telegraphed? Given our foreknowledge of the movie, we cannot say, and this presented us with the greatest difficulty in enjoying the novel (though well-written within its conventions) and appreciating it for itself.
We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.
The book begins with a couple out for a leisure cruise through space, and they come upon a message in a bottle. The manuscript inside is what constitutes the story, and most of the novel. The manuscript has been written by Ulysse Merou, a journalist in the year 2500. He is part of a three-man mission to Alpha Orionis, three hundred light years away from Earth. While the astronauts age two years during their voyage, Earth ages three and a half centuries. In the solar system of their destination, they land on a planet with attributes much like Earth's, which they dub Soror.
If you have never seen the movie, or the remake, the basic premise is that on Soror apes are the "kings of creation," with all of our modern civilization and culture, while humans are speechless animals running around naked in the forest and kept in zoos for amusement. Merou is at pains to prove he is intelligent, and gradually develops a savior complex. At the same time, some chimp scientists are trying to shine light on their civilization's shrouded emergence.
Merou and his spacemates first encounter only humans. Mr. Boulle does a fine job of describing the animalisms of these humanoids, Merou noting they watched as if from "a sort of void, an absence of expression, reminding me of a wretched mad girl I had once known."
Whenever we had discussed, during the voyage, our eventual encounter with living beings, we saw in our mind's eye monstrous, misshapen creatures of a physical aspect very different from ours, but we always implicitly imagined the presence in them of a mind. On the planet Soror reality appeared to be quite the reverse: we had to do with inhabitants resembling us in every way from the physical point of view but who appeared to be completely devoid of the power of reason. This indeed was the meaning of the expression I had found so disturbing in Nova and that I now saw in all the others: a lack of conscious thought; the absence of intelligence.When the apes appear, their humanisms exactly replicate our own behaviors today.
The novel has a decidedly different tone, and follows a different path, than the movie. Though Merou is initially hunted, in the way men today hunt deer or fox, there is not really a violent antagonism between him and the apes as there is in the movie. Some oppose him, but when he presents his case at the annual biological conference of apes, he achieves the status of a diplomatic emissary, and he is eventually permitted to assist the chimp scientists in their research. He never loses his capacity for speech--precluding one of the movie's best scenes--though there is an initial language barrier between Ape and French that he must overcome. He learns the truth of much ape prehistory by means of an experiment run by the chimps on a human, a sort of electrically induced hypnosis. This leads him to consider the possibility apes had overtaken a human civilization, in a particularly interesting passage that considers imitation in the place of evolution:
Of what is our literature made? Masterpieces? Again, no. But once an original book has been written--and no more than one or two appear in a century--men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators....Only when Merou fathers a child is he considered dangerous. He is able to escape the monkey planet by deception with his female companion and their son, and return to Earth. This conclusion also precludes the most powerful scene in the movie, though it does provide the book with a final twist.
The novel contains the basic elements of both the original movie and one of its sequels. It is a quick read, and fits comfortably into the science fiction genre. What kind of impact must it have had when first published? Was the subject shocking? Were the surprises telegraphed? Given our foreknowledge of the movie, we cannot say, and this presented us with the greatest difficulty in enjoying the novel (though well-written within its conventions) and appreciating it for itself.
We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Library as Autobiography
A bookshop functions not just as a controlled environment from which books may be sold. Some shops also offer events with local authors, or host book clubs or writing groups. In some one may find a place to snack, or sip coffee, while relaxing with a good book. In this way and others bookshops serve as meeting places, and by their very nature inspire discussion of all things. Because a bookshop is also a storehouse of ideas old and new, a place to think and research and explore possibilities.
So in thought we sat, browsing an issue of the defunct Biblio magazine, where we encountered a quote from Richard Le Gallienne: "The catalogue of a man's library is a form of autobiography." This brought to mind a recent post from Litlove about the way a blog and the words a writer uses reveals much of her personality, in spite of a refrain from writing anything personal. This brought to mind a post from Doppelganger about books a man gave her that made her swear never to go on another date with him ever again. At the intersection of these three items sprouted the idea of LibraryThing as dating service.
Long ago, when the computer was still just a grain of sand lying oceans away from the rest of the world, our grandfather had a small notebook in which he carefully recorded details about every book he owned: bibliographic information, when he purchased it, how much it cost, when he read it, where it could be found on the shelf. Though his notebook served as a catalogue of his collection, it also formed his literary autobiography and a cultural history from his lifetime. How we wish we had that notebook today; how we wish we had kept track of our own book acquisitions in the same manner.
LibraryThing takes the idea of our grandfather's notebook online, as a digital database for individual users. The data from each book must still be recorded manually, but the digital nature allows the information to be instantly manipulated in ways that would have taken countless hours with the notebook. A keystroke can now display a book collection from every conceivable angle. We own seventeen copies of Parnassus on Wheels. Why do we own so many titles by Scott Fitzgerald and have read only one, five times? Here is our French literature period. With what else were we occupied the year we read so few books? We must be on the lookout to upgrade our Robert Anton Wilson titles from paperback to hardback. Why do we own more non-fiction than fiction books, but have read more fiction than non-fiction?
