Book Club for March has been postponed to Wednesday, April 25. And we
are going to try something unprecedented! Rather than carry over the
March book to April we'll keep the original books we selected for each
month and chat them both up.
It's a double feature! It's never been done before! How cool are we?! It's like Advanced Placement Book Club!
It's a double feature! It's never been done before! How cool are we?! It's like Advanced Placement Book Club!
Our March Book is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new—something
extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That
extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple
novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest
work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of
the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby
captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a
permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented
millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's—and his
country's—most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the
promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the
orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then,
but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms
farther.... And one fine morning—" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual
fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American
Dream.
Our April Book is The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2009: Like Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic The Secret Garden, Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden
takes root in your imagination and grows into something
enchanting--from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to
Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort
themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving
against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an
overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot.
This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts, while the mysterious
Authoress's fairy tales (every bit as magical and sinister as Grimm's)
whisper truths and ignite the imaginary lives of children. As Morton
draws you through a thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story
could cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren't clothed
in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the heady stench of
emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that furtively flourished in the
glasshouse of Edwardian society. While most ache for a spotless mind's
eternal sunshine, the Authoress meets the past as "a cruel mistress with
whom we must all learn to dance," and her stories gift children with
this vital muscle memory. --Mari Malcolm
It's time to get our read on!
Mark your calendar it'll be here before ya know it.
April 25 at 7 PM at Rachel's home.
Thanks Rachel!
It's time to get our read on!
Mark your calendar it'll be here before ya know it.
April 25 at 7 PM at Rachel's home.
Thanks Rachel!
