Last Thursday Book Club
2008 Schedule  -  Leaping into our fifteenth year of critical reading ...

 
Meeting Date Host Selection Notes
Special December (Christmas Season) Delay!  Meet Thursday 
3 January 2008

Charlie Palmer (243-4962) or  cell:   263-4586

host at 131 14th SW  (about 1/2 block south of Central

Going west on I-40, take the 6th/12th exit;  then, go south on 12th.

Turn right on Central.   Turn left on 14th. House is directly across the street from the 12 story Queen Mary.   There is no parking on 14th street, use the double driveway to left of house.  Call if problems.


John Updike, 74
Terrorist by John Updike

This book has received excellent reviews.  Our Albuquerque/ Bernalillo County Library System has 27 copies - no waiting!


Updike's 22nd novel is in some ways, a departure.

While working on the book, Mr. Updike, now 74, white-haired, bushy-browed and senatorial-looking, risked suspicion by lingering around the luggage screening machines at La Guardia Airport, where he learned that the X-rays were not in black and white, as he had imagined, but rather in lurid colors: acid green and red.

He also hired a car and a driver to take him around some of the seedier neighborhoods in Paterson, N.J., and to show him some churches and storefronts that had been converted into mosques. "He did his best, but I think I puzzled him as a tour customer," Mr. Updike reported.

Excerpt from Time;  New York Times Review

Thursday 
31 January 2008

Mike Blackledge   (294-6030)
14321 Stalgren Ct NE

(from Tramway & Copper, go East 5 blocks [counting on right], then right on Parkside, immediate left onto Stalgren Ct.)



   Charming Billy - National Book Award 1988
Charming Billy


by Alice McDermott
audio interview
"Billy is really the reason for the novel.  He was the beginning and the end point.  He's that stereotypical, lovable Irishman, drinks too much, talks too much, puts his arm around you at 3 AM, when everybody else has gone home and with tears in his eyes tells you how much he loves you.  He's a great guy but also he's drinking himself to death, and no one can stop him. "
   -  Alice McDermott

I chose this book following the strong recommendation of a lady calling in to NPR on one of their Friday Book Reviews.  The listener stated that this was her all-time favorite book, about an alcoholic and how his friends viewed him after his death.  Our Albuquerque Library system has 13 copies of this book; 11 copies are on the book shelf right now.
National Book Award Winner

Charming Billy was a late entry, as my earlier choice, No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, has been missing from the shelves of our Library System ever since the November 2007 movie was released.  Members are still encouraged to read the book prior to seeing the movie. 
Thursday 
28 February  2008


  Don Tubesing


41 La Puerta Trail
Placitas, NM 87043

505 771-1601
Tubesingda@aol.com



 
InfidelInfidel
by Ayaan Hirshi Ali
Ayaan presents:  Video1    Vid2
Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated).  Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy.  In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage.  Copyright 2007.   Published by Free Press, a division of Simon Schuster.


 Amazon has it new hardcover for $15.60 with their discount or used here for under $11.  Should come out in paperback in early February 2008.  Kindle version for $9.99.
Thursday
27 March 2008
Tom Genoni  (292-4985)
1616 Catron SE
(In 4-Hills, turn right on Stagecoach, left at the 4-way stop sign onto Cuatro Cerros, 2nd right onto Bernalillo, then 1st left onto Catron.  About half-way down Catron, 1616 house is on the right.)
 

Man in the Holocene

by Max Frisch



  Extra credit for solving the "Golden Ratio" puzzle on page 12.  Double-extra credit for reading in the original German. 
No copies available in our Library System however Amazon has many used copies for reasonable cost.
   
(modified) First Thursday
1 May 2008

  Ron B. 
... Loma Linda SE
Lead/Coal;
between Carlisle and Washington, take
Montclaire south



The Birth of Venus

a novel by Sarah Dunant

18 copies in our local Library system.


Sarah Dunant   Sarah Dunant:   Biography

(modified) Next to Last Thursday
22 May 2008
 

Ken Gillen

(797-8956)

331 White Oaks Dr. NE

(From Tramway and Live Oak Rd [one block N. of Paseo del Norte], go EAST 0.6 mi on Live Oak, then SOUTH 0.3 mi on White Oaks Dr. to last house on right.  Pay no attention to most of the house numbers.).


Out Stealing Horses
  • We imagine we’ve seen this: Trond Sander, an Oslo professional who has recently lost his wife and sister, hopes to cure his loneliness by a plunge into solitude; nothing dramatic, he wants to pension out and make a few changes. Scandinavians differentiate between loneliness and solitude as a matter of course. But Trond, insinuating at times, but colloquial and close to one’s ear, tells a candid story so concretely that the reader has to live it out. “I have been lucky,” he says of his life, while acknowledging that he has always longed to be alone.  [see entire NY Times review by Thomas McGuane: In a Lonely Place here]

Won several book awards.
Thursday 
26 June 2008


Jack Ferrell

17 Sunset Blvd
Placitas, NM
I-25 Exit 242
East on NM 165.

Right at the 5-mile marker onto Tunnel Springs Road.
Right onto Quail Meadow Road (first street on right - 0.2 mile)
Right onto Leah Lane (first street on right-0.4 mile)
HARD right onto Sunset Blvd
(100 yards)
17 Sunset Blvd is the third drive/house on the left. The 17 is in small gold numbers near the ground, near road.

Lord of the Flies
There are numerous study guides to Golding's Lord of the Flies, and many of these are available to you on-lineOne example can be found here
(modified) First Thursday

Thursday, 
7 August 2008
Keith Gilbert (265-8122) 
  

913 Parkland Circle SE

From Wyoming, go West on Zuni to Carlisle;
Go South on Carlisle until the median disappears;
(or changes drastically);
Go East;
Keith is on this street, on the North side.


A Thousand Splendid Suns
After The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini again takes us into the heart of Afghanistan with A Thousand Splendid Suns:  a story of two Afghan women and their life.  It is not just a story of helpless women, it is story of the greatness of their endurance.

More than enough copies of this book are in our local library system.

HosseiniBio on Khaled Hosseini.

The Khaled Hosseini Book Group Discussion site also provides several video clips where the author answers questions submitted by readers, and discusses such topics as writing from the viewpoint of a woman.
Thursday, 
  28 August 2008

Ed Duff
(823-1872)
Tanoan area:
9709 Pebble Beach NE


(Enter Tanoan onto Tanoan Drive,
north off Academy, between Eubank and Ventura.  Take 3rd left onto Pebble Beach Drive.
 2n
d house on right.)

Bel Canto
"Bel Canto by Ann Patchett should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so spendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty. Ann Patchett is a special writer who has written a special book."
Lloyd Moss, WXQR
25 copies in our local library system, however perhaps only 1/3 of these available currently.  Check here

Ann Patchett
Thursday 
25 September 2008
Rob Easterling (286-8796) 

East Mountains: 51 Avenida del Sol,
Cedar Crest, NM 87008
Take N14  4.5 mi. N of I-40
(exit 175, Cedar Crest).

Turn Left into Ventana del Sol subdivision.
  Follow
keypad instructions.

 To A God Unknown John Steinbeck 1902 - 1968First published in 1933, the book was Steinbeck's second novel (after his unsuccessful Cup of Gold),  The title was taken from a hymn excerpt of the Rig Veda's Book X.   Steinbeck found To a God Unknown extremely difficult to write; taking him roughly five years to complete, the novella proved more time-consuming than either East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's longest novels.  In this short novel, Steinbeck explores the relationship of man to his land. The plot follows a man, Joseph Wayne, who moves to California in order to establish a homestead, leaving his father, who soon dies. The novel examines what is meant by belief and how it affects different people. It also portrays the connection between the farmer and the land, a common theme, which appeared also in his later novels, such as East of Eden.
There are only five (5) copies in our local library system as found  here. 


POSTPONED!
for one week until Thursday 
  6 November 2008
 Joel Nash

884-5064

7508 Dellwood
Road NE

Between Candelaria
and Comanche


go West off
Pennsylvania;
2nd house from
Pennsylvania,
south side.

      


Winter in the Blood


Winter in the Blood

by James Welch

summary & study guide


James Welch was born on November 18, 1940, on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana. His father, a welder, hospital administrator, and later rancher and farmer, was a Blackfeet Indian. His mother, who trained as a stenographer, was a member of the Gros Ventre tribe.

Welch was raised as a Catholic and attended schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations before moving with his family to Minneapolis. He graduated from high school in 1958 and briefly attended the University of Minnesota.


Winter in the Blood (1974), the first novel by James Welch, is set on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, which is located forty miles south of the Canadian border and twenty miles north of the Missouri River. It is the fourth largest Indian reservation in Montana; more than five thousand people live there. The protagonist and narrator of the novel is a thirty-two-year-old Blackfeet Indian whose name is never revealed.
[3rd] Thursday: 
20 November 2008
[Thursday before Thanksgiving]

Charlie Palmer (243-4962) 

1506 Park SW

From I-25, go West on Central or
Lomas; then South on 14th St.  
Cross Central, continue 2 or 3 blocks,
then turn right onto Park (1st stop sign).

Yiddish Policemen's UnionThe Yiddish Policemen's Union

by
 Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a truly wonderful literary novel. Michael ChabonThe book is one part thriller, one part ironic love story and two parts Yiddish lesson. The book is Jewish, however, in the same way that Joyce's books are Irish - you don't have to be "in" to get it but some of the meaning (and especially the humor) is deeply cultural.
Gary Ganong has located this on-line Yiddish Dictionary which may prove useful to the gentile reader.
Thursday 
18 December 2008

[Thursday before Christmas]

Mike Blackledge   (294-6030)
14321 Stalgren Ct NE

(from Tramway & Copper, go East 5 blocks [counting on right], then right on Parkside, immediate left onto Stalgren Ct.)

Please bring a book for a fellow club member, wrapped in newspaper or butcher paper.  We will have a book exchange to start the meeting.


What is the What


In one sense, What is the What brings together two earlier selections for the Club during this year of 2008:  Infidel and Lord of the Flies.  Valentino Achak Deng, the real-life hero of this engrossing epic, was a refugee from the Sudanese civil war - the bloodbath before the current Darfur bloodbath - of the 1980s and 90s.  In this fictionalized memoir, Salon.com's Dave Eggers ([then 36 yr old] author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") makes him an icon of globalization.

God Grew Tired of Us For a film documentary on the Lost Boys of the Sudan which follows three young men (including John Dau to Syracuse, NY), see the National Geographic film:  God Grew Tired of Us

This book was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction  455 pages; easy to read and intriguing.  18 copies in our local Library system.

Valentino Achak Deng's Foundation web site;  includes slide shows and a reader's guide.  Here is Wikipedia.com entry for author Dave Eggers


Schedule for Year 2008

LTBC 2008 schedule last updated:
  20 November 2008


Back to Schedule for Year 2007

Forward to Schedule for Year 2009
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Coffee Table

Email the LTBC via  Mike@Blackledge.com