The Elegance of the Hedgehog

[December 2009]

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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Burbery

number of voters: 6
percentage of voters who finished the book: 83
highest rating: 10
lowest rating: 6
average rating: 7.83

percentage of readers who hold a degree in philosophy: 0

*****
Marx has the ability to completely change the way one views the world. One need not agree with him to necessitate said change; the evolution of thought occurs with or without concurrence.

So it may be with Muriel Barbery and her eclectic collage of aristocratic and working class figures coexisting in a Parisian apartment.

The title, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, refers, in no subtle way, to the hidden intellectualism (elegance) of the building’s underclass concierge (hedgehog), Renee. Her secret is uncovered by the adolescent, quasi-suicidal Paloma, a paltry girl who is wealthy yet suffers from a dearth of human affection.

I would be negligent if I did not mention that the author is a professor of philosophy. Her novel is dense, overloaded with metaphysical contemplation. The plot develops at an almost sedative pace, but when it—finally, fantastically—engages it is in a headlong rush that leaves the reader almost dizzy with, in turns, exultation, anguish, and simple, quiet beauty.

Concerning the denouement—and here I hesitate, apprehensive of sabotaging your own experience—prepare yourself for a myriad of possibilities and your accompanying reactions. Prepare yourself for anything and nothing, and in this way, I hope, you will not be dissatisfied.

Take it upon yourself to read this book. You might love it or you might hate it; all the same, perchance you will be changed.

Feed

[November 2009]

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Feed
M.T. Anderson


number of voters: 7
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 8.75
lowest rating: 3
average rating: 5.75

percentage of readers who rushed out to get new lesions after reading this book: 0

*****
I read a young adult book to have fun, but the book turned out to completely suck.

Well, maybe not completely. But mostly. I mean, I don’t know for sure because I can’t remember what they taught is in School Inc. about what books are for. Are they supposed to be funny? scary? weird? Are you supposed to learn stuff from them or, like, just be entertained or something?

So, in the story there was this meg stupid guy with this totally weirdo name and he kind of liked this girl, I guess, and they were, like, Do you come to the moon often? No, you? Sometimes. Da da da da.

And then some whacked out unit totally hacks their feeds. He’s all, We enter a time of calamity! We enter a time of calamity! Then, BAM! No more feeds! Then it was, like, totally crazy and I wanted to read more because can you even imagine what life must be like without being connected to anything, just you all alone by yourself?

Then their feeds get fixed and the girl is all weird and then the guy doesn’t like her so much anymore. But he does get a totally brag upcar.

Everything kind of falls apart after that though, and the book is a meg downer and I thought well, maybe books are supposed to be kind of, like, preachy? But really, it was meg null and nothing really ever happened. I kind of laughed at some parts, but then I started wondering if the book was really, like, laughing at me?

So I just deleted it from my feed.

A Fine Balance

[October 2009]

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A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry

number of voters: 7
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 6.5
average rating: 7.7

percentage of readers who were disappointed in some way or another with the ending: 100
NOTE: All quotes in this recap are from the book.

*****
“Birth and death—what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it’s freakish, let’s face it.”

Part history. Part fiction. All epic.

Set in India during “The Emergency,” A Fine Balance follows four characters on a roller coaster existence of day-to-day survival. It is dark and funny and moving and maddening. “After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents—a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

Rohinton Mistry pieces together a quilt of characters (both major and minor) and events (both national and miniscule) that is both beautifully rich and tragically threadbare. The end result is that “the whole quilt is much more important than any single square.”

The main characters are intriguing, if not always likable, each one struggling to survive. “You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.” Although it could be argued that in the end the author makes his opinion known as to which wins out.

A Fine Balance is not for everyone. It is long, slow in places, at times frustrating, and often infuriating. But for the patient reader, this epic tale of a country gone mad is a truly rewarding experience. “Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”

Love in the Time of Cholera

[August 2009]

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Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

number of voters: 2
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 5
lowest rating: 5
average rating: 5

question of the night: Can really good writing redeem a really long story with really unlikable characters?

**********

She pulls the faded book from the shelf, dusting its cover with the palm of her frail hand. The pages are worn and yellowed, corners threading from years of folding and unfolding where the reader had marked his place. As she opens the cover, a musty smell fills her nostrils, and she breathes deep its familiar scent.

This is the book. This is the book that her lover read and reread from the time she first knew him until the day it fell from his hands in his final repose.

