If You're All Ready....

Hey, all!

Okay, so there were only three comments and two were definitely ready for the new book, one was on the fence. So I will go ahead and announce it and then you can read it when you get the chance.

I live in the warm and nearly-always sunny Southern California. We don't have winter here. I've experienced winter and I really wasn't a fan. That's why I live 10 miles from the ocean.
But when I thought about the fact that my month was January, I thought about what types of books might be better read when temperatures have dipped and you just want to cuddle up with a blanket and a warm cup of cocoa and get lost in a good story.

And so I looked for winter-type books. Something that would remind me that there are places that have that sort of thing.

That was my motivation for selecting:

From Barnes & Noble:

She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...

It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....

I hope this sounds okay to all of you. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm always done for a mystery and this one came fairly highly recommended.

January Book

So...I have a book picked out for January. I've even purchased it already.

I picked it awhile ago, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

But I have hesitated because it seems like everyone, myself included, has been incredibly busy with life and other things.

So, instead of announcing the January book quite yet, I thought I'd just ask if you are all ready for a new one or if you'd like to give it a bit more time, finish up the December short stories, recover from the holidays, whatever.

Thoughts?

#1

Well, my favorite story has been the very first one. About the boy who meets another boy and they catch that huge fish... remember?

I don't know but I find it the most disturbing out of all the stories in a very strange way. I'm not sure why either, it's just a feeling I have every time I read it. How old do you think that boy is? Sometimes I think he sounds very young, like 12 maybe. Also at the same time I feel like he is older then I think as well, but he just acts like a child. I'm not sure yet.

I think the entire story seemed so normal. It seemed like an average day for him. I felt sad about his parents not seeming to really care about him, or what he does. It's obvious he wants their approval, real bad. Which is another reason why I believe he is young. You are seeing that through his eyes. Maybe his parents are great people, they were just having an off night?

I don't know, I'm still thinking about it all. What do you think?`

Fat

Well, I didn't hear otherwise, so I figured I'd just go along with Brandon's suggestion on how to discuss the December book: Where I'm Calling From.

I quite enjoyed a lot of the short stories in the book, but one that really kept me thinking afterward was "Fat."

It's one of the shorter stories in the book. Only 6 or 7 pages maybe and probably took fewer than ten minutes to read.

It's the one about the waitress telling her friend a story about this incredibly fat customer that she waited on, and who she seemed to take a bit of extra care of because she felt sorry for him and his girth.

As the waitress tells the story, she includes some details of other conversations she has with coworkers and with her husband. And ends with a bit of introspection.

Now, when I read this story, I was fairly convinced the waitress, our narrator, was relating to her friend, Rita, a dream she'd had. The way the waitress describes the fat man, the detailed way she continues to talk about his fingers. The way the customer repeatedly refers to "us" and "we" instead of "I" and "me."

After doing a bit of google searching, I have yet to come across any critic or commentator or essayist that agrees with my conclusion. It seems that everyone approaches this story in the same way. As though this, fictitiously, actually happened.

But the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that the narrator is telling her friend about a dream she had. A dream that led her to make some conclusions about her own life. At one point, she talks about serving the man some food and then looking in the sugar bowl, saying, "I know now I was after something. But I don't know what." To me, that sounds like the part in a dream when you know you need to find a person or a place or an object, but you don't know what you're looking for.

Does that happen to anyone else, or just me?

At the end of the story, the narrator and her husband go to bed and Rudy wants to sleep with her, but now she feels overwhelmed by size and imagines that she is much larger than the husband that is forcing himself on her.

The story ends when the narrator says, "My life is going to change. I feel it."

This story is so full of symbolism, from the size of the fat man, to the food he consumed, to the need to find something, to the unhappy marriage.

I still believe the whole thing was a dream in need of interpretation. A reflection of a problem the character's mind was trying to work out.

Thoughts?

A Suggestion

I have started reading the book for this month. I got a late start on it, but I'm flying through it in the last couple of days. I'm not going to talk about it too much until I finish. But I wanted to suggest that for this one, since it is a collection of short stories, rather than just post our normal general reviews of it everyone should pick a story that they liked the most and do a post about that story in a bit more detail. I think it would be a lot of fun to see what different stories everyone picks out to talk about, and why.

What do y'all think?

Oh Edward!

Alright, here we go...

Really, I constantly had to keep myself motivated to read this book. Nothing really exciting happened and I don't think I really understood where Edward was coming from. I'm all about saving the wildlife, but sometimes he got preachy and extreme about it. He would rather kill a human than a snake? Come on!

He did however make me ever so slightly wish I was sitting next to him. Some of the writing was poetic and I wish I was there to see what he was describing. It was interesting to watch him as a man combine with nature. I think the problem with me though is that I don't feel the same way he does, so it was hard to relate.

So really, other then him being poetic I didn't really like the book. I guess Moab will forever be a mystery to me.

December Book!

Hi All...

Sorry this is so late in coming. It has been a busy couple of days down here, and solidifying a choice is harder than it seems. I have been going back and forth between three different books for a while and have finally picked one. It should be easy to find on Amazon and such.

Without further ado...




I have a deep place in my heart for Raymond Carver. We have yet to tackle a short story collection, and I thought it would be the perfect time to do so with the holiday season upon us.

This collection of short stories was Carver's last published collection. He was one of the few authors who brought the short story back as it were in the 1980's. People often compare him to Kafka, Hemingway, and Chekhov. (Carver refers to the later quite frequently in his poems.)

I can't wait to hear what y'all have to say about it. I hope you enjoy it!