kwg Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 That are not depressing. I am tired of feeling sad. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwg Posted September 22, 2014 Author Share Posted September 22, 2014 Bump for morning crowd :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Come on over to the Book a Week thread. You can hear about what we're all reading! Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stacia Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I think Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi is completely charming. Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox uses a series of interconnected vignettes to capture the love triangle between wry, self-absorbed writer St. John Fox, his wife, Daphne, and his imagined muse, Mary Foxe. As his muse Mary takes form on the page, St. John struggles to maintain his already tenuous marriage. Through different time periods and characters, he writes and rewrites Mary Foxe as an embodiment of unrequited love: the young girl who removes her heart to alleviate heartache; the nanny tasked with caring for a cold, apathetic teenager; the fearful daughter reliving her father’s stories of the tragedies that befall rebellious children. Through them all is the shared and often feverish complexity that comes with sustained relationships. Oyeyemi published The Icarus Girl at just 19, so it’s no wonder that this, her fourth novel, sets a high literary bar. With clever, tender, and often poignant prose, she captures the magic and heartbreak of the love story. --Heather Dileepan If your group likes deadpan British humor, Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson is a funny skewering of foodie/travel/wish-you-were-here type books. From Publishers WeeklyUsually writers taking a holiday from their serious work will use a pseudonym (DeLillo as Cleo Birdwell), but British novelist Hamilton-Paterson (Gerontius, etc.), who lives in Italy, bravely serves a very funny sendup of Italian-cooking-holiday-romance novels, without any camouflage. Written from the alternating perspectives of two foreigners who have bought neighboring Tuscan houses, the book has no plot to speak of beyond when-will-they-sleep-together. Gerald Samper is an effete British ghost writer of sportsperson biographies (such as skier Per Snoilsson's Downhill All the Way!); neighbor Marta is a native Voynovian (think mountainous eastern bloc) trying to escape her rich family's descent into postcommunist criminality—by writing a film score for a "famous" pornographer's latest project. Each downs copious amounts of the title swill and carps at the reader about the other's infuriating ways: Gerald sings to himself in a manner that Marta then parodies for the film; Gerald relentlessly dissects the Voyde cuisine Marta serves him, all the while sharing recipes for his own hilariously absurd cuisine. Rock stars, helicopters, the porn director and son, and Marta's mafia brother all make appearances. The fun is in Hamilton-Paterson's offhand observations and delicate touch in handling his two unreliable misfits as they find each other—and there's lots of it. Translation is a Love Affair by Jacques Poulin is just a nice -- as in, nice people doing nice things -- novel. A quietly affecting modern fairy tale told with humor and warmth, Translation is a Love Affair is a slender novel of immense humanity. A Quebecois novelist with a bad back and his vivacious young translator discover a stray cat with an SOS attached to its collar. They embark upon a search for its owner, and when they discover a young girl with bandaged wrists they are drawn into a mystery they don't dare neglect. The world Poulin creates is haunted by dark memories, isolation, and tragedy, yet it is a world in which language - and love - are the most immediate and vital forces, where one human being hearing a cry of distress of another is compelled to shed one's own inhibitions to respond. Also, if your book club likes non-fiction, maybe try one of A.J. Jacobs' books. I've read both The Year of Living Biblically and The Guinea Pig Diaries & really enjoyed them. Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened is hilarious (but has a good bit of profanity, if that is something your group considers in selecting a book). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwg Posted September 24, 2014 Author Share Posted September 24, 2014 Thank you both! I will check out all the suggestions and the thread! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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