Next Meeting

Now that you've started the book, is the first week of January still a good time to meet?

Jane Austen-2008

"Masterpiece Theater has good news for Jane Austen's millions of fans: PBS's beloved British drama series will broadcast adaptations of all of Austen's six novels, plus a new drama based on her life. It's the first time in television history that her books have been broadcast as a complete collection..."

"Mullet Love"

a little treat

for those who attended white elephant:

MULLET LOVE by the Maple Street Band

AC/DC's in town, got to get in my truck
Me and mullet girl, yeah we're mullets in luv
Got some Busch in the car, got some Dorals in my pocket
If ise an astronaut, I'd be on a mullet rocket

Mullet Love, flowin like the grain of Iowa,
Mullet Love, higher than the hills of Tennessee.
Mullet Love, flowin like the grain of Iowa
Mullet Love, Mullet Love, Mullet Love

Now the Dorals all gone, and the Busch done been drank
And I beat up this kid who called my woman a skank
I looked in her eyes, said honey we'd never part
she gave me a grin, and took off her carhart.

Mullet Love, flowin like the grain of Iowa,
Mullet Love, higher than the hills of Tennessee.
Mullet Love, flowin like the grain of Iowa
Mullet Love, Mullet Love, Mullet Love

as per our lyricist steve, "I would like to mention there were several versions of the third verse, which i have omitted completely. Also, "and took off her carhart" is sang in a whisper. "

You're welcome,
Scott

White Elephant

The White Elephant Book Exchange is a go. We'll do it at the Lockview (old Lime Spider) in downtown Akron at 6:00 this Thursday. Bring the worst book you own and wrap it up. We'll do standard WE rules and allow you to steal books of anyone that has already picked.

Middlesex After All

Let me start off with a mea culpa. As I was informed by our fearless leader, it turns out that Middlesex is only 500 pages, not 1100 as I incorrectly stated last night. Since that was the #1 pick in the vote, I think that we should go for it. I would suggest that we meet again the second week in January. We can take another vote in a few weeks about whether we want to just talk about the first half of the book or whether we want to discuss the whole thing. That way, no one has to feel rushed around the holidays. What do you think?

Wrap-up & Discussion Questions

A Dirty Job

by Christopher Moore

(spoilers ahead)

Dramatis Personae

Charlie Asher – Unwilling Hero, Death Merchant, Beta-Male

Rachel Asher – Wife of Charlie, mother of Sophie, fan of Sarah McLachlan

Sophie Asher – Daughter of Charlie, deadly with “kitty” at 100 yards, Luminatus

Minty Fresh – Death Merchant, CD store owner, wielder of massive handguns

Jane Asher – Sister of Charlie, Aunt of Sophie, lover of Cassie, connoisseur of fine Italian suits

Cassie – Jane’s partner, “Anti-Semite” according to some

Lily – Charlie’s employee, celebrant of the macabre, inadvertantly offers sexual advice to little girls

Ray – Charlie’s employee, Ex-cop with Batman-like neck mobility, star-crossed lover of Filipino men, possible serial killer

Mohammad and Alvin – Hellhounds, Garbage Disposals

Audrey – Tibetan monk turned taxidermist

Morrigan – Badb, Macha, Nemain – Raven-bodied sewer harpies who may enjoy rubbing one out before rubbing you out

Orcus – Bull headed god of the underworld

The Emperor – Self declared benevolent ruler of San Francisco, presides with his companions Bummer and Lazarus

Alphonse Rivera – San Francisco Detective, Deus Ex Machina

Mrs Korjev – Charlie’s Ukrainian tenant, Sophie’s babysitter who is reliable like bear

