August 2012

We had the pleasure of chatting with poet Maya Stein.  She’s currently perched atop The High Line collecting stories for her Type Rider project and will be taking her interactive poetry experience to the Decatur Book Festival in a couple of weeks.  She says what inspires her is “doing the thing you don’t know the outcome to.”  Thanks, Maya, for your time and energy and we wish you the very best in your travels!

Here’s what we’ve been reading:

The Chaperone – Laura Moriarty

A Natural Woman:  A Memoir – Carole King

The Rose Garden – Susanna Kearley

Helen Keller in Love – Rosie Sultan

The Playdate – Louise Millar

Objects of My Affection -  Jill Smolinski

The Lost Saints of Tennessee  - Amy Franklin-Willis

Little Did I Know – Mitchell Maxwell

Bringing Up Bebe – Pamela Druckerman

Blame – Michelle Huneven

Moonflower Vine – Jetta Carleton

Clair de Lune – Jetta Carleton

Fidel Castro: My Life – Ignacio Ramonet

The Journal of Best Practices – David Finch

Wild – Cheryl Strayed

How Should a Person Be – Sheila Heti

Death Comes to Pemberly – P.D. James

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

Bart’s Books

The Five Red Herrings – Dorothy Sayers

Charles Dickens’ Inner Child – Christopher Hitchens

Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity – Averil Cameron

Procopius of Caesarea – Anthony Kaldellis

New & Selected Poems – Ron Padgett

Philip Lamantia poems

Bill Knot poems

A Renegade History of the United States – Thaddeus Russell

A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn

A Patriot’s History of the United States – Michael Allen

Roadside Picnic – Arkady Strugatsky

Stalker the movie

From our sister group in OK:

Lawton Book Bunch

August 9, 2012

Books

Gwynne, S.C.: Empire of the Summer Moon.

Orwell, George: 1984

Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451

Wilson, A.N. The Elizabethans

Rushdie, Salman: Haroun and the Sea of Storieis

Asher, Jay: Thirteen Reasons Why

Bowers, Rick: Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate

Rushin, Kate: Black Back-Ups: Poetry by Kate Rushin

Parks, Gordon: Eyes with Winged Thoughts

Movies

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Theatre

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare – as high school reading

(OU will do a production set in modern times: 8 pm Sept. 21, 23, and 27-29 & 3 pm Sept.23 and 30)

Etc.

The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company)

Frantzie’s link to NPR: “Your Favorites: 100 Best Ever Teen Novels” http://www.npr.org/2012/08/07/157795366/your-favorites-100-best-ever-teen-novels?ft=3&f=100876926&sc=nl&cc=bn-20120809 Geechee Kunda Museum: http://geecheekunda.com/http://geecheekunda.com/

Gullah and disappearing languages Bedre Chocolates (Chickasaw Nation): http://www.bedrechocolates.com/ Chickasaw Cultural Center: http://www.chickasawculturalcenter.com/

NONFICTION WRITING (Cameron University Weekend Class)

CRN 13635 ENG 3881

Nonfiction Writing is often popularly defined as narratives or accounts of events understood to be factual. Such a definition, however, ignores the

many and varied types of nonfiction writing and, more important, ignores the fact that nonfiction necessarily employs fictive techniques in the

reporting of events. This two-weekend workshop will explore a few of the types of nonfiction as well as the role of narrative and rhetorical theories

in understanding nonfiction writing. The first part of the course will explore definitions of nonfiction and its history beginning with medieval court

records and news reports as well as journalism and scientific writing in the 1600s through the early 19th century. The second part of the course

will explore contemporary notions of objectivity and genres such as autobiography, memoir, and “New Journalism.” Students enrolled for

university credit will receive a letter grade.

INSTRUCTOR: William Carney

DATES: September 8 and 15, 2012 TIME: 8:30 – 4:30P

PLACE: NB 1074

From Mary Lou in MD:

David Adams Richards, Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990).  This is the second book in the trilogy set in the small northern New Brunswick town.  Some of the characters appeared in more minor roles in the first novel.  I found them somewhat less exasperating but they are all frustrated and isolated and misunderstand themselves and each other.  There is a more sustained story line than in the first novel but it didn’t really grip my attention.  I think Richards’ view of the human experience is a bit existential for my taste.  Still, I plan to read volume three.

Studs Terkel, Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It (1995).   This is a series of brief autobiographical essays by persons age 70 and above.  As they reflect on major events in their lives that shaped their identities as well as the world around them, they also reveal how they created significance in it all.  There are 20 sections with three or four essays each, provided by leading figures in the full range of American society -- corporate tycoons, labor leaders, doctors, lawyers, ministers, farmers, whistleblowers, and poets. I recognized few of the names but many of the events. The analysis of the evolution of American culture is astute and challenging.

Claudia Shear, Blown Sideways through Life (1995).  The author is a Brooklyn misfit who tells a hilarious tale of her too-numerous-to-count employment experiences in New York and even briefly in Italy.  These include jobs as a nude model, a Wall Street proofreader, a whorehouse receptionist, and many short stints as a waitress.   This is a short, quick entertaining book in the style of a stand-up comic with an unusually perceptive understanding of human foibles. 

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940, reissued Book of the Month Club 1992).  Deemed “A Classic of the Old West,” this novel is set in and around the small Nevada town of Bridger’s Wells in the 1880s.  Carl and Gil ride into town after wintering in a mountain cabin and find the local townsfolk and cowboys disturbed about recent incidents of cattle rustling.  When a prominent rancher’s foreman is reported shot by the rustlers, the men form into an irregular posse and set out in pursuit.  Carl and Gil feel they must join in the chase so they will not be suspected of rustling themselves.  The portrait of mob psychology is chilling. 

Curtis J. Badger, Bellevue Farm:  Exploring Virginia’s Costal Countryside (1997).  This is a slim volume of natural history essays nicely illustrated with pencil drawings.  It describes the costal marshes and barrier islands of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  Bellevue Farm dates back to pre-Revolutionary days but only the graveyard and the foundation of the plantation house remain. It now is part of the Nature Conservancy’s 45 thousand acre Virginia Coast Reserve sanctuary. Over many years Badger rambles the hedgerows, streams and marshes at all seasons and provides thoughtful observations of terrain and its plant and animal life.

James Lee Burke, Rain Gods (2009).  The setting is a West Texas border town and the detective is Sheriff Hackberry Holland, cousin to former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland whom we have meet before.  The villain is Preacher Jack Collins, a stone cold killer with a rigorous and paradoxical sense of right and wrong.  Holland and Collins both carry the nightmares and other psychologically scars of their war experiences.  Other characters include a burn-scarred Iraq vet Pete Flores and his girlfriend who sings Carter family spirituals in the beer joints where she waits table. An assortment of New Orleans lowlifes also figure into the complex plot.  The vivid descriptions of landscape and weather make the atmosphere as intense as the back-stories of the characters.  This is a totally engaging detective thriller but it is much more.  A Burke novel never disappoints.