Blogs

I’m a sucker for a good debut . Truth be told, great debuts confound me. They seem like things that really shouldn’t exist, a thing that defies logic and physics; something that should be placed on Stephen Hawking’s desk for him to investigate and extrapolate. Something like antimatter. Or William Shatner’s secret at defying the ageing process.

Lynette facilitates the book discussion group at the Helmerich Library. At each meeting they read books on a particular topic or books by the same author and share their opinions. Below is the newsletter she shared with her group after their February meeting.

When you read Sunset Park by Paul Auster you get the sense of an older New York as described by an old guard New Yorker. New York before Harlem and Brooklyn gentrification, when struggling writers chatted with prodding editors over knishes at deli countertops. When the Dodgers played in Brooklyn and stats were catalogued in steel trap minds rather than fantasy league spreadsheets.

My favorite part of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One woman’s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia, is definitely “Eat.” I love the way that Gilbert writes about feeding (literally) her soul with food that is slowly, beautifully, and artistically prepared. Love or hate the book in its entirety, Eat, Pray, Love is worth picking up if only for Gilbert’s description of her obsession with the pizza in Naples.

In recent years historical chronicles of illnesses have made the publishing rounds. Just as one author might tackle the sprawling historicity of the Hapsburg’s, others have recently opted to focus their research on disease. Some have taken a light, humorous approach to disease and decay, Mary Roach’s Stiff for example, as opposed to a more traditionally dense, academic style. The latter, while thorough, doesn’t really do any favors for the lay person.