Book Magazine - May/June 2002 issue

from the May/June 2002 issue

When you need a break from your book group, take a break with
your book group
by Marla Abramson
This is an archived page. Click to return to the current issue.
After twenty-five years, Tony Panero's book club in San Carlos, California, said its goodbyes. Then, the four married couples who comprise the group loaded up their cars and drove to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway.

Illustration by David Sheldon

Panero's is one of a number of clubs that have realized that traveling�like reading�can be invigorating, and that combining both passions can go a long way toward keeping a group energized. The Sistah Circle of Dallas, fed up with their monthly meetings last year, rented a bed-and-breakfast in Gainesville, Texas, eighty miles north of Dallas, so they could, in the words of member Lisa Cross, relax, rejuvenate and read. The Last Thursday Book Club in Albuquerque, New Mexico, uses an annual retreat as an excuse to travel. The men have gone hiking in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and walked the dusty streets of Winslow, Arizona. "It gives us a chance to talk about the book and get away for a couple of days with the guys," member Tom Genoni says.

@bookmagazine.com

For discussion questions, visit
http://www.bookmagazine.com/groupdynamics/22.shtml.

Participants at the African American Book Club Summit at Sea visit new places and learn fresh ideas to bring back to their groups. The annual floating retreat grew out of the Good Book Club in Houston, founded in 1996 by a group employed at the Johnson Space Center. After the group expanded online with a cyberchapter of more than 500 members, many wanted to meet in person. So, two years ago, 160 members of various book clubs and twenty-seven authors, including Eric Jerome Dickey, gathered for a five-day cruise. In between readings and discussions, participants explored Canc�n and Cozumel, Mexico. At night, the group danced together and sang karaoke tunes.

Lauretta Black Pierce of Colorado says the second cruise, which took place last October, felt like a family reunion. And it wasn't just book club members who returned. Author Kimberla Lawson Roby (Casting the First Stone) participated in both literary voyages and has signed on for next year's.

"It's a great way to let your hair down with other readers," explains Timmothy McCann, author of Until..., "doing everything from karaoke to horseback riding to scuba diving. It was a good way just to connect and talk books."

Even for groups that may not have the time or the resources to cross oceans, creating a retreat can be beneficial. "It's like pulling into a gas station," explains Pat G'Orge-Walker, who has gone on retreats with her Long Island, New York-based group as well as the Summit at Sea, "and getting a refill on your energy level."

"I allow everyone three uninterrupted minutes at the beginning of each meeting" to say whatever they want about the book, says Sue Catalano of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Otherwise, "they forget they're there to discuss and share." Send your book group suggestions and reading lists to groupdynamics@bookmagazine.com.

PICKS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BOOK GROUPS

Ahab's Wife
Sena Jeter Naslund
In this feminine twist on Moby-Dick, Una Spenser is a compassionate, independent woman whose adventures rival those of her whale-obsessed husband.

Coming Through Slaughter
Michael Ondaatje
Buddy Bolden blew the roof off New Orleans dance halls in the early 1900s, but went insane at the peak of his career and never recorded a sound. Ondaatje combines fiction, poetry and lyrics in this portrait of one of jazz's founding fathers.

Coming Through Slaughter
Michael Ondaatje
Buddy Bolden blew the roof off New Orleans dance halls in the early 1900s, but went insane at the peak of his career and never recorded a sound. Ondaatje combines fiction, poetry and lyrics in this portrait of one of jazz's founding fathers.

Dark
Kenji Jasper
Thai is torn between the promise of a career and the allure of street life. When he flees his inner-city hood after committing a violent crime, he finds himself on the lam�and on the path toward maturity.

Last Orders
Graham Swift
As a trio of World War II vets carry out their final duty to a dead friend�to scatter his ashes into the sea�they reflect on their outwardly unexceptional lives in this 1996 Booker Prize�winning novel.

Middle Son
Deborah Iida
Spencer Fujii must face a lingering secret when he returns to Hawaii to comfort his dying mother. In this lyrical 1996 novel, Iida beautifully portrays the insular community of the Japanese sugarcane workers.

Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem
In this 1999 novel about a Tourette's-afflicted detective piecing together both the murder of his mentor and the fragments of his own life, Lethem tests the boundaries of hard-boiled fiction.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Jorge Amado
When Dona Flor's rakish husband dies mid-samba, she marries a gentle pharmacist and leads a peaceful new life, until her first husband's ghost pays an amorous visit.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS May/June 2002

Graham Swift's Last Orders
How is the metaphor of life as a journey played out in Last Orders? With its echoes of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, how far is this modern journey a pilgrimage for the men who undertake it? How does it deepen their understanding of the lives they have lived?

Amy tells Ray, "You're a lucky man, you're such a little man." What does she mean? Is Ray lucky or does he make his own luck? What has Amy's life been like with Jack? Do you think she and Ray will go to Australia?

What ties bind these men to one another? How have the hardships of the past shaped them? Consider them as family men. Why do they have such unsatisfactory relationships with their daughters? What has Vic learned in the funeral business that enables him to be more dignified than the others?

Jack's shop was his "billet." Can you understand why Vince rejects it? How do you react to Vince throughout the story? Why do the older men tolerate him? Does he have any redeeming features?

What is the effect of the shifting perspectives and multiple voices of Last Orders? How successfully are all the threads woven together? Is the resolution satisfactory?

Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn
Lionel describes the Minna Men without Minna as "a verbless sentence." Later, an attack of vertigo feels like "a loss of language." What does language mean to Lionel and what part did Minna and Minna's Brooklyn play in the development of his sense of self? What is the significance of the novel's title?

Julia claims that Minna found Lionel useful because people thought he was crazy and underestimated him. Consider how various characters react to Lionel during his investigation and whether his Tourette's finally proves to be an asset to him as a detective.

What forms do Lionel's verbal outbursts take? How does Jonathan Lethem use Lionel's Tourette's in the novel to provoke action, create or break moods and to hint at the deeper layers beneath the surface of the story?

Lethem's novel is reminiscent of classic noir detective fiction�a genre to which Lionel refers during the book. Lionel as narrator and detective aside, how original is Lethem's work? Did you read it as satire, parody or homage?

Detectives in hard-boiled thrillers rarely exhibit a human, vulnerable side. How far did you find Lionel Essrog an appealing character?

Who is Bailey? Is it important?