Our Bookclub is the Greatest Ever

Our bookclub is the greatest in the history of the world.

I will take the Pepsi Challenge against any other bookclub and I guarantee ours is the best.  I am biased, but I still believe.

We have a diverse group of people that are amongst the most passionate fans of literature that I have ever met.  Everyone is unique, from diverse backgrounds and experiences, but the passion for the literature is universal.

We have a list of books that each person votes on - if any of the 12 members doesn't want to read the book, we remove it from the list.  As tastes change, we revisit this list and modify accordingly.  It has come to our collective attention that the books we chose by this democratic election process is flawed, and that is because none of us seems to trust our own opinions.  The decision tonight was to change the list to books we SHOULD read, not necessarily the books we WANT to read.  Here is the collective theory behind this:

We recently read War and Peace - a daunting effort that most of us were completely afraid of.  As it turns out, a majority of members that were present at tonight's meeting felt like this was the best or among the best books we have ever read.  Most of us were afraid of the undertaking and would not have read the book without the bookclub - the collective force that seems to drive us to undertake challenging reading tasks that we may not have had the courage to take on by ourselves.

We want more of these challenges.  We want to start at the beginning and see how collective works have shaped history and other works of literature down the line.

The problem with this is, there are no lists that we want to follow exactly.  Also, none of us really want the responsibility of choosing the works on this list because each of our ways of thinking are flawed.  But if we don't use someone else's list, and we don't want to vote on books... someone has to choose the list.  I cannot believe I was volunteered to do so, but this list now rests on my shoulders.  A daunting task, and certainly not one that anyone can do correctly.  Still, why not just do our best and see what happens?  If it's not perfect, at least it can be a good starting point.

This list will not be written in stone and instead will evolve as we do.  But we'll try to start at the start.  We will remove the Bible and the Koran and other religious works but keep daunting reads by the ancient Greeks and even that of Hitler.  What bookclub do you know that would not be averse to reading something like Mein Kampf?  This will surely be difficult, but we hope it will be rewarding, teach us valuable lessons and enrich our lives.

For those of you in the blogosphere, you're welcome to read along with us and see how you do.  There are no rules, this is not a set challenge with guidelines, but feel free to do as you will.

For those of the members of the bookclub that were not present at this meeting, please feel free to email me with any concerns or contribute to our facebook page.

I'm more concerned with getting the list right up until 1900, so don't focus too much on works after this point.  This list will evolve.  It is not perfect.

The list: http://eclectic-indulgence.blogspot.com/p/to-be-read-tbr-list.html

Review: Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

This is my fourth romp through the pages of Vonnegut.  A guilty pleasure, I am learning.  There are some that go to the beach and they bring their ragged trade paperbacks of Dan Brown, Ian Fleming, Michael Connolly and so on... for that semi-mindless pleasure read.  Vonnegut represents something not completely dissimilar to me.  Vonnegut books are crammed with quirkiness and obscure anecdotes and while most stories to me are enjoyable, I doubt that many ideas span the length of time and definitely do not compare to the generally well-known classics that I am accustomed to digesting.  His books, with a quirky intelligence, provide a semblance of value in their cynical nature.

As per normal custom, I knew nothing about this book when I bought it.  What really intrigued me about this edition I found in Kitchener was that there was a stamp that said 'Parkwood Hospital' in the front and back end pieces.  My brain got a chuckle out of this because I envisioned this book being in a mental institution.  I thought Vonnegut would be happy about this.  I was happy about this.  I just shattered my thoughts on this premise though, because I found out it is just another hospital in St. Joes London.  Now all I can wonder is who took the book from there and sold it in Kitchener... or what rounds it made before it wound up on a shelf in my little condo.  The one thing that makes me happy about this still, is that a hospital thought to stock their shelves with Vonnegut instead of some more useless drivel.  I wonder who had a hand in this or if they just found it lying around somewhere from a patient or visitor that left it sitting somewhere.  No point to this tirade of mine.  Tangent over.  So it goes.

