Tuesday, November 25, 2014

January - The Magus by Fowles

Book for January is The Magus by Fowles  published in 1985

Description from Amazon:

A man trapped in a millionare's deadly game of political and sexual betrayal. 
Filled with shocks and chilling surprises, The Magus is a masterwork of contemporary literature. In it, a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching position on a Greek island where his friendship with the owner of the islands most magnificent estate leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately confused by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life. A work rich with symbols, conundrums and labrinthine twists of event, The Magus is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, a work that ranks with the best novels of modern times.
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Books on my "to read list"

Parallel Stories - Nádas
The Dervish House - McDonald
My Name is Red - Pamuk
The Paris Wife - McLain
Havana Nocturne - English
Ripper - Allendes
An Officer and a Spy - Harris
Beautiful Ruins - Walter
The Lost Wife - Richman
Luncheon of the Boating Party - Veeland
The Sealed Letter - Donoghue
Graham Greene
Salt , A World History - Kurlansky
Spice - The History of a Temptation - Turner
When you are engulfed in Flames - Sederis
West with the Night - Berkham
Cave Dreams - Donenfield-Vernoux
Paris, the Secret History - Hussey
Paris to the Moon - Gopnik
A Paris Aparment - Gable
Almost French - Turnbull
One Fifth Avenue - Bushnell
Killing Kennedy - O'Reilly
Shock of Gray - Fishman
A Sudden Light - Stein
In One Person - Irving
Mrs. Poe - Cullen
The Shoemakerk's Wife - Trigiani
The Children Act   McEwan
The Bartender's Tale - Doig
Adultery - Coelho
The Company of Strangers - Wilson
The Wall in my Backyard - Dodds and Allen-ThompsonThe Ugly Renaissance - Lee
Contested Will - Shapiro
Vifginia Woolf - DeSalvo
My Lives - White
The First Muslim - Hazleton
Vera - Schiff
Gutenberg Apprentice - Christie
The Bone Clocks - Mitchell
The Paying Guests - Waters
Colorless Tsukuru and his year of Pilgrimage - Murakami
Dr. Mütters Marvels - Aptowicz
The Luminaries - Catton
Andrew's Brain - Doctorow
Wild - Strayed
Berlin - Maclean
The Light in the Ruins - Bohjallian
The Deepest Secret - Buckley
Empty Mansions - Dedman and Newell
Sweet Salt Air - Delinsky




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Books under consideration for future discussion

I sent out emails with the list of books suggested for everyone to select at least 5 of their choice. That is the first round. Once I have everyone's selections I will compile a much shorter list from which we will then vote for the final selection.

Below is the list of books from which we voted on at our November meeting. Highlighted text should link you to the Amazon cite describing the book.

2015 January  The Magus by J. Fowles
2015 February The City of Thieves by Benoitt
2015 March      The Candy Bombers by Andrei Chemy
2015 April      The Cuckoo's Calling by R. Galbraith

Round one of suggestions
o   A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben MacIntyre
o   The Way of the Knife, Mark Mazzetti
o   America’s Great Game, Hug Wilford
o   The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer
o   Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
o   We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
o   The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T.J. Stiles
o   The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, David Nasaw
o   Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, H. W. Brands
o   Expo 58, Jonathan Coe
o   The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Alice Hoffman
o   Zealot, Reza Azlan
o   Sutton by J.R. Moehringer
o   One Summer by Bill Bryson
o   Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
o   Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
o   Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
o   The Human Age by Diane Ackerman
o   The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
o   Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
o   The Known World by Edward Jones
o   White Teeth by Zadie Smith
o   Wolfe Hall by Hilary Mantel
o   Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 
o   Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
o   The Human Stain by Philip Roth
o   Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
o   Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
o   Paris the Novel by Edward Rutherford
o   The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin
o   The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
o   Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson
o   Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
o   Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
o   anything by William Faulkner, Light in August
o   The Round House by Louise Erdrich
o   Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
o   Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
o   Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
o   Fault in Our Stars by John Green
o   Luminarium - Alex Shakar
o   Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier
o   How to be Both - Ali Smith
o   Our Mutual Friend, Dickens
o   Bleak House, Dickens
o   Tale of Two Cities, Dickens
o   Great Expectations, Dickens



ü  Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
ü  Doer, All the Light We cannot See
ü  Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
ü  Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
ü  Roth, Patrimony (autobiog)
ü  Atkinson, Life after Life
ü  Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
ü  Waters, The Paying Guests
ü  Doctrow, Andrew’s Brain
ü  Allende, Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel
ü  Shaccochis, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
ü  Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
ü  Maya, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War
ü  McDermott, Someone
ü  Ozeki, A Tale For the Time Being
ü  Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
ü  Robinson, Lila
ü  Thomas, The White Hotel
ü  Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
ü  Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country
Glass, Three Junes
ü  Franzen, Freedom
ü  Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
ü  Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Essex
ü  Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
ü  Ciezadlo, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War
ü  Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
ü  Morrell, Murder is a Fine Art
ü  Kulanski, Salt: A World History
ü  Pavone, The Expats

ü  Catton, The Luminaries
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Kafka's Last Love for November

November's discussion centered on Kafka's Last Love by Kathi Diamant, a local author. While few of us had read the entire book, we managed to have a lively discussion that evening.

I left a copy in our Club "library" for those who may be interested. Below is the beginning of the excerpt from Amazon:

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who fled her Polish Hasidic family to pursue her Zionist dreams, who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died.


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