The Book Club discussion

D, has suggested each member suggest at least one book for the group to read, making the suggestion before or at the August meeting.

Several book titles have been flying around in our emails since our July meeting. If any are missing here, please contact me or, better, add them as a post here yourself.

C: She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me by Emma Brockes

D: The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

E: Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin

F: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman

Carol asked what people read in South Africa. They read much what Americans read. The books are just more expensive. The children like the Spud series, which may be popular in the US by now.

Two books with local interest. "Laugh Back the Sun" by Lan Reid. The author gave a talk at the Botanical Garden. Interesting family book, did her father commit suicide or was murdered? Historical spy background. Not well written, but interesting.

Attended the South African Book Fair. Much smaller than in US, but lots of local authors. "A Carrion Death" by Michael Stanley, set in Botswana a police detective book. There was a discussion about the legitimacy of writing about a foreign country as opposed to writing about your own country. The authors felt that in the post apartheid era, it was OK to write about other Southern African countries, with an outside perspective. Also how to deal with mass genocide in novels. The numbers don't count, you have to make it personal.

Read a history of the Boer War and "The Great Trek", which provides a lot of background for living in South Africa.

Great to hear from you, Janet!

Janet wrote: "Two books with local interest. "Laugh Back the Sun" by Lan Reid. The author gave a talk at the Botanical Garden. Interesting family book, did her father commit suicide or was murdered? Historical spy background. Not well written, but interesting.."

I don't find a Goodreads entry for this one, either the book or the author! Haven't checked other sources.

Janet wrote: "Read a history of the Boer War and "The Great Trek", which provides a lot of background for living in South Africa."

Is "The Great Trek" the name of a particular book you read, Janet? There appear to be numerous books with that name and I haven't searched the descriptions to figure out which might apply (likely not the one by Zane Grey!).

A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley

A bit on Carrion Death.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

If anyone is interested, there is a strong discussion of Americanah happening here:

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

or more specifically:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/ta...

“Every moment of serious reading has to be fought for, planned for … A prediction: the novel of elegant, highly distinct prose, of conceptual delicacy and syntactical complexity, will tend to divide itself up into shorter and shorter sections, offering more frequent pauses where we can take time out. The larger popular novel … will be ever more laden with repetitive formulas, and coercive, declamatory rhetoric to make it easier and easier, after breaks, to pick up.”

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/...

Italo Calvino on why read the classics:

http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/it...