Mrs Ling – Charlie’s Eastern tenant, Sophie’s babysitter with eclectic tastes

Discussion Questions

1. A Dirty Job utilizes a number of genres: fantasy, surrealism, science fiction, modern fable, comic novel etc. What genre to you feel best describes the novel?
2. How does the opening scene at Rachel's bedside, in which Charlie first encounters Minty Fresh, foreshadow Charlie's reluctant role as Death Merchant?
3. Moore wrote of Charlie, “Until he became death, he never felt so alive.” Relate this statement to Charlie’s development as a Hero.
4. How do the efforts of the Morrigan (Babd, Nemain, and Macha) and Orcus to reclaim the Above with their dark powers come into conflict with Charlie's work as a Death Merchant?
5. A number of characters in A Dirty Job are primarily comic, most notably the Hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, and Sophie's babysitters, Mrs. Korjev and Mrs. Ling. Why might the author have chosen to incorporate so much humor into a novel about the business of death?
6. Why does Charlie avoid discussing his secret identity with his sister, Jane, who serves as his sounding board and shoulder to cry on throughout the novel?
7. Weird things happen in the San Francisco of A Dirty Job. How did you reconcile the impossibly fantastic occurrences in this novel with the more commonplace events?
8. A Dirty Job incorporates various religious viewpoints: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. Do these views come in conflict with the story?
9. How are Audrey and the squirrel people significant in ending the reign of the Morrigan, and why do Charlie and Audrey fall in love with each other so suddenly?
10. How does Inspector Alphonse Rivera facilitate Charlie's mission against the Morrigan, and in what respects does he impede it?
11. What’s the deal with the squirrel people? Seriously? Squirrel People? And how accurate is that name? I mean, the large majority were made up of anything but squirrel. I’m just saying…
12. A Hero’s journey to the Underworld is a common literary device. How is Charlie’s journey similar to other accounts and in what ways unique?
13. In what respects does the death of Charlie Asher at the end of A Dirty Job seem inevitable? Were you at all surprised that the author decided to kill him off?
14. Was it necessary for Charlie to die in order for the novel to “work”?
15. Was the identity of the Luminatus intended to be kept a mystery, or do you believe Moore planned for the reader to pick-up on it before Charlie? In what ways did this help or hurt the novel?
16. Why did Moore utilize “real” mythical creatures with the Morrigan, but manufacture others like the Luminatus?
17. How did Moore’s handling of Rachel’s death make you feel about Charlie?
    By Christopher Moore
18. Christopher Moore has been described as a “cult author”. Do you feel this is an accurate description? If so, does his current popularity and recognition hurt this title?
19. Moore said of his readers that he hopes they feel as though they are “on the inside of an inside joke”. As you read A Dirty Job, do you feel Moore succeeded?
20. What would you choose as your soul vessel?
    
    

I obviously have far too much time on my hands...

I've located a website where you are able to take a quiz to see which character from A Dirty Job you most resemble. Obviously, it is incredibly accurate and insightful.

You're welcome.

See you tomorrow-

Nicole

http://www.youthink.com/quiz.asp?action=take&quiz_id=37413

Middlesex

I’ve been asked (read: instructed) to write a little blog introducing the next book on the list.

Is it a tad hopeful to compose an “our next book” chapter when we have yet to meet or discuss our first? Perhaps. Luckily, I have faith in the power of our book club which is fueled on equal parts passion, drive and discounted wine. Ah, and let us not forget Eren’s tyrannical fixation with creating and enforcing book club policy; I doubt we will have many who will successfully desert.

I am personally excited about the next selection. I know some have already read it, but I have high hopes that even as a “reread” Middlesex will prove enjoyable. As I have yet to meet 90% of you this hope may be ill-founded.

I’m including a description of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides below. I did not write it. Take comfort in that.

I look forward to meeting everyone next week!

Nicole

Synopsis

Spanning across eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence--Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

Annotation

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction.2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender.

Book Magazine

For the first fourteen years of life, Calliope Helen Stephanides, the narrator and main character of this second novel from the author of The Virgin Suicides, is a coltish schoolgirl, the bright, coddled daughter of a hard-working Greek family who own a chain of hotdog stands in Detroit. But for Calliope, the transformations of puberty do not consist of the usual ripening of womanly curves, but rather the solid musculature, husky voice and nascent mustache of shocking, unsuspected manhood.

Named for the muse of epics—of which this wonderful comic novel is surely a modern version—Calliope is the rarest form of hermaphrodite. "Like Tiresias," she explains, "I was first one thing and then the other." It is this dual viewpoint, as much as the oddity of her experiences, that prompts her to write. "I want to get it down for good: this roller coaster ride of a single gene through time. Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome!" Cal bravely declares, adding, "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic too." It is in fact the first of many classical allusions. Homer called the sea "wine-dark." Landlocked Calliope, as befits her Motor City origins, mentions a "wine-dark Buick." Cal's mock-heroic announcement is the portal into so odd and yet so normal a chronicle of three generations of an American family that readers will find themselves gloating over the book's length and its consequent guarantee of extended pleasure.

