February 2008 BOM

TITLE: Love in the Time of Cholera

AUTHOR: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

HOST: Marie

DISCUSSION LEADER: TBA

MEETUP DATE: TBA

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

In the late 1800s, in a Caribbean port city, a young telegraph operator named Florentino Ariza falls deliriously in love with Fermina Daza, a beautiful student. She is so sheltered that they carry on their romance secretly, through letters and telegrams. When Fermina Daza's father finds out about her suitor, he sends her on a trip intended to make her forget the affair. Lorenza Daza has much higher ambitions for his daughter than the humble Florentino. Her grief at being torn away from her lover is profound, but when she returns she breaks off the relationship, calling everything that has happened between them an illusion.

Instead, she marries the elegant, cultured, and successful Dr. Juvenal Urbino. As his wife, she will think of herself as "the happiest woman in the world." Though devastated by her rejection, Florentino Ariza is not one to be deterred. He has declared his eternal love for Fermina, and determines to gain the fame and fortune he needs to win her back. When Fermina's husband at last dies, 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days later, Florentino Ariza approaches Fermina again at her husband's funeral. There have been hundreds of other affairs, but none of these women have captured his heart as Fermina did. "He is ugly and sad," says one of his lovers, "but he is all love."

In this magnificent story of a romance, Garcia Marquez beautifully and unflinchingly explores the nature of love in all its guises, small and large, passionate and serene. Love can emerge like a disease in these characters, but it can also outlast bleak decades of war and cholera, and the effects of time itself.

REVIEWS:

"A love story of astonishing power and delicious comedy...humane, richly comic, almost unbearably touching and altogether extraordinary." - Newsweek

"Revolutionary in daring to suggest that vows of love made under a presumption of immortality - youthful idiocy, to some - may yet be honored, much later in life when we ought to know better, in the face of the undeniable....a shining and heartbreaking book." - Thomas Pynchon, The New York Times

"The greatest luxury, as in all of Garcia Marquez's books, is the eerie, entirely convincing suspension of the laws of reality...the agelessnewss of the human story as told by one of this century's most evocative writers." - Anne Tyler, Chicago Sun-Times Book Week

January 2008 BOM

TITLE: Absurdistan

AUTHOR: Gary Shteyngart

HOST: Anna

DISCUSSION LEADER: TBA

MEETUP DATE: TBA

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook comes the uproarious and poignant story of one very fat man and one very small country.

Meet Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, a 325-pound disaster of a human being, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, proud holder of a degree in multicultural studies from Accidental College, USA (don’t even ask), and patriot of no country save the great City of New York. Poor Misha just wants to live in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, all hopes of a U.S. visa are lost.

Salvation lies in the tiny, oil-rich nation of Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. But after a civil war breaks out between two competing ethnic groups and a local warlord installs hapless Misha as minister of multicultural affairs, our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century.

REVIEWS:
The novel is grounded in a noble literary lineage. You can hear echoes of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, with its glorification of size and appetites. Misha is a man of leisure on the order of Goncharov's Oblomov, who spends most of his time in bed. Although it's not written with as much compassion as A Confederacy of Dunces (justifiably so -- do we need to sympathize with the oligarchy?), Absurdi stan exhibits a similar sense of humor mixed with sharp insights into the absurdity of the modern world. - Josip Novakovich, The Washington Post

Compared with most young novelists his age, who tend toward cutesy involution, Shteyngart is a giant mounted on horseback. He ranges more widely, sees more sweepingly and gets where he's going with far more aplomb. His Absurdistan, to Americans, may seem amusingly far away at first, but the longer one spends there, hunkered down with Misha in a hotel room high above the rocket fire, the closer and more recognizable it gets. Absurdsvanï is far, but Absurdistan is near. - Walter Kirn, The New York Times

Our very first book discussion...

...was great! There was a good number of people who attended and actively participated in sharing thoughts, opinions, and discussions about the book. Thanks!

Let's keep it going, guys and gals!

FYI: A Thousand Splendid Suns is currently on sale, 30% off at Borders. It's 40% off for members (which is free).