The book was about a man named Walter F. Starbuck who was put in jail after his 'role' in Watergate in the 70's.  You will learn nothing about Watergate from this book - just so you know.  It is about the life of Walter F. Starbuck.  And now I begin with the **SPOILERS** part of the review - though I will not go into tremendous detail.

Vonnegut cynicism is in full view.  The media and papers publish nothing but crap.  There is a good part about magazines and how even the magazine 'People' really doesn't talk about people at all (Page Ref: 158).  It's just drivel.  Agreed.  The book talks a lot about big business, through the lens of the RAMJAC corporation who owns 19% of the world's business interests.  It is run by a woman who nobody knows, who turns out to be a bag lady who roams the streets of New York City.  Walter F. Starbuck once had a relationship with this woman.  He finds this out later.  This bag lady is probably the richest person in the world.

The concept of her corporation was to make the world better - though all it really did was make a lot of money.  In the end, she tries to give it back to the people which just means the government gets it and hires a bunch of lawyers to sell the pieces to other corporations.  Very bleak and slightly Darwinian of Mr. Vonnegut.  I can't say I disagree that this would be exactly what would happen. 

The infamous Science Fiction writer, Kilgore Trout makes another appearance, as he always does in the works of Vonnegut.  He is thrown in there as a trademark.  While Wikipedia states he is vital to the story, this is a falsehood probably made up by a VP (everyone is a VP in this book - which makes me laugh in reference to the banks or other similarly structured companies I have worked in) in RAMJAC in order to stir up interest in the work, which they inevitably own.

I mix up the story with my review because to prove a point.  Vonnegut does this.  He mixes up actual fact with fiction (on purpose, of course) - which shows the lens in which he views the world.  It is cynical, but intelligent.  It is humorous, but rooted in morals.  And it's something that I would read on a beach instead of the latest crime thriller.  Deeper than shallow, lighter than heavy.

[This doesn't really fit anywhere, but there was a great part about Einstein undergoing an audit by accountants when he made it up to heaven because the auditors insisted that he must believe that life is great before they let him in.  They stated that there were so many opportunities he could have taken advantage in life to make him richer - and thus make him more successful.  My brain laughed at this.  Hard.]

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QUOTATIONS:
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' "Jesus may have said that," I told Larkin, "but it is so unlike most of what else He said that I have to conclude that He was slightly crazy that day." ' 38

"every successful government is of necessity a Ponzi scheme.  It accepts enormous loans that can never be repaid." 51   (Parenthetically, this struck a chord with me when I first read the concept here)

"The tragedy of the planet was that its scientists found ways to extract time from topsoil and the oceans and the atmosphere - to heat their homes and power their speedboats and fertilize their crops with it; to eat it; to make clothes out of it; and so on.  They served time at every meal, fed it to household pets, just to demonstrate how rich and clever they were.  They allowed great gobbets of it to putrefy to oblivion in their overflowing garbage cans." 56  (I assume he is talking about oil here - love the implied metaphor)

"The economy is a thoughtless weather system - and nothing more." 231

"Frank invented a new sort of cash register for the McDonald's Hamburgers Division.  It was getting harder all the time to find employees who understood numbers well, so Frank took the numbers off the keys of the cash register and substituted pictures of hamburgers and milkshakes and French fries and Coca-Colas and so on." 232

"We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one." 236

Book snobbery or intelligence? Maybe a bit of both?

I recently agreed to a deal with one of the members of my book club to delve into a book we haven't read that we felt the other person should read.  I chose "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger for her and she chose "The Shining" for me, by Stephen King. 

Today, I began my adventure into Stephen King.  I sat down on my comfy couch with nothing going on at all except for the book.  Television was off.  Music was off.  Phone was off.  Complete silence.  Let's really get submersed into this one and give it a fair shot.  After the first few sentences, I already wanted to give up.  Thankfully, there was a quote by Edgar Allan Poe before I begun.  Very good.  But, on to 'The Shining' by Stephen King...

