July 30 is the new August

Dear Bookclub,
Just a big head's up that next Wednesday, July 30 is our August Bookclub meeting. Terry F. has chosen "Bellamy's" on Grand in Escondido for our lunch at noon:

http://www.bellamysdining.com/

Looks great!

We will be discussing "A Burnable Book" by Bruce Holsinger. Hopefully you have started it/finished it and know that the following humor would never be so aptly direct in Holsinger's terms:

Happy Reading!
LK

July 2014 at The Winery

Dear Bookclub,
The Bernardo Winery was the perfect setting for our round table discussion of "The Goldfinch". Truly a top-notch waitress, who knew how to serve and artfully ignore us for an inordinate amount of time (were we really there for nearly four hours??!), eased us into a lulling afternoon, complete with rehashing the novel's highlights and themes, double dessert order, and ample time to catch up on each others' antics.

Tartt owned us as readers, with her 2.1 pound hardcover of 775 pages (or 123,324,546,687,099 page e-read) and we agreed, a lot of it was uncomfortable to read. This is not a massage therapist reference. The end was a great reward for all the discomfort and I am sure we will all keep the tale sharply remembered in our evermore challenged memories (nod to TF).

"Goldfinch" was number one in the recent Wall Street Journal Piketty index. Many bestsellers go unread (Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time" had been dubbed "the most unread book of all time"). With the statistical analysis done on Amazon "popular highlights', it has been determined that most of the highlights occur in the last 20 pages of the "The Goldfinch". Mix in some non-scientific hocus-pocus and voila - it was deemed that 98.5% of readers finish. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty (a humble 700 pages), is dead last with 2.4% of readers finishing.

Complete article (99% Piketty):

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-summers-most-unread-book-is-1404417569

We had fun considering the three diverse books Wanda presented for our upcoming November selection:

"Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin" by Jill Lepore
"The Lion Seeker" by Kenneth Bonert
"We the Eaters:If We Change Dinner, We Change the World" by Ellen Gustafson      *chosen

Next up: "The Burnable Book".

 Please be sure to mark your calendars .... .we changed our next meeting date from August 5 to July 30.

Happy Reading!
LK

July 2014 Bookclub News

Dear Bookclub,
Wanda has chosen Café Merlot for our meeting next Wednesday, July 2 at 12:30. We will discuss Donna Tartt's, "The Goldfinch".

OK... you decide: Tartt/Dickens ...... actually, aside from the jumbo literary style (and similar hair), the parallels end.

At age 58, Dickens died of a stroke, leaving behind 10 children. Over his lifetime, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens also thrived on his book tours, traveling the world and doing hundreds of readings.

At 50, Tartt has written three huge novels, taking about 10 years to complete each. She is actually quite private (and has no children to support), skipping the book tours, etc.  In her own words from a November interview with Irish Independent:

"I think there's an expectation now, possibly because of Facebook and those sorts of things, that everyone should share the Facebook vision of the world but people have different ideas of what makes them comfortable and what makes them uncomfortable.

"Was it Emerson who talked about the great freedom of American life as the freedom not to participate in the life of the culture, the freedom to shut the door, to close the curtains? American heroes are almost always solitary figures in our literature.

"Joan Didion writes a beautiful essay about Howard Hughes who was a lonely recluse but also a kind of weird American hero who built the whole city of Las Vegas and Joan Didion said, 'he's the last private man, the dream we no longer admit'."

 I just love that Emerson thought on the great freedom of American life.

full article:
 http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/interview-the-very-very-private-life-of-ms-donna-tartt-29780543.html

And, recently there is the highbrow literary backlash - (hey Donna, it is a mean world).....  Please check out this quick little article describing not only Tartt's polarized critics, but other authors' adventures with pundits.

  http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0624/Donna-Tartt-s-The-Goldfinch-is-the-newest-bestseller-to-weather-backlash


OK, I must get back to reading....
Enjoy!

LK

June 2014 on the Veranda

Dear Bookclub,
Despite our small rotation about the table, the sun could not be inhibited and insisted on being very present on the Veranda for our late afternoon 'tea'. Thankfully, none of us experienced any phengophobia. A bright, beautiful setting, we enjoyed the environs of the golf course view and set about discussing "My Age of Anxiety". Tiptoeing around the topic of emetophobia, we delicately ordered light dinners, and stayed grounded in our chairs, safe from crash landings or toppling over cliffs.

Ultimately, we agreed we were grateful to have not experienced Stossel's levels of anxiety.


Trudy suggested three great titles for an upcoming selection:

"Astonish Me" by Maggie Shipstead
"The Interestings" by Meg Wolitzer
"Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel" by Carol Rifka Brunt   *chosen

At one point, I'm sure we were a lovely sight of boorish women, noses in tiny phone screens, pecking away with pointy, frenzied fingers trying to bookmark our blog and checking out the parlor game invented by Val of reading the last and lowest ranked reviews. Good reads, those reviews! Fakes can be real bombers and there is an art to spotting them... wonderful; a new time waster. I wonder if they will publish a book of them... guess who would probably buy it.

