attn 09ers book club

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Posted by tanda826

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Posted by beram63

i actually read prep already i'd really like to participate. she just came out with another book tho--american bride or american wife--something about being the first lady.

i had suggested choke by chuck palahniuk bc it just came out as a movie.

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Ok, Prep is out-I guess I'll save it for another day, how was it anyway?
One of the other girls mentioned on the previous post that she had read Choke already.
Damn, who knew choosing a book would be so damn hard!
what about:
matrimony by joshua henkin
or
eat, pray, love by Ellizabeth Gilbert

keep the suggestions coming girls!

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Prep was ok. I thought it was a little wordy. Parts of it were hard to get through.

Matrimony
by Joshua Henkin


Synopsis
It's the fall of 1986, and Julian Wainwright, an aspiring writer, arrives at Graymont College in New England. Here he meets Carter Heinz, with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship, and beautiful *** Mendelsohn, with whom he falls in love. Spurred on by a family tragedy, Julian and ***'s love affair will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next fifteen years. Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is a stunning novel of love and friendship, money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It is a richly detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone-to do it when you're young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.

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Posted by PROBM

Choke look s good. I am def interested in reading it . below are some reviews, overview and note from publisher

From the Publisher
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.


From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
Chuck Palahniuk, author of the dangerously brilliant Fight Club, pulls no punches in his latest novel, Choke. Once again, Palahniuk invites us to experience the underground, church-basement-dwelling world of the 12-step program. Only this time we're not in for testicular, bone, or skin cancer; this time we're dealing with sexual addiction. Not that former med student Victor Mancini has a problem, 'cause he doesn't. But when it comes to getting a little action, where better to go?

In Choke, as in all of Palahniuk's work, we hear the echoes of writers as diverse as Jonathan Swift, Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bret Easton Ellis. But Palahniuk's voice is so unique, and his perspective so specific and fresh, one can hardly call his fiction derivative. Brazenly addressing our sexual excesses, our obsession with death, and our yearning for love, Palahniuk paints a horrific but ultimately fascinating portrait of the 21st-century psyche whose effect is much like bearing witness to an accident: Gruesome as it is, it is impossible not to look. (Cary Goldstein)




Review

Speechless
Ashlie ([email protected]), an enthused reader, 08/20/2008

I can't exactly say I'm speechless because I do have things to say about this book, but it's hard to put into words how I would describe it. So far I've only read two of Chuck Palahniuk's books and each are completely different and yet the same. All of them get you hooked within the first paragraph. His writing is pure genius because each scene is intricately detailed and framed with witty humor. Like his other books, Choke has random facts that make you wonder how in the world he knows these little tidbits of information. I would recommend this book to anyone that wants a strange yet disturbingly great book that you just can't put down.

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Maybe we can do another Chuck Palahniuk book instead. Let's add a few to the list.

Now...when should we start?

ok book clubbers,
we have a ton of girls in the club, all of whom are all thrilled that we are doing this!!
What book suggestions are we going to poll?

It would be awesome if we could pick our book by the end of the week so we can all go out, buy our book and get reading!

Please put in your suggestions

my step-sister recommended invisible monsters by palahniuk:



Palahniuk's grotesque romp aims to skewer the ruthless superficiality of the fashion world and winds up with a tale as savagely glib as what it derides. Narrator Shannon McFarland, once a gorgeous fashion model, has been hideously disfigured in a mysterious drive-by shooting. Her jaw has been shot off, leaving her not only bereft of a career and boyfriend, but suddenly invisible to the world. Along comes no-nonsense, pill-popping diva Brandy Alexander, a resplendent, sassy, transgendered chick, who has modeled her body rearrangement--the breast implants, the hair, the figure--on what Shannon used to look like. Brandy suggests veils, high camp and no self-pity. Shannon wants revenge[...] Adding to the plot's contrivances are the relentless flashbacks, heralded at the beginning of almost every paragraph with 'Jump back to...' and the author's pretentious device of using a fashion photographer's commands ('Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break') to signpost the narrator's epiphanies. Palahniuk writes like he's overdosed on Details magazine. Though the absurd surprise ending may incite groans of disbelief, this book does have fun moments when campy banter tops the heroine's flat, whiny bathos.

the author of prep's new book:



Sittenfeld tracks, in her uneven third novel, the life of bookish, naïve Alice Lindgren and the trajectory that lands her in the White House as first lady. Charlie Blackwell, her boyishly charming rake of a husband, whose background of Ivy League privilege, penchant for booze and partying, contempt for the news and habit of making flubs when speaking off the cuff, bears more than a passing resemblance to the current president (though the Blackwells hail from Wisconsin, not Texas). Sittenfeld shines early in her portrayal of Alice's coming-of-age in Riley, Wis., living with her parents and her mildly eccentric grandmother. A car accident in her teens results in the death of her first crush, which haunts Alice even as she later falls for Charlie and becomes overwhelmed by his family's private summer compound and exclusive country club membership. Once the author leaves the realm of pure fiction, however, and has the first couple deal with his being ostracized as a president who favors an increasingly unpopular war, the book quickly loses its panache and sputters to a weak conclusion that doesn't live up to the fine storytelling that precedes it.