Poor dialogue.  Short sentences creating false suspense.  Listen.  Learn. Grow.  Be.

I kind of felt like laughing at the work because I felt it was written for someone who didn't actually read books.  Kind of like training wheels on a bicycle.  I know this sounds sort of elitist, but this is how I felt.  I promised myself I would at least get through the first chapter, and I did. 

But I learned some valuable lessons:

• Obvious one - I don't like Stephen King. 
• The way I read is different now.  Years of reading the classics have maybe not taught me what good literature is (though, I have some ideas here), but it has definitely taught me what it is not.  As a child, I read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and loved it.  I explored.  I imagined.  I generally felt some sort of growth.  I would hypothesize that if I were to read the book again, I may laugh as I did with my Stephen King experience today.

I battled myself in my thought process here.  Am I a book snob?  Could this actually be construed as a good thing?  I suppose that the answer to these questions, like all of life, is strongly based on perception. 

Is a gourmet food critic a snob?  What about someone who likes the symphony and not Britney Spears?  I suppose that the answer to these questions, like all of life, is strongly based on perception. 

I wonder if any of you have gone through your lives reading, not noticing that you're subconsciously evolving your pallet (see how I stuck with that metaphor? :) to literature until some inciting event teaches you - wow, I have really grown here.  Would love to hear some stories.

LATE DISCLAIMER: I don't apologize for my views on this work and Stephen King's writing style, but I do apologize if you really enjoy his work and this post offends you.  Different strokes for different folks, and we should all be accepting of this.

Review: How To See Yourself as You Really Are | HH, The Dalai Lama

First of all, I want to say that I was introduced to the Dalai Lama and his teachings a couple of years ago when I saw him give a speech on 'happiness' in Toronto.  I was moved to such an extent that I ended up crying - not a thing I can ever remember doing in public preceding this event.

I saw him again in the last year or so, when he was talking about 'world peace' and I wasn't as moved as before - but I went in with high expectations.  He is evidently aging, though he still has such a powerful personality and his mind is very deep and clear.  He talks a lot about the interconnectedness of all and how important it is to show people compassion. 

A lot of these sentiments are echoed in 'How to See Yourself as You Really Are.'  For instance, he says this about compassion:

"You have a responsibility to help them (closest friends) possess happiness and to help free them from suffering, develop great love and great compassion." 219

This book is more about core Buddhist principles (this is what I would think of them as) and not really a self-help book in the 'traditional Western' respect.  It was very different from the other book I read by him, called "The Art of Happiness at Work," in the sense that it was more about explaining a theory then directly speaking to you, from what I recall. 

This book details a few key principles that I could discern:
1. People want happiness, not suffering.

2. Lust and hatred are rooted in ignorance.  The key to solving this is knowledge, partially obtained through meditation.

3. Focusing on physical emptiness through meditation.
4. It's important to liberate yourself from a cyclic existence (happiness, followed by sadness, followed by happiness, etc).

5. All things do not inherently exist.  And even though you may thing of something as 'my mind' or 'my body', they are not you.  The "I" that is you, is not your mind and body.  However, without the mind and body you would not exist so whatever "I" is, it is dependent on the mind and body.

6. To reduce lust, focus on breaking things into tangible components - since they do not inherently exist as you see them.  When you are lusting after a woman, for example, simply focus on her eye balls, her sinews, her muscles, her veins, etc and you can disassociate from a feeling of lust.

7. The concept of the impermanence of our lives.

There is much about these musings in the book, as well as some helpful tips to learn how to meditate and what to do if you are having trouble - especially if you have a hard time focusing on one thing ("If your mind is scattered, it is quite powerless" 88) or you are too calm and you can't focus. 

'How to See Yourself As You Really Are' is a self help book, but one of a different kind.  It does not say things like 'go explore a new place to gain perspective' or 'put yourself in someone elses' shoes.  It simply speaks of the interconnectedness of the world, how to see objects as they exist (their function, not based on materialism) and how to ultimately help people and contribute positively to society.