She’d never dared to open it since that day. How it came to be on this shelf, she would never learn, but there it was, and without pausing to contemplate the repercussions of the ensuing memories, she had removed it from its own repose.

It is just a book, she tells herself. Just a story. There is nothing to fear from a story, a jumble of words arranged in a particular order. But her hands tremble nonetheless. And her fingers fumble with the frontispiece as she turns to chapter one.

...

As if from a dream she awakens to the final sentence, five words loaded with a subtext that sends her heart plummeting. This is the book. This is the book that her lover, to whom she had abandoned herself and her purity for innumerable years, had so desperately adored. Her stomach roiled.

Who was this man who had loved a book with such unlikable—nay, appalling—characters and such a tedious plot. Had he seen himself in this same light? Had he thought of her in this way?

The writing was beautiful; perhaps he merely enjoyed the language the author employed. Perhaps he felt a particular sympathy for these drifting souls. Or maybe, through some literary trick of the mind, he was drawn to the disease of the title, somehow knowing that he too would die by its clawed grasp.

This was the book he had loved as much as, if not more than, he had loved her. A better woman might return it to its resting place on the shelf for others to find, read, ponder.

She throws it in the fire and watches it burn.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

[July 2009]

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The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith

number of voters: 7
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 4
average rating: 6.41

random quotes about this book: “didn’t love it” “didn’t get it” “liked it fine” “really liked it” “take it or leave it” “liked it” “love it”

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“Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa...” and First Monday Reading Group might need her to solve the mystery of what to think of her novel.

We’ve never read another book quite like The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—and depending on your perspective that might be a good thing or a bad thing. Is it overly simple, or simply unpretentious? Is it choppy and uneven, or consistently varied? Are the African themes beautiful and moving, or too picturesque?

Precious Ramotswe is the first woman in Botswana to open a detective agency (hence, the title). As a main character, Precious is strong, independent, and clever. She solves cases with alacrity, and each case reveals to the reader some new, hidden facet of her character. In this way, the novel is surprisingly deep.

The cases, however, are fairly uncomplicated, and as readers we don’t get far before the author takes us somewhere else. The quick, short mysteries can be entertaining but can also lack depth. Also, the story jumps around so much that it can be hard as a reader to get a good footing as to where the plot is going.

The setting is undoubtedly a rarely seen portrait of Africa. Whether it focuses too much on the continent’s beauty and not enough on its hardships is debatable, but never for a moment does the story feel like is could take place anywhere but the sub-Sahara.

So, is The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency recommended reading? The case file is open. A ruling is pending. You just might have to read it to decide the answer for yourself.

Moloka'i

[June 2009]

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Moloka’i
Alan Brennert

number of voters: 7
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 7.5
average rating: 8.03

percentage of readers who liked this book particularly because of the history: 100

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At the intersection of history, Hawaii, and leprosy lies the fascinating novel Moloka’i. In 1891, a young Hawaiian girl contracts leprosy. She is torn from her family and sent to live in the leper colony at Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka’i. How her life unfolds from this point is best left to author Alan Brennert’s competent prose.

The historical part of this historical fiction book was a completely new and fascinating topic for us. The irony of a beautiful island paradise serving as a prison is haunting; the humanity of the colony’s inhabitants is astounding. The fact that hundreds of people were ripped from their families is horrifying; the government’s desire to protect the rest of a population is frighteningly understandable.

As for the fiction, it is a shocking and tragic story, yet surprisingly sweet and moving. We couldn’t help but root for the young heroine, and her life story quickly became too interesting to put down.

The novel itself is not without its flaws—it is at times choppy and can be repetitive—but these flaws are minor compared to the rewarding experience of the book as a whole. Moloka’i is a well-crafted piece of historical fiction. Recommended.

Suite Française

[May 2009]

Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky
number of voters: 3
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 7
average rating: 8.167
percentage of book clubbers who didn’t read the book (shame on us!): 75

***

[personal disclaimer: Since I have still failed to finish reading this book, my recap centers more on what fascinates me about it and why I still desire to finish it than on our discussion recap...]

It’s June, 1940. You are a French authoress of Jewish descent, and your country is being invaded by the Germans. What do you do?

You write, of course.

You write what you see, what you hear, what you feel. Only you make it a novel, because the wound is still too raw to expose it to the air. You write a true story about fictional characters in the midst of invasion, flight, and quick defeat. You write about the foreign occupation and the tenuous peace it brings. For two years, you write. The story is unfolding around you every day.