I would love to join

this just won the pulitzer:



Díaz's gutsy short story collection Drown (1996) made the young Dominican American a literary star. Readers who have had to wait a decade for his first novel are now spectacularly rewarded. Paralleling his own experiences growing up in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, he has choreographed a family saga at once sanguinary and sexy that confronts the horrific brutality at loose during the reign of the dictator Trujillo. Díaz's besieged characters look to the supernatural for explanations and hope, from fukú, the curse unleashed when Europeans arrived on Hispaniola, to the forces dramatized in the works of science fiction and fantasy so beloved by the chubby ghetto nerd Oscar Wao, the brilliantly realized boy of conscience at the center of this whirlwind tale. Writing in a combustible mix of slang and lyricism, Díaz loops back and forth in time and place, generating sly and lascivious humor in counterpoint to tyranny and sorrow. And his characters—Oscar, the hopeless romantic; Lola, his no-nonsense sister; their heartbroken mother; and the irresistible homeboy narrator—cling to life with the magical strength of superheroes, yet how vibrantly human they are. Propelled by compassion, Díaz's novel is intrepid and radiant.

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Posted by tanda826

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Posted by beram63

i actually read prep already i'd really like to participate. she just came out with another book tho--american bride or american wife--something about being the first lady.

i had suggested choke by chuck palahniuk bc it just came out as a movie.

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Ok, Prep is out-I guess I'll save it for another day, how was it anyway?
One of the other girls mentioned on the previous post that she had read Choke already.
Damn, who knew choosing a book would be so damn hard!
what about:
matrimony by joshua henkin
or
eat, pray, love by Ellizabeth Gilbert

keep the suggestions coming girls!

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I read eat, pray, love and it wasn't that great.

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Posted by JamieAnt06202009

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Posted by tanda826

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Posted by beram63

i actually read prep already i'd really like to participate. she just came out with another book tho--american bride or american wife--something about being the first lady.

i had suggested choke by chuck palahniuk bc it just came out as a movie.

---

Ok, Prep is out-I guess I'll save it for another day, how was it anyway?
One of the other girls mentioned on the previous post that she had read Choke already.
Damn, who knew choosing a book would be so damn hard!
what about:
matrimony by joshua henkin
or
eat, pray, love by Ellizabeth Gilbert

keep the suggestions coming girls!

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I read eat, pray, love and it wasn't that great.

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I agree.. after all the hype.. i didnt even finish it

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Posted by beram63

my step-sister recommended invisible monsters by palahniuk:



Palahniuk's grotesque romp aims to skewer the ruthless superficiality of the fashion world and winds up with a tale as savagely glib as what it derides. Narrator Shannon McFarland, once a gorgeous fashion model, has been hideously disfigured in a mysterious drive-by shooting. Her jaw has been shot off, leaving her not only bereft of a career and boyfriend, but suddenly invisible to the world. Along comes no-nonsense, pill-popping diva Brandy Alexander, a resplendent, sassy, transgendered chick, who has modeled her body rearrangement--the breast implants, the hair, the figure--on what Shannon used to look like. Brandy suggests veils, high camp and no self-pity. Shannon wants revenge[...] Adding to the plot's contrivances are the relentless flashbacks, heralded at the beginning of almost every paragraph with 'Jump back to...' and the author's pretentious device of using a fashion photographer's commands ('Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break') to signpost the narrator's epiphanies. Palahniuk writes like he's overdosed on Details magazine. Though the absurd surprise ending may incite groans of disbelief, this book does have fun moments when campy banter tops the heroine's flat, whiny bathos.

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This book is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is my second favorite of his books... My first favorite was Survivor by FAR! If you guys decide to do one of his books, I can still participate in the discussions and I will jsut read the second book you guys do.. I highly reccommend doing one of his books though.. They are very dark and twisted, but you can't put the books down!

Here is the sypnosis for Survivor, although IMO it does not do the book justice!!!
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Synopsis
From the author of the cult sensation Fight Club (now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter) comes Survivor.

'A turbo-charged, deliciously manic satire of contemporary American life.' --Newsday

'The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage,' according to the 'been there, done that' wisdom of Tender Branson, last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult. At the opening of Chuck Palahniuk's hilariously unnerving second novel, Tender is cruising on autopilot, 39,000 feet up, dictating the whole of his life story into Flight 2039's 'black box' in the final moments before crashing into the vast Australian outback.

Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Wickedly incisive and mesmerizing, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak.

Here's another one:
It looks like a lighter read,

THE NEXT THING ON MY LIST

Meet June Parker. She works for L.A. Rideshare, adores her rent-stabilized apartment in Santa Monica, and struggles with losing a few pesky pounds.

But June’s life is about to change.

After a dark turn of events involving Weight Watchers, a chili recipe, and a car accident in which her passenger, Marissa, dies, June finds herself in possession of a list Marissa has written, “20 Things to Do By My 25th Birthday.” Even though they barely knew eachother, June is compelled by both guilt and a desire to set things right and finish the list for Marissa.

The tasks before her range from inspiring (Run a 5K), to daring (Go braless), to near-impossible (Change someone’s life), and as June races to achieve each goal before the deadline, she learns more about her own life than she ever bargained for.

Funny, engaging, and heartwarming, The Next Thing on My List features a loveable, relatable heroine and a story with plenty of humor and heart.

lol I feel like we're gonna have so many choices.. someone pick!!

okay,
this is my last official suggestion...

The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffenegger’s innovative debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.


The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals—steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable

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Posted by NickandTara426

How about Twilight?

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I am obsessed with this series! My carpool to work every morning is like a mini book club for Twilight!