Reading List for 2010

I know you all have been on the edge of your seats wanting to know what the book club will be reading in 2010. Well, the wait is over! After the cut.


January: Graphic Novel Month
Usually for January we have a "Now for something completely different", so this certainly still fits into that theme. It's just more specific! Par example, Amy will be reading:



February: Newbery Winners Month
Casey will be reading:



March: Philosophy month
Will be reading:



April: Books Made Into a Movie Month
Amy, Will, and Casey will all be reading:



Additionally Amy and Casey will be reading some of these, heck yes Disney movies we're talking to you:



May: American History Month
Will will be reading this:



June: Judge a Book by its Cover Month
Undecided what any of us will be reading. Basically, we'll just go to Border, library, etc, and read a book based solely on which cover we like the most.



July: Two Sides of the Same Coin Month: Relationships
Also undecided what we will be reading. But basically, we will all choose a separate book the addresses a different aspect of the general topics of relationship. For example, you could choose a man's perspective, and someone else a woman's perspective, or a positive viewpoint vs a negative viewpoint. Then the idea is that after we read this books there will be a discussion or debate type scenario on this topic. Hopefully will be interesting.



August: Legitimized Fanfic Month
Will will be reading:



And Amy will be reading something along the lines of:



September: Banned Books Month
Which is appropriate because Banned Books week turns out to be September 25 - October 2 2010. Undecided as to what we will be reading. But there is a plethora of books to choose to from. Take your pick.



October: Unfinished Novels Month
Casey will be reading:



November: Fiction Based on Fact Month
Casey may be reading: (based on the life of Laura Bush)



OR: (based on the underworkings of the mafia as connected to the J.F.K assassination)



December: Christmas Gift to Yourself Month
Good old December. Just buy a book you want, any book at all, and treat yourself to the luxury of reading it in the busy month of December.



Read More......

Book Review: Personal Icon Month

The month of March was "Personal Icon" month for the book club portion of the salon. Pretty self-explanatory but both Casey and I chose a memoir or biography about a person we admired. So far this has turned out to be an extremely fulfilling month and I encourage everyone to participate with their own personal icon! It's not too late to find an icon/book! So I chose the book "Me: Stories of my Life" by Katharine Hepburn.



Honestly I chose to read about Katharine Hepburn because I really admire her sense of style. Also, she has a strong but sensitive spirit in all of her movies that I've always admired, so that was another reason I wanted to read about her. But really, it was mostly because of her sense of style :). I am so pleased to say that after reading this book I have so much more to admire about her. I won't go into specifics about her life so you will still feel compelled to read the book, but I will just say that her joie de vivre, strong spirit, and honesty all inspired and touched me. I can only hope to lead a life half as interesting as hers was. But even if that doesn't pan out, I hope that I can capture her amazing spirit and lead my life with the style, grace, and strength that she did. She was truly a force to be reckoned with and she never let anything or anyone change who she was. So inspiring.

And besides how admirable Katharine was, this book was so interesting in the glance that it gave into Hollywood during it's most glamorous days. Katharine spoke openly and honestly about everything and this held true for her discussion about the movies she was in, how the film industry worked, and the people she met on her films. This was a great little slice of the fascinating world of 1930's and 40's Hollywood.

Well Katharine - here's to you. You'll always be an inspiration to me. You were one classy lady.


Read More......

Book Review: Women's Historical Lit. Month

At the Salon meeting we held to decide which books to read this year, Casey and I decided that we wanted to read a book that was fictional, written by a woman, and written more than a century ago - and thus was born Historical Women's Lit month. We settled on a book by Elizabeth Gaskell, (on my part) due to the great success of the BBC "Cranford" series which they showed on PBS. Cranford is pretty short, and one of her other books Wives and Daughters was way too long for the short month of February - so there was North and South, just right in length (if maybe leaning towards the too long side), with a lot of literary value, and an equally good BBC special. I'll admit, I had already seen the BBC version of North and South, and Mr. Thornton is really hot. So I was pretty excited about reading this book. So was it as good as I had hoped? Find out after the cut!




Ok. So while the movie version that I saw stays very true to the book, it was another bird altogether trying to read this thing. For the first 150 pages I had to FORCE myself to sit down and read. The words seemed inordinately tiny on the page and it was a chore to get through a chapter. It was one of those affairs where it's a pretty long book already, but it seems even longer by how long it takes you to read it. In fact, I had to take a break like 60 pages in and read a romance novel in hopes of getting my reading juice regenerated. I mean, what was weird though was that it's not like it was bad or unenjoyable, it was more just bleh.

However, everything turned completely around for me when Margaret moved to Milton and was starting to get settled into her new environment. After page 150 I went into a reading frenzy and read the rest of the book (all the way to page 425) in one day. Maybe it's just that I got used to the narration style, or maybe it's that the book actually got interesting at this point. I think probably a little bit of both.

