This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.
By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
- **Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lie here. Read at your own risk***
I suppose Henry Adams is not really beach reading
I'd like to suggest a good beachy book for next summer. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor may be somewhat long and hard to get, but it's a fun romp through Restoration England. Or Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls, for a wallow in post-WWII Hollywood.
And for something more serious, Anthony Trollope's The Warden. Life among the clergy in an 1859s English cathedral town. (Actually, I'd rather suggest his Barchester Towers or Can You Forgive Her?, but those might be too long for a book club.)
I have a mad, undying, and unexplainable love for
Valley of the Dolls
.
You know I'm not going to be happy unless I recommend Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. Independent of my passion for the show, it really has changed my perception of what non-fiction journalism can be. Seriously.
That's a brilliant book, Erika!
As Kurt Vonnegut says, Valley of the Dolls is a book with it's "ups and downs, ups and downs".
I thought so. But I'm the kind of sick person who would actually try to keep track of Rules One-Nine, so they had me at "Gimme a quarter."
It is way, way, better written than any other book about crime, ever. If Simon wrote faster...and the whole TV thing hadn't happened, he could send Ann Rule back to the suicide hotline. As a client.
Woo, glad I caught up before the lists were entirely set.
I'll have to mull over some suggestions for the list.
I wonder if we could do a Select the Selector every fourth book or so. It intrigues me as an idea. It doesn't have to be an either/or situation. We can build our own traditions. I think it might be a good way to keep people involved, enthusiastic and add some wildcard elements.
It'll be fun - after we finish a three book cycle, we'll spin a large virtual wheel and somebody gets to be The Boss Of Us that month (at least as far as reading matter).
"Bwahahahhaha! You'll all read Ethan Frome and you'll LIKE IT!"
Okay, it goes without saying MM is right out.
Very cool idea!! Also, I love the suggestion upthread of pairing up books. A suggestion for two relatively recent selections, one fiction and one non-fiction (the non-fiction author got the idea of the book from reading the fiction one)--The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. The first is a wonderfully creepy serial killer book set in 1890s NYC, with real people fictionalized and intermingling with the original characters. The second has parallel storylines, one dealing with Daniel Burnham, architect and organizer of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the other with a serial killer who actually did transform his hotel on the outskirts of the fair into a death factory, where he killed an unknown number of women.
