We had a good Neanderthal meeting on Monday night to discuss Caputo's The Voyage. Following Lumpkin's last-minute suggestion for a location change, we met at the new Fado and sat upstairs on the new roof deck on a lovely late-spring evening. The usual suspects were Lumpkin, Parker, Mullen, and me, and we were joined for the first time by my friend and colleague Andy Delfino. He gets high marks for a) having actually read the book, and b) convincingly lecturing on Post-Modernism (Mullen gets high marks for pretending to be interested when what he really wanted to talk about was Lost).
Anyway, we've decided to make Fado our new meeting location. After all, unlike Fox and Hounds, they closed for renovations and you can actually tell they did something. Plus, it's evidently more convenient for the hinterland-dwelling Mullen. And the scenery is better. The view of the neighborhood from up there is nice, too.
In the interest of time, we went ahead and set a date and picked a book for June, bypassing the usual intermediate step of pretending to care what those who didn't attend might want. Our next book will be White Noise, by Don Delillo, and our next meeting date is Monday, June 23rd. We also decided that the Neanderthals would take a summer break over July and August and would kick off our eighth season in September with a weekend in the mountains (details TBA) to discuss Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons. We'll iron out logistics about that one later . . . for now, though, White Noise, June 23rd at Fado.
EDIT: Hey, wonder if I'm related to this guy?
A Book Club For Men
Next Meeting:
7:00 PM on Monday, September 21st, at Steve Carvalho's feng shui estate. We'll be discussing whatever. Frazier's 13 Moons if you've read it.
The Horde Demands It:
- 1) No girls allowed (a girl tried, once)
- 2) You do NOT have to read the book to discuss the book (a relief to those of you who can't read)
- 3) No Oprah books (this, amazingly, includes Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which has no place on Oprah's Book Club, but we cannot break this very important rule)
Blog Archive
Past Neanderthal Books
First Season: Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier; Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Second Season: Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt; I Am One Of You Forever and Brighten the Corner Where You Are, by Fred Chappell; The Fool's Progress, by Edward Abbey; The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien; Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov; As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner; Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene; Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse; The Brothers K, by David James Duncan; Turn of the Century, by Kurt Andersen
Third Season: A Prayer for Owen Meaney, by John Irving; Catch 22, by Joseph Heller; The Winter of Our Discontent, by John Steinbeck; Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, and Grendel, by John Gardner; The Iliad, by Homer(?); The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway; Letters From the Earth, by Mark Twain
Fourth Season: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene; Black Dogs, by Ian McEwan; Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner; A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole; Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, by James Gleick; Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire; Anthem, by Ayn Rand; Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
Fifth Season: True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey; About a Boy, by Nick Hornby; The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen; A Wild Sheep Chase, by Hakuri Murakami; If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino; Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk
Sixth Season: In Open Spaces, by Russell Rowland; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer; The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert; Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan; Floating Opera, by John Barth; The Crisis of Islam, by Bernard Lewis; The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard; Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.
Current Season: No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy; Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; All The King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren; A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter; The Voyage, by Philip Caputo; White Noise, by Don Delillo
Atlanta Book Club Reading Group Literature Discussion
3 comments:
Okay, so I finished The Voyage yesterday, and once again I'm kicking myself for not having completed a book in time for our meeting.
A couple of thoughts, though . . . I completely agree that the book could have been longer. I really enjoyed Sybil's reconstruction of the family history not only for the answers that it provided but also for its fill-in-the-gaps detective work. But her sleuthing is only summarized in conversation between Sybil and the narrator rather than really shown in the narrative. Having become interested in her as a character in the book's early chapters, I would have enjoyed her story's getting more development. The summarizing seems like a cut corner, somehow. The revelations she makes at the end are quite juicy, so it would have been nice to savor them a little longer.
That said, I still really liked the book. I took the chance to go back and reread some of the early chapters after knowing the full story, and I had to smile at how many glimpses of the truth I missed the first time through.
I agree with you, Clark. The last 50 pages of that book make the whole thing worth it.
WHITE NOISE: I'm almost finished. This book is very funny and somewhat ominous. Whenever you wonder what a plot story will be, you can always count on imminenet DEATH to enter as a major theme, and this book is no exception. It definintely pokes fun at how silly and mundane much of our lives have become. Listen for the blurbs that come from the television in the story...very funny. Has anyone tried piecing them together? I thought about it. Oh well, finish your books you pansies!
Damn it all! I forgot we where meeting again and therefore have not read the book. For some reason I thought we were in recess.
No matter, I will be present tomorrow evening. I'll spend my time eating those mini burgers and taking in the scenery.
I'm glad you guys liked The Voyage. Could someone please explain to my how one uses italics in this blog? I'm so behind the times . . .
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