Mostly what made the book more interesting once Margaret moved to Milton was the introduction of Mr. Thornton, the proud Mill owner. Of COURSE Margaret hates him when she meets him, but Mr. Thornton is totally beguiled by Margaret and thus follows a series of charged debates between the two. Honestly, the interactions that Margaret had with Mr. Thornton were pretty great. So great, and so sparse that I really wish there had been more. But the scarcity of their interactions and how charged they were aided in spurring me on to read more so that I could get to the next time they faced off. I will admit though - reading about their interactions through Margaret's eyes wasn't HALF as interesting as when we saw them through Mr. Thornton's eyes. Mr. Thornton was a much stronger character than Margaret in my opinion. Yeah - Margaret was courageous and had spunk and a virtuous sense of justice - a veritable modern woman, which was great. But Mr. Thornton. A self-made man, with strong ideas of what "manliness" is, and surprisingly sensitive! It was amazing! I honestly felt like, and this is a good thing, that he is one of the models for what romance novel heros are today. It was actually odd to me how much he fulfilled my modern views of what a good leading man should be. To illustrate - here is a screenstill from the BBC movie version that perfectly describes to me how badass Mr. Thornton is.


Heck yes.

But back to Margaret. She was well developed, had all of the right elements there (independence, spunk, courage, confidence) to make her relatable and someone who we want to see succeed, but something just seemed to be missing. I liked her a lot, but I often found myself wondering - "now what is it that Mr. Thornton loves her so much for?" What Margaret really did for me is underline how great Jane Austen is. That seems like a non sequitor, but I swear it isn't totally. All of Jane Asuten's heroines are so relatable and we just fall in love with them. We want to BE them. If Lizzy Bennett and Margaret Hale had a catfight, Lizzy would just straight up rip Margaret a new one. I don't know, I guess we can't expect everyone to be as awesome as Lizzy, but it just seemed like she was trying to be that awesome, but fell just short of it.

Besides just Margaret and Mr. Thornton, there were some really great (and annoying) secondary characters. I loved Nicholas Higgins, her brother Frederick, Sir John, and her Dad (he SO got shafted by being called feminine all the time). And I loved to be annoyed with her cousin Edith and Mr. Thornton's sister. But there were a couple characters who kind of annoyed me when they weren't supposed to - namely Bessy Higgins and her mom. At least I don't THINK we were supposed to be annoyed by her mom. Either way - they were both big complainers, and yeah, sure, they were dying. But do we have to TALK about it all the time? What a Debbie Downer.

Well that basically concludes my review of this book. I'm interested to hear what the rest of you (Casey) think :). And ALL of us - wether you read the book or not (Allison) - need to watch this movie in celebration of our Women's Historical Lit. month.
Read More......

Reading List for 2009

Happy anniversary, Salon! You're officially one year young, and it's time to celebrate. Forget the traditional party hats, and noisemakers, dearie. You are a true New Year's baby, and you get a different sort of gift: resolutions, ambitions, and (best of all) a new reading list! Hmm... and cake is always allowed. It is a party after all.

One brief amendment: a shorter list. It would seem that we, your humble and neophyte parents, mere little women, had great expectations for you this past year. We are a confederacy of dunces! We forgot that you were in the age of innocence with a heart so white and fresh from the ghost road of the underworld. You were a mere infant, a stranger in a strange land, and new to the rites of passage on the road of life. Well here's to the hours past, and to the years to come. We are ready to take possession of ourselves and amend our love's work (if not now, when?) and shorten our book list from two books every month to one. One book will be mandatory and SHALL be read (the punishment is banishment to the jungle, nay the inferno where angels fear to tread). Thus it is written, thus it is law.
Let us now return to our party going, our cakes and ale. We have reached the end of the affair.
Farewell my lovely,
Casey & Amy, proud parents of The Salon.

P.S. Can you find the 22 book titles hidden in the previous paragraph?? :)

Now for the book list...


The following literary works SHALL be read as organized by month in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Nine A.D.

January: "It's Time to Try Something New (Again)" Month

Book: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

February: "Women's Historical Fiction" Month

Book: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

March: "Personal Icon" Month (Biography/Autobiography)

Book: Choose your own. Amy, for example, is reading Me by Katherine Hepburn

April: "Big Names, Lesser Known Works" Month

Book: Sanditon and Lady Susan by Jane Austen

May: "Music Appreciation" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: You Choose.  For example, Casey is reading The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia

June: "English Is Not My Native Language" Month

Book: The Lonely Hearts Club by Raul Nunez

July: "Southern Charm" Month

Book: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty compared with The Color Purple by Alice Walker 

(A rare exception to the one book rule)

August: "I love to laugh" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: Some kind of humorous nonfiction a la Chelsea Handler or John Hodgman

September: "Bestsellers" Month

Book: TBA.  Will be decided once the years bestsellers are known.  We aren't clairvoyant, wish as we may.

October: "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons

November: "The Future's Lookin' Bleak (a.k.a. Dystopian)" Month

Book: The Island by Aldous Huxley

December: "Merry Christmas to You!" Month

Book: Buy what you want and read yourself happy into 2010!  :)

Thus concludes the listing of the books of 2009.
You're Welcome.

Read More......

A Call to Arms!