The true power in LibraryThing is the connection with others. Now we can see who else owns Endurance, and what else they have beside it on their shelf--a virtual tour of the personal collection of any other user. This insight, then, gives us a sort of autobiography of each person. We can take heart in the fact that more people own The Count of Monte Cristo than do The Da Vinci Code. We can cast aspersions on any person who owns The Bridges of Madison County. Someone who owns Jude the Obscure, on the other hand, might be someone we'd like to talk to. To go even further, the woman whose books are a 96% match of our own might be a perfect candidate for our shortlist of backup spouses.
So what autobiographical information might one have gleaned from this? That we are pretentious? That we are foolish? That we are solitary? That tragedy makes us happy? That we are old-fashioned? That we are always planning for the future? That we buy more books than we could ever possibly read? That Doppelganger places on our shortlist?
Last year we won a year's subscription to LibraryThing. We proceeded to enter about seven books to our online catalogue. Maybe we haven't found the time to add any more. Maybe it is too labor-intensive, as the books must be brought to the site of the computer. Probably we haven't identified a function of the database that would truly be useful to us right now. It is a great idea, a wonderful tool, and full of possibilities. Future additions will likely make LibraryThing even more functional. This old-fashioned book-fancier will probably just make the effort from now on to record his new acquisitions in a little lined notebook.
So in thought we sat, browsing an issue of the defunct Biblio magazine, where we encountered a quote from Richard Le Gallienne: "The catalogue of a man's library is a form of autobiography." This brought to mind a recent post from Litlove about the way a blog and the words a writer uses reveals much of her personality, in spite of a refrain from writing anything personal. This brought to mind a post from Doppelganger about books a man gave her that made her swear never to go on another date with him ever again. At the intersection of these three items sprouted the idea of LibraryThing as dating service.
Long ago, when the computer was still just a grain of sand lying oceans away from the rest of the world, our grandfather had a small notebook in which he carefully recorded details about every book he owned: bibliographic information, when he purchased it, how much it cost, when he read it, where it could be found on the shelf. Though his notebook served as a catalogue of his collection, it also formed his literary autobiography and a cultural history from his lifetime. How we wish we had that notebook today; how we wish we had kept track of our own book acquisitions in the same manner.
LibraryThing takes the idea of our grandfather's notebook online, as a digital database for individual users. The data from each book must still be recorded manually, but the digital nature allows the information to be instantly manipulated in ways that would have taken countless hours with the notebook. A keystroke can now display a book collection from every conceivable angle. We own seventeen copies of Parnassus on Wheels. Why do we own so many titles by Scott Fitzgerald and have read only one, five times? Here is our French literature period. With what else were we occupied the year we read so few books? We must be on the lookout to upgrade our Robert Anton Wilson titles from paperback to hardback. Why do we own more non-fiction than fiction books, but have read more fiction than non-fiction?
The true power in LibraryThing is the connection with others. Now we can see who else owns Endurance, and what else they have beside it on their shelf--a virtual tour of the personal collection of any other user. This insight, then, gives us a sort of autobiography of each person. We can take heart in the fact that more people own The Count of Monte Cristo than do The Da Vinci Code. We can cast aspersions on any person who owns The Bridges of Madison County. Someone who owns Jude the Obscure, on the other hand, might be someone we'd like to talk to. To go even further, the woman whose books are a 96% match of our own might be a perfect candidate for our shortlist of backup spouses.
So what autobiographical information might one have gleaned from this? That we are pretentious? That we are foolish? That we are solitary? That tragedy makes us happy? That we are old-fashioned? That we are always planning for the future? That we buy more books than we could ever possibly read? That Doppelganger places on our shortlist?
Last year we won a year's subscription to LibraryThing. We proceeded to enter about seven books to our online catalogue. Maybe we haven't found the time to add any more. Maybe it is too labor-intensive, as the books must be brought to the site of the computer. Probably we haven't identified a function of the database that would truly be useful to us right now. It is a great idea, a wonderful tool, and full of possibilities. Future additions will likely make LibraryThing even more functional. This old-fashioned book-fancier will probably just make the effort from now on to record his new acquisitions in a little lined notebook.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Book Eleven
We have a grand To Be Read pile of books, and a wish list on a major book-selling website, and of course plenty of space to add books we don't know we want until we actually see them. One of the interesting things about such piles and lists is that during the interval between deciding we want a certain book and actually reading the book we might well forget our initial interest in the book.
The eleventh book we have read is an Oxford World Classic by Charlotte Dacre titled Zofloya, or The Moor. At some point we read something that mentioned this book, and either the subject or the summary or the recommendation drew our interest. The book was added to our wish list, and received last Christmas. Now coming to read it, we have forgotten precisely why we wanted to read it in the first place. Well, in general, who wouldn't be interested in reading a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century? Beyond this, though, what did we want to read it for?