Gear up for the next selection: Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch". Wanda, where shall we go... Park Aveneue?

Happy Reading!
LK

June 2014 Bookclub News

Dear Bookclub,

Consensus! We will be meeting this month at 4 PM at the Veranda to discuss Scott Stossel's, "My Age of Anxiety".

I first heard about Stossel's story on Fresh Air; very interesting. I really recommend hearing his voice tell the tale:

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/06/260152542/fear-of-fainting-flight-and-cheese-one-mans-age-of-anxiety

Sign of anxiety at NOLA Jazzfest 2014.

Deep breath. Read.

LK

Mother's Day Readers

May Bookclub News

Dear Bookclub,
Our fascinating adventure to the Spirit of St. Louis at the San Diego Air & Space Museum was delightfully fueled by our 2 1/2 hour lunch at The Prado. Sharing it all with Valerie, Pam and Ginger will definitely put this meeting in bold in our memory banks! I am sorry that we didn't get a picture with our beloved Terr-y-ies (next time block out a day and a half for our little lunch meeting).

Anyone interested in purchasing the old Lindbergh mural? (Disclosure: it has a bit of a "black biological substance" deposit.) Thursday's paper had this interesting column by Diane Bell about our airport art:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/may/08/tp-new-airport-art-popular-saving-old-work-is-too/

Books I suggested for our next selection:
"Thank You for Your Service" by David Finkel
"Sous Chef, 24 Hours on the Line" by Michael Gibney
"The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown


Stave off any anxiety about getting it finished by starting it now!!

(And nothing says, "Happy Mother's Day" like a nag about anxiety.)

I appreciate all that you, as friends, have shared over the years about being mothers, grandmothers, aunties, daughters,  & granddaughters. You inspire and support more than you will every know!











Read with peace of mind,
LK

Updated Plans for May Meeting

The Spirit in San Diego

Dear Bookclub, 

May is turning into another adventurous meeting (thanks to Valerie's ideas!). In addition to having 'bring-a-girlfriend-to-bookclub', it has been suggested to view "The Aviator's Wife" ultimate machine. Lunch at The Prado at 12:30 followed by a visit to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Although the original Spirit of St. Louis is in Washington D.C. at the National Air & Space Museum, please see the story below about the San Diego model. Update your calendars please and we can make plans to carpool closer to our date.

Happy Reading!
LK

<from sandiegoairandspace.org>

The Spirit of St. Louis

Considered one of the most famous airplanes in history, the Ryan NYP (New York Paris) Spirit of St. Louis was flown by Charles Augustus Lindbergh.
Built essentially along the lines of the Ryan M-1, the NYP was bigger. It had longer wings which had fuel tanks inside (152 gallons), as well as a longer fuselage, again to hold more fuel. It did not have a windshield and Lindbergh's view forward was blocked by a huge fuel tank in front (88 gallons). Instead, a retractable periscope was installed which gave him a view forward for landing, giving up nothing to aerodynamic drag. Also, Lindbergh was very tall and could easily lean over and look out the window if needed. The designed total gasoline capacity was 425 gallons. The airplane had a very small tail group, specifically designed that way by Lindbergh, so that the airplane would be unstable in order to keep his attention over the long expanse of the Atlantic.
The original "Spirit" was built in sixty days at a cost of about $12,000 in 1927 dollars. After 24 test flights in the San Diego area, Lindbergh took off for New York via St. Louis. He landed at Curtiss Field in New York on May 12, 1927, and after six more test flights he made the momentous flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21 landing with enough fuel to fly more than 1,000 additional miles!
Fifty-two years to the day after Lindbergh's first flight, the Museum's exact duplicate built to the original Don Hall plans, which sits in our rotunda, was flown by Ryan test pilot Ray Cote. After two hours and forty two minutes of airtime over San Diego it was retired to the then new Aerospace Museum in June 1979. It replaced a reproduction built by the late Frank Tallman who flew it in the 1967 Paris Air Show, then sold it to the Museum and later was lost in the fire that destroyed the original Museum in 1978. There are other aircraft which resemble the original "Spirit" but none are exact duplicates or "replicas" as the term is defined by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (where the original hangs). Replica means "constructed by the original builders" and ours was, built by Ed Morrow, T. Claude Ryan and John Van Der Linde all from the original Ryan Mahoney factory. They were not the only builders of course; there were 34 other volunteers also.
Other look alikes are converted Ryan B-5 Broughams, of which one is at the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. This was one of three built for the movie "The Spirit of St. Louis" with Jimmy Stewart who donated it to that museum. These are reproductions.
Our "Spirit" last flew for the seventy fifth anniversary of the naming of Lindbergh Field on August 16, 2003.
It was then restored and put on display in our rotunda, preserved until the next planned flight, the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Lindbergh's flight to Paris in 2027.