Forgive me book club for I have sinned. It has been two months since I've read a book for the book club. I officially suck. I haven't even been able to finish Scoop yet, which I had hoped to do in the past two months! Sigh.... So I am deciding right here and now that I am not going to worry about reading Brideshead Revisited. I am still going to try and read it, but I won't feel bad if I don't get to it. I am just going to concentrate on finishing Scoop and being good from here on out! I think it will be easy for me to do that because this month is style month!!!

I am very very excited about this months books. Cary Grant my love - lead me back to the straight and narrow! King of kings, troubadour of sartorial elegance, sexy beast. I wish I could go back in time and be your first, second, third, fourth, or even your fifth wife. But sadly, I will have to content myself just with reading about you. And I have to come clean here - I was SO excited about this book that when I bought it early last month, I couldn't help but start reading it. But I was able to stop myself after the first couple chapters!



And Marie Antoinette, you're pretty cool too. But honestly I don't wish I could go back in time and be you. So really I'm happy to just be reading about you this month.

So let's all get excited about this month of style and hope that it rejuvinates the book club! In fact, I hope you all took the time to read to the end of this post, because here, in these last few sentences, I am going to propose a Salon event in which we celebrate this awesome month and watch Marie Antionette, and one or more Cary Grant movies. I have the feeling we'll want to anyway after reading these books, and then we will be able to discuss their style in an educated fashion. So let's do it! Viva la salon! Read More......

The month of August Books.

So if anyone is interested Casey and I went and bought our books for August. August is Non-fiction month. We had planned on reading two of the "Very Short Introduction" books, but there weren't any at the Borders we went to so we just got some other ones instead. They seem like very interesting reads and if anyone wants to join us, please do!

First of all, we bought three books. But there is only one that is the Official Salon Book of August. The other two can be read at your leisure, or not at all if you really don't want to. (Although I definitely plan on reading all three as soon as possible). So the official non-fiction book of August is: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas.


The other two books are : Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky and This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin



So hopefully someone is intrigued enough by one or all of these titles to feel compelled to join us. Happy reading in the month of August! Read More......

Blog-Blah to Blog-Tastic!

(The Algonquin Round Table)

I've been increasingly interested in how we can take this little blog from our personal round table to something that provokes widespread curiosity. Just look at this - we ARE our own Algonquin Round table, and our own Lost Generation, and Dadaists, and the Friday Street Club, and the Bloomsbury Group, and the Pastel Society. We ARE the new generation.

(The Lost Generation)

The only thing we need now is prospective members to reject in order to obtain our full glory as a literary and arts circle. So how can we set ourselves apart from our predecessors? How can make this blog as creative as its contributors? A new background? Categorized posts? I'm thinking we should recommend and document our events: mystery dinner night and the lawn olympics, and pie day, and Guy's Night. Any thoughts?

(Us??)

Read More......

Is it too early for a debate? The October Books

As you may know we have an undecided category of books, that is, October's books into movies theme. Well I think it is time to consider our options and I would like to be the first to nominate a possible candidate. How about... "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh? Yes, Dears, this book is by one of my favorite authors and one I have yet to read if you can imagine it and (to top all) the movie is scheduled to release September 18! Well, allowing for delays, and assuming that this might be the ultimate birthday present to myself... I think the timing is only too wonderful. So here is my nominee. Are there any objections?

Movie Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Xql3fDM44

Read More......

What say you?

I was thinking about February and thought I would add an additional *Bonus* novel if one so chooses to embark on such an adventrue. The lucky book is... The Westing Game! I just remember really liking it... who knows why. On that note: I have a feeling that we're going to have to repeat the February theme in the future because it has been really really inspiring lately. Could it be due to the fact that we are in a college atmosphere trying to encourage our own feeble attempts at self-mastery and too often look to our younger years to find headway in the shallow end of the abyss that is the future? Methinks oui. Read More......

When shall we be discussing? Or where? Will there be tea? There should be tea. Read More......

A New Year - A New Reading List

As decided in the Salon/Finer Things Gala :
The following literary works SHALL be read as organized by month in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eight A.D.

January: "Now For Something Completely Different" Month

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

February: "Let's Take a Trip Down Memory Lane" Month

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar and Kilmeny of the Orcharch by L.M. Montgomery

vs.

March: New Obsessions Month

The Affected Provincial's Companion by Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy and Selections from The Portable Dorothy Parker edited by Marion Meade

April: Laugh Your Socks Off Month

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut and A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

May: Theatre Month

Travesties by Tom Stoppard
Other selection to be decided later. We're open-minded.

June: "The Name's in the Title" Month

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

July: Travel Month

On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson

August: Learning Something New/ Nonfiction Month
TO BE DECIDED LATER

September: "Size DOES Matter" Month (A novel of epic proportions)

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

October: Books Made into Movies Month

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
Other selection to be decided closer to the actual month of reading - so we can read something that will be coming out close to that time.

November: Fashion Icon Month

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antionette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber and Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style by Richard Torregrossa

December: "Merry Christmas to Me" Month.
Buy yourself the spontaneous gift of literary ______ and read it this month! Yay!

Everyone please feel free to join us! It's so much fun to read and discuss these books. You can join in just for certain months that you are particularly interested in, or join for the whole year. Do it!!! Read More......