Please Vote for the Next QUIET Online Book Club Selection! (The Next Meeting Will Be Held Right Here on the Blog)
Author: Susan Cain
Hi everyone,
It’s time to organize the next meeting of the QUIET Online Book Club. The first meeting was really interesting — lots of you joined in to discuss Marilynne Robinson’s GILEAD. I must report that I have since been obsessed with all things Marilynne Robinson — just finished HOME, which is a companion piece to GILEAD (and I loved it so much that I read some parts twice), and have also ordered HOUSEKEEPING.
But for those not similarly obsessed, here are three new selections — please vote for your first choice by posting a comment below!
1. Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart: this one got lots of votes last time around, so I’m putting it up for consideration again.
Amazon book description here:
“The author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America’s dysfunctional coming years—and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.
In a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn’t it? Lenny’s from a different century—he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,” as they’re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness…”
2. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Amazon book description here:
“In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation.
In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the city’s rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed.”
3. A Gesture Life, by Chang-Rae Lee:
Amazon book description here:
“The riveting story of a Japanese immigrant who leads a proper, decorous life in a New York suburb. As his life slowly unravels, he is transported back to his days as a medic in the Japanese army in World War II, and his obsessive love of a young comfort woman.”
Please do vote — I’ll announce the winner next week, and we’ll pick a day to meet. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WEREN’T KEEN TO MEET ON FACEBOOK — I’m planning to hold the next Book Club meeting right here on the blog.
Thanks!
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I vote for ‘A Gesture Life’. Thank you.
One vote for “People of the Book.”
People of the Book
I vote for A Gesture Life oh and thanks for not doing the Facebook thing. I’m not on Facebook for an arm’s length of reasons.
Super Sad True Love Story
People of the Book
Super Sad True Love Story
Super Sad True Love Story
People of the Book
A Gesture Life sounds beautiful, historical, and captivating. That is my vote.
(though Super Sad True Love Story is second choice)
A Gesture Life please! Using the blog site for the discussion will be a good idea.
Super Sad True Love Story.
People of the Book
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
People of the Book
People of the Book
Super Sad True Love Story
People of the Book
I vote for Super Sad
People of the book or Super Sad True Love Story.
I vote for Super Sad or People of the Book.
people of the book
A Gesture Life
A Gesture Life
Super Sad True Love Story
I vote for People of the Book.
People of the Book please!
A Gesture Life (although I read Super Sad True Love Story and loved it, so wouldn’t mind reading it again).
A Gesture Life, please.
People of the Book (although they all sound great!)
A Gesture Life
People of the Book
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A Gesture Life. Looking forward, at all events.
People of the Book!
Super Sad, please
I’d like to read People of the Book.
Super Sad True Love Story,
People of the Book sounds wonderful!
people of the book
Super Sad True Love Story
A Gesture Life gets my vote!
Super Sad True Love Story… still thinking about it from the last round of voting!
Super Sad, svp.
People of the Book
super sad, super true love story
People of the Book
People of the Book!!!
A Gesture Life