This is an early gothic romance that follows in the footsteps of classics by Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, and then steps beyond their boundaries to become something unexpected and shocking for its time. Never before had a woman been shown to venture so far down the "alarming paths of sin." Today, many of the main ingredients of the novel provoke little distress in us as they must have in one of our previous lives. Issues such as class and race and nature versus nurture are deftly explored in the novel, yet they did not stand out as issues to us until after we finished reading the novel, when we read the introduction. We are told that upon publication, the Library Journal dismissed Ms. Dacre as "being afflicted with the dismal malady of maggots in the brain." The novel is reported to have enraptured Percy Shelley, and Ann Williams believes Zofloya and other gothic works provide critical keys to understanding the works of Mr. Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats. Instead of being hailed as groundbreaking and influential, the novel and its author have been mostly consigned to oblivion. In her introduction, Kim Ian Michasiw writes,
We enjoyed this book. Ms. Dacre writes in an old-fashioned manner, with words and phrases that provide an appropriate literary flavor to the novel. She even employs shifts in point-of-view, but does so with control and purpose, rendering them natural and unobtrusive. The book took longer to read than we might have expected, though it was not difficult, confusing, or boring. We now suspect our initial interest in the novel was the masterful seduction of both Victoria and her mother, as already mentioned, superbly illustrated. We would recommend this to any fan of classic gothic fiction. When you put it on your wish list, just remember to note why.
We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.
The eleventh book we have read is an Oxford World Classic by Charlotte Dacre titled Zofloya, or The Moor. At some point we read something that mentioned this book, and either the subject or the summary or the recommendation drew our interest. The book was added to our wish list, and received last Christmas. Now coming to read it, we have forgotten precisely why we wanted to read it in the first place. Well, in general, who wouldn't be interested in reading a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century? Beyond this, though, what did we want to read it for?
This is an early gothic romance that follows in the footsteps of classics by Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, and then steps beyond their boundaries to become something unexpected and shocking for its time. Never before had a woman been shown to venture so far down the "alarming paths of sin." Today, many of the main ingredients of the novel provoke little distress in us as they must have in one of our previous lives. Issues such as class and race and nature versus nurture are deftly explored in the novel, yet they did not stand out as issues to us until after we finished reading the novel, when we read the introduction. We are told that upon publication, the Library Journal dismissed Ms. Dacre as "being afflicted with the dismal malady of maggots in the brain." The novel is reported to have enraptured Percy Shelley, and Ann Williams believes Zofloya and other gothic works provide critical keys to understanding the works of Mr. Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats. Instead of being hailed as groundbreaking and influential, the novel and its author have been mostly consigned to oblivion. In her introduction, Kim Ian Michasiw writes,
A mother-hating triple murderess who dreams of sexual congress with a demon of colour has not been judged a proper model for the young reader either in the last century or in this.For the first half of the novel, the protagonist Victoria suffers abuse at every turn. There is a digression to follow another character, and we wondered what purpose this served the novel, until everything was brought together at the end. Zofloya does not appear until about the halfway mark, at which point Victoria believes things have begun to go her way. Of course we come to realise that she is under the influence of Satan in the gorgeous guise of Zofloya. Everything she wants she gets by his evil ways, but nothing turns out as she expects. The further she treads down the paths of sin, the more she must turn to Zofloya for help. He is a consumate seducer, and by the last page the only thing Victoria thinks about and desires is giving herself completely to Zofloya. She remains ever self-absorbed and unrepentant.
We enjoyed this book. Ms. Dacre writes in an old-fashioned manner, with words and phrases that provide an appropriate literary flavor to the novel. She even employs shifts in point-of-view, but does so with control and purpose, rendering them natural and unobtrusive. The book took longer to read than we might have expected, though it was not difficult, confusing, or boring. We now suspect our initial interest in the novel was the masterful seduction of both Victoria and her mother, as already mentioned, superbly illustrated. We would recommend this to any fan of classic gothic fiction. When you put it on your wish list, just remember to note why.
We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Literary Salon
One of the things we have been working on at the shop is starting a book club. The impetus for this is from a friend. We had a practise run at the end of February, and are taking it to the public this month. Though space is at a premium in the shop, we should be able to sqeeze everybody in cozily.
Wednesday 28 March will be the inaugural meeting of the Illinois Valley Literary Salon. The first book to be discussed is For One More Day, the newest release from Mitch Albom, who also wrote Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Though the discussion will center around the novel, one need not have read it to join. The club will meet monthly, with books chosen by vote from member nominations. Interested readers should muster at 4:45pm for introductions and refreshments. Discussion will begin promptly at 5:00pm. The complete press release can be read here.
If you are in the area and decide to come, parking directly across the street is plentiful. Members of the book club can also take advantage of a 25% discount offered on any books purchased that evening.
Wednesday 28 March will be the inaugural meeting of the Illinois Valley Literary Salon. The first book to be discussed is For One More Day, the newest release from Mitch Albom, who also wrote Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Though the discussion will center around the novel, one need not have read it to join. The club will meet monthly, with books chosen by vote from member nominations. Interested readers should muster at 4:45pm for introductions and refreshments. Discussion will begin promptly at 5:00pm. The complete press release can be read here.
If you are in the area and decide to come, parking directly across the street is plentiful. Members of the book club can also take advantage of a 25% discount offered on any books purchased that evening.
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