It was very difficult for me to get through it because it came across as very mathematical (like when I read 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu), but as I write this review I realize all that I actually learned.  I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it UNLESS you were able to get past the mathematical nature and had a really quiet place where you could digest the meaning over time.  To meditate, perhaps.

As I final thought, I would strongly recommend listening to some of his lectures on topics that interest you.  Also, seeing him in person may elicit a very strong response - and it's important to let that feeling pass through you.  It's possible that both these experiences will really help you to understand the true nature of a compassionate and knowledgeable individual.

In Praise of Reading and Fiction

I don't usually post anything outside of the beginning lines of a novel, some of the intriguing vocabulary of a work or a review itself, but I felt like I should make a post on this, an article written by Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize winner in the Literature field.

He wrote a very compelling article on "In Praise of Reading and Fiction" and states the importance of the genre both to individuals and the societal collective.  I wanted to share the link and some quotes, in case you don't feel like meandering through the 9 pages of text.  There is a lot of content about Spain and South America, the former the place of his current habitation and the latter the place of his birth (Peru).  He talks about the importance of democracy, the importance of learning from past mistakes and how all

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html

Quotes I enjoyed:
"Flaubert taught me that talent is unyielding discipline and long patience. Faulkner, that form – writing and structure – elevates or impoverishes subjects. Martorell, Cervantes, Dickens, Balzac, Tolstoy, Conrad, Thomas Mann, that scope and ambition are as important in a novel as stylistic dexterity and narrative strategy. Sartre, that words are acts, that a novel, a play, or an essay, engaged with the present moment and better options, can change the course of history. Camus and Orwell, that a literature stripped of morality is inhuman, and Malraux that heroism and the epic are as possible in the present as is the time of the Argonauts, the Odyssey, and the Iliad.


If in this address I were to summon all the writers to whom I owe a few things or a great deal, their shadows would plunge us into darkness. They are innumerable. In addition to revealing the secrets of the storytelling craft, they obliged me to explore the bottomless depths of humanity, admire its heroic deeds, and feel horror at its savagery. They were my most obliging friends, the ones who vitalized my calling and in whose books I discovered that there is hope even in the worst of circumstances, that living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories."

"We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.


Without fictions we would be less aware of the importance of freedom for life to be livable, the hell it turns into when it is trampled underfoot by a tyrant, an ideology, or a religion. Let those who doubt that literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression, ask themselves why all regimes determined to control the behavior of citizens from cradle to grave fear it so much they establish systems of censorship to repress it and keep so wary an eye on independent writers. They do this because they know the risk of allowing the imagination to wander free in books, know how seditious fictions become when the reader compares the freedom that makes them possible and is exercised in them with the obscurantism and fear lying in wait in the real world. Whether they want it or not, know it or not, when they invent stories the writers of tales propagate dissatisfaction, demonstrating that the world is badly made and the life of fantasy richer than the life of our daily routine. This fact, if it takes root in their sensibility and consciousness, makes citizens more difficult to manipulate, less willing to accept the lies of the interrogators and jailers who would like to make them believe that behind bars they lead more secure and better lives."

"the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy has been one of the best stories of modern times, an example of how, when good sense and reason prevail and political adversaries set aside sectarianism for the common good, events can occur as marvelous as the ones in novels of magic realism."

"Homeland is not flags, anthems, or apodictic speeches about emblematic heroes, but a handful of places and people that populate our memories and tinge them with melancholy, the warm sensation that no matter where we are, there is a home for us to return to."

"Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die."

"fiction is more than an entertainment, more than an intellectual exercise that sharpens one’s sensibility and awakens a critical spirit. It is an absolute necessity so that civilization continues to exist, renewing and preserving in us the best of what is human. "

"a world without literature would be a world without desires or ideals or irreverence, a world of automatons deprived of what makes the human being really human: the capacity to move out of oneself and into another, into others, modeled with the clay of our dreams."

"The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality."

"we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility."