Book Club

Powell's Talks to Luis Alberto Urrea

2009-07-02T13:48:13Z

Powell's has a new interview with Luis Alberto Urrea, author of past Book Club selection The Hummingbird's Daughter and the recently published Into the Beautiful North.

On writing female characters, he says:

It's funny. I had an interviewer ask me, "Are you writing chick books?" I said, "Chick books? What's a chick book?" "You keep writing about women," he said. I said, "What's wrong with writing about women?" I don't know. I guess it's because of Hummingbird, in part. But part of the process of Hummingbird was being accepted by the women's healing community in the indigenous world. I didn't really understand the world of medicine, or curanderas. I had some access to that through men, because I have all these brothers who are Oglalas (adoptive brothers, in the loose term of brother), and I have relatives who are Apache, and so forth.
When I was accepted by a couple of communities of women, I was taken in to learn the women's stuff. One of those women said this very simple thing. It was so simple it was brilliant. She said, "You goddamned men. When you want to know something about women, why don't you just ask?" I had this idiotic Western writer's response; I was writing down notes: "Hmm, ask women!" [Laughter] Her follow-up was, "And when we tell you, why don't you listen?" It became really important to me if I was going to write Hummingbird's Daughter to try to do honor to women.

New Yorker News on U of C

2009-06-29T13:20:37Z

The New Yorker's Book Bench blog isn't really the place I expected the image of such shirts to jump out at me, as if leaping through the past to haunt me in my present (I wholeheartedly concur with Walker's summation of time spent at the University of Chicago as "bleak"). Nevertheless, two reported items are of note: the left-leaning locally published magazine The Baffler is coming back, and two undergrads are penning a book called Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less and have sold it to Penguin. Is the last item sad or ironic? The thing about the U of C is that you never really can tell the difference.

More on Hemingway's Marriages

2009-06-29T12:47:54Z

There's even more Hemingway news to bring you. Last week Alice alerted us to a new book that will take a fictionalized look at Hemingway's first marriage; now the New York Times tells the story of the author's grandson's efforts to restore the posthumously published A Moveable Feast, the memoir that includes the dissolution of that first marriage. It seems that the editing of the book is a story in itself: originally edited by Hemingway's fourth wife, the first edition included a final chapter on that first marriage built from parts that Hemingway indicated he did not want published. The upcoming new edition of the book, what is being called the "restored edition," is edited by grandson Seán Hemingway who, among other changes, added passages from the manuscript that he believes puts his grandmother (the author's second wife, Pauline) in "a more sympathetic light." The Times reports on Seán's motivations:

Seán said he revised edits that had been made in the first edition, and restored paragraphs that he believed presented his grandmother's relationship with Hemingway in a more nuanced and truthful way. Seán said that in doing so, he felt he was returning the text closer to the way his grandfather wanted it.
The new version of Pauline's arrival in Hemingway's life, titled 'The Pilot Fish and the Rich,' and included in the additional Paris sketches, shows Hemingway taking more responsibility for his breakup with [first wife] Hadley. While the 1964 edition casts him as Pauline's victim, he shares the blame in the new version.

Event Spotlight: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. @ Harold Washington Library

2009-06-29T12:17:49Z

One of the preeminent scholars of our time, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, will be at the Harold Washington Library tonight for a discussion on "Our Histories, Our Stories," a look at how the way we tell stories shapes our history and how our history shapes the way we tell stories. Joining him will be Chicago Tribune columnist, author, and FoBC (Friend of the Book Club) Rick Kogan. For some time now Gates has been an influential and important voice in the academic study of literature and the African American experience, so if the idea of either of those interests you, this is not a talk you'll want to miss. Free at 6pm (doors open at 5pm) in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, 400 S. State St. Call 312-747-4300 for more information.

Chicagoland Bestseller List for Week Ending Sunday, June 21

2009-06-26T04:25:43Z

Stores reporting this week: Anderson's Bookshop; Read Between the Lynes; The Book Cellar; Lake Forest Books; The Bookstall at Chestnut Court; The Book Table; the Seminary Co-op Bookstores; and Women and Children First.

Hardcover Fiction
1. Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafron
2. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. First Family by David Baldacci
5. The Women by T.C. Boyle

Hardcover Nonfiction
1. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton
3. Renegade by Richard Wolffe
4. Home Game by Michael Lewis
5. Driving Like Crazy by PJ O'Rourke

Paperback Fiction
1. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
2. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
3. Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
4. Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
5. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Paperback Nonfiction
1. The Naked Roommate by Harlan Cohen
2. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
3. City of Sin and Splendour by Bapsi Sidhwa
4. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
5. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Children's
1. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
2. Goldilicious by Victoria Kann
3. Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter
4. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
5. LA Candy by Lauren Conrad

Bookmarks

2009-06-26T04:05:47Z

The New York Review of Books has a lengthy excerpt from J.M Coetzee's forthcoming book, Summertime.
Teresa Budasi highlights the local authors in contention for the Great Lakes Book Awards, awarded by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association.
Uh oh. More Hemingway news. A fictionalized look at Hemingway's marriage to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and told from her point of view, will be coming to a bookstore near you.

Chicago Authors Know How to Write a Threesome

2009-06-24T18:12:16Z

The Guardian asked novelist Ewan Morrison, author of Menage, to pick the Top Ten Literary Threesomes. His list includes not one, but two Chicago authors. In at #1, the Top Literary Threesome Ever, is Oak Park native Ernest Hemingway with The Garden of Eden, a novel that "tells the story of an author, his adventurous wife, and the psycho-sexual games they play while sharing a young woman. It is largely held to be autobiographical." University of Chicago alum Susan Sontag comes in at #7 with The Volcano Lover, a historical fiction revolving around Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma and Vice Admiral Horation Nelson. Apparently, Chicago authors know how to write the sexy. (Of course, we already knew that.)

Sherman Alexie Safe in Antioch

2009-06-24T17:50:35Z

Banned Books Weeks is coming up in about three months and it's a shame to be reminded why we so desperately need to continue with this celebration. Recently, parents at a school in the suburb of Antioch petitioned to pull Sherman Alexie's The Absolutley True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from the freshman required summer reading list. Parents objected to the book's "descriptions of masturbation, racist language, graphic depictions of sex, and references to bestiality," but faculty maintained that the language needs to be read in context and that the book contains an overall "strong anti-drug, anti-alcohol message." The faculty won (yay!). I haven't read the book myself, but knowing that it was challenged certainly sparks my interest when I had none before. I imagine the same will be true for a lot of those freshmen. [via]

Review: Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon

2009-06-23T11:54:35Z

Love and Obstacles
by Aleksandar Hemon
(Riverhead Books, 2009)

I will be the first to admit that when we read Aleksandar Hemon's debut novel, Nowhere Man, during our first year of Book Club meetings, I was not the author's biggest fan. I generally like my novels and stories to be imbued with a certain element of concreteness and plausibility; I like to feel a sense of roundedness; I like to believe that if we start out in one place we will eventually get back to that place in one way or another. These are qualities that Nowhere Man does not possess. I do not mean this as a criticism of this book - my literary likes simply did not match up with what Hemon had to offer and I was content for us to go our separate ways. Rare is the author who can execute both styles of writing and execute them well. How wonderful and surprising it was to then find out that in his newly published collection of short stories, Love and Obstacles, Hemon shows that he is indeed that author.

The stories in Love and Obstacles focus on a single narrator's upbringing as a boy in Bosnia and as a man living as an ex-patriot in the United States. So closely does this mirror Hemon's own travels that one cannot help but guess that the author used his own life as fuel for these stories, but nowhere in the book does Hemon suggest that these stories are autobiographical and I'm disinclined to leap to that assumption. Here we have a teenage boy forgoing spending time with his family to forge a connection with a strung out American during a summer vacation in Kinshasa in "Stairway to Heaven." In "Everything," the same boy is later sent on his first journey alone through the country on mission to purchase a freezer chest for his parents, only to fall in love with the married woman staying in the adjacent hotel room. Obsessed with losing his virginity, the narrator knocks on her door and offers her a contraceptive pill, only to have the door shut in his face: "I heard them murmuring conspiratorially, like a husband and wife, and I recognized that love was on the other side, and I had no access to it."

Perhaps one of the most revealing stories is "The Bees, Part I," wherein we learn the story of the narrator's father through the lens of a failed autobiography. The autobiography starts with the proclamation that it was this man's grandfather who brought beekeeping to Bosnia, followed by a detailed explanation of the beekeeping life, but the narrator quickly realizes that this is merely a way for his father to delve into the maladies that plagued their family during the wars: "In an abrupt transition, he asserts that the most successful period of our beekeeping ended in 1942, during World War Two, when we for the first time lost our bees. It is clear that was a major catastrophe for the family, but my father, keeps everything in perspective, probably because of what was going on in the besieged Sarajevo at the time of his writing. There are worse things that can happen to you. A whole family, for example, can perish without a trace, he writes. We didn't perish, which is excellent." Though the story incorporates a hilarious anecdote of the narrator's failed attempt to serve as the star in the film version of his father's life, "The Bees, Part I" remains memorably haunting in its depiction of a man coming to terms with his war-torn life.

Several of the stories in Love and Obstacles do, indeed, deal with the realities of life in a war-stricken country and the effects of living outside that country as an adult, as Hemon himself has experienced. But, far from alienating the reader who does not share his narrator's exact background, the stories in this collection ring true for anyone who has seen the effects of war, both firsthand and abroad; they speak to anyone who has left their country for whatever reason, only to find themselves acting as its representative in their new land; they are as much about the difficulties of being Bosnian and American as they are about the difficulties of being a boy becoming a man. It is this incorporation of the universal that lends the stories of this very specific life the sense of fullness and tangibility that will surely appeal to all readers.

Event Spotlight: Dollar Store Super Summer Tour

2009-06-23T01:11:20Z

The Dollar Store is going on tour! Of course, with Chicago being the show's home, you've been lucky enough to see the show whenever it's on. Fittingly, this Sunday the show kicks off their tour right here with a huge party at the Hideout featuring readings from Tobias Amadon Benglesdorf, Elizabeth Crane, Amelia Gray, Patrick Somerville, Caroline Picard, and Zach Dodson and Jonathan Messinger of Featherproof, among others. Come eat some barbeque (vegetarian desires will be kept in mind), enjoy improv by 1,2, Fag and Hag! and An Oak and enter into a raffle for which the prize is a custom-built, Featherproof-themed bike. 1pm-6pm at 1354 W. Wabansia. $8 admission; purchase your tickets here.

'Great Perhaps' Definitely Great

2009-06-22T22:17:43Z

Joe Meno scores a review in the New York Times Book Review for his latest novel The Great Perhaps. The reviewer says Meno "has a highly developed ear not simply for teenage dialogue but for the teenager's inner life."

The Tribune also reviews the novel, and according to the reviewer, Meno is an "ambitious, adventurous writer" who "throws in every thing but the kitchen sink -- historical digressions, magic realism, fervent prayers, sordid sex, academic politicking, three wars and the 2004 election -- as he follows two confused teenagers, their bewildered parents and a disoriented grandfather through one eventful month."

And, in the following video, Meno talks about why he works with an indie publisher to publish his books:

Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries

2009-06-22T22:08:48Z

Ray Bradbury is lending his considerable literary clout to save the Ventura County public libraries, which are threatened by loss of revenue from falling property taxes. The 88-year-old author tells the New York Times, "Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."

Bookmarks

2009-06-22T21:49:37Z

Studs Terkel has been selected for posthumous induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Some local publishing honchos, including Doug Seibold, president of Agate Publishing in Evanston, Garrett Kiely, the director of the University of Chicago Press, and Jonathan Messinger of Time Out Chicago and featherproof books, discuss whether Chicago can be a hub for independent publishing.
Jeffrey Eugenides tells NPR that he "that he's recently realized the deterioration of Michigan's auto industry" inspired his novel The Virgin Suicides.
David Sedaris is touring to promote the paperback release of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, but this time he's making stops in small towns.
The annual Newberry Library Book Fair is just one month away, but you can read the book fair blog now and find out all kinds of cool facts about the fair written with a surprising amount of snark.

Test Your Knowledge of Literary Chicago

2009-06-22T21:43:10Z

Do you think you know your Chicago literature? Here's your chance to put your knowledge to the test. Bill Ott at Booklist has put together a wicked Literary Chicago quiz. Not only do you have to match the book with its author, but you also need to correctly identify the neighborhood or location where the story takes place. Several of his choices are past GB Book Club selections. Here's the .pdf version. Good luck!

Indie Bookstores Need Your Patronage

2009-06-22T21:38:12Z

Time Out Chicago raises the alarm bells for Women and Children First, which is still struggling to survive.

W&CF does have an online store, so even if you can't visit the physical store, consider buying online and help support a valuable local business.