But you do not know how the story will end. This part of the story, you cannot foretell.

It’s July, 1942. Your Jewish heritage is discovered by the Germans. You are sent to Auschwitz. And you are sent to the gas chambers.

This is the true story of Irène Némirovsky. It is not the story told in Suite Française, but knowing the author’s story makes the book all the more poignant.

And what of that unfinished novel? Madame Némirovsky’s daughters keep their mother’s notebook and, assuming it is a memoir with too traumatic of details, do not open its pages for 50 years, at which time they discover two parts of an unfinished suite.

Suite Française is part historical fiction and part history. It is haunting for the story it is, but even more so for the story the author herself could not tell.

Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff

[March 2009]

Lamb: the Gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal, Christopher Moore
number of voters: 6
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 6
average rating: 7.33

percentage of readers who laughed and/or cringed, possibly at the same time: 100

***

If thou dost wish to laugh, if thou dost long for thy thoughts to be provoked, if thou seekest a respite from the typical retelling of the gospel, might we recommend the irreverent Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff?

We might. It depends.

Christopher Moore (whose author photos show him in a ratty t-shirt and baseball cap) takes his readers on a gleeful tour of the life of Christ, as told by the imaginary—and imaginative—Biff.

It is hilarious. It is troubling. It is moving. It is raunchy (very much so). It is well-researched and well-written. It is too long, but it is a quick read. It is believable and yet completely unbelievable. It is arguably accurate in its adherence to scripture, but it is full of colorful writing between the lines. It is a story you probably know, but it is completely unique. It might even drive you to your knees (if only to pray for your mind to be cleansed... or for the author’s soul).

Still confused? Maybe this will help:

Art thou easily offended in matters of faith and religion? This book is probably not for you.

Art thou willing to suspend thy disbelief for 400-some pages and look at the life of Christ in a whole new way? This book might possibly be for you.

Give it a try and let us know what you think. Or don’t. Direct all complaints and/or compliments to Christopher Moore.

The Shack

[February 2009]

The Shack, William P. Young
number of voters: 6
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 7.5
lowest rating: 5
average rating: 6

percentage of readers who think the book would have been more powerful if (spoiler alert!) justice had not been meted out: 100

***

Dear reader,

Meet me at The Shack. There, we will together contemplate all that is mysterious about the Trinity. We will wrestle with guilt and pain and fear. We will ponder the judgment seat and the Judge’s seat. We will stare in wonder at forgiveness and grace.

Sound serious? It can be. Sound hokey? Okay, well, maybe it’s that too. But if it doesn’t make you think, then it has failed completely.

If you believe that no one can completely know and understand the Trinity or the depth of human emotion or judgment and grace, then you are right. But who is to say that one little human author can’t give it his best shot? You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. But you should probably read it. And discuss it. And prepare to answer questions about it.

So I’ll see you at The Shack. It might not be easy or pretty or perfect or likable, it’s definitely a trip.

Love,
Papa

Little Women

[January 2009]

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Little Women
Louisa May Alcott

number of voters: 6
percentage of voters who finished the book: 67%
highest rating: 10 (from our guest Isabel)
lowest rating: 7
average rating: 9

percentage of readers who thought the writing was too flowery: 100
percentage of readers who thought the writing was too flowery but loved it anyway: 83

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And now, a scene from “Little Women: The Book Club Discussion”...

“I absolutely adored this delightful book! The writing is brilliant, the characters are so endearing, the story is wholly original and completely moving,” cried A—.

“Oh, how you do go on, dear,” replied K—, “but you are right that it is a great book. I do wish, though, that Miss Alcott didn’t feel the need always to use such ornate, overly elaborate expressions.”

“You are right about that!” interjected M—. “While it is an extremely romantic story – and by romantic I mean both a depart from the classical and a darling love story – the whole March family can be a little too perfect, don’t you think?”

“Of course! That’s what makes it so idealistic and quaint!” added C—. “It’s such a nice little piece of diversion.”

“Well, you can call it a ‘little piece,’ but the whole thing was too long for me,” commented L—. “Too long, too flowery, and after a while I just didn’t care anymore! But I do have to agree that the writing part is superb. What about you, I—? What did you think?”

I— replied quietly with a sweet little grin: “I loved it! I give it a 10!”