The story begins in the tiny Greek village of Bithynios in 1922. Perilously near the Turkish border, it is a center of silkworm cultivation. Here, Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, Calliope's grandparents, growup; and from here they flee to the port of Smyrna, where they precariously survive the sacking of the city by Ottoman troops. During their passage to the United States, the Stephanideses make a rash decision. Acting on an incestuous passion, they start their new life by declaring themselves not brother and sister but husband and wife. In their commingled genes Calliope's fate is sealed.

In the old country, this would be Greek tragedy. But in the America of Eugenides' novel—the land of optimism and self-transformation—consensual incest engenders only slightly more regret than it does in Tom Jones. At one point the author describes a lustful impulse by saying, "It was her body that did it, with the cunning and silence of bodies everywhere." In these pages, human frailty is excusable. Human tyranny, however, is not. Thus Eugenides ridicules the paternalism of the Ford Corporation—which in its early years inspected workers' homes for signs of loose living, poor hygiene or similar transgressions against the American way of life—as Lefty attends compulsory training at the automobile plant. There he is forced to recite, "Do not spit on the floor of the home" and "The most advanced people are the cleanest." Similarly, the condescending doctor who torments Calliope with tests and seeks to exploit the rarity of her condition is as close as the novel comes to a villain.

In other literatures and cultures, a woman who permits incestuous relations would be an object of condemnation and horror. But a clue to how lightly we are expected to regard Desdemona comes when Eugenides describes the braids emblematic of her nature: "not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail." The sudden incongruity of the last two words raises the sentence from something one might find in run-of-the-mill magical realism to true, subversive comedy. Such highly compressed, explosively sudden comparisons are Eugenides' forte. Some are charmingly written, as when Calliope's aunt Zoë sits so meekly in church that "the round gray hat she wore looked like the head of a screw fastening her to her pew." Others have the force of poetry, as when Calliope says of the freckled, red-haired schoolmate whom she secretly adores, "It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors." When Eugenides deals not in metaphor but in historical detail, he imbues facts with the same piquancy as his imagination. The 1967 Detroit riots that destroy Lefty's cozy, dumpy little restaurant, The Zebra Room, resonate with the Stephanideses' recollection of Smyrna in flames. And consider the antic boldness of making use of the Nation of Islam's Mosque Number One as the setting for the recently emigrated Desdemona's first job, teaching young black women how to make the silk for the congregants' robes.

Even a great-hearted novel such as this one has patches that are marginally less satisfying. Eugenides' home turf is adolescence. Perhaps for this reason, Cal's account of his own middle age in the present day seems dim and perfunctory, a mere episode before we return to the moment when Calliope, now Cal, presents her mother with her new identity. Their wonderful brief exchange expands a singular genetic event into an inescapable human experience, one that takes place between every child impatient to embrace the future dictated by one's nature, and every parent who shrinks from the inevitable hardships that child must undergo.

Book Club Buffoons

I can't stand Oprah's Book Club. In no little part, it's due to people like Patricia:

If only there would have been 6 stars...

By the bye, another of Patricia's insightful reviews is for Paula Abdul's Get Up and Dance!

(She loved it)

Meeting

First meeting: Bricco in downtown Akron on December 4th at 6:00.

Yes, it's discount wine night. Yes, this was a major influence on the meeting location.

I'll attempt to come up with discussion topics, but as this is the first time doing so I'm sure they will mostly consist of vague generalities and comments on how pretty the book cover is. No, seriously. Please post any topics you have here or email me.

Book Selections

Morning BABCers,

A few of us met yesterday and the following books were suggested for the next read.

Everything Is Illuminated
Holidays on Ice
Middlesex
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Know-It-All
The Last Samurai
The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break

Take a look at the descriptions, and feel free to leave additional titles and your votes in the comments.

What’s in a name? That which we call a book club by any other name would ______ as _______

A two part challenge goes out to the now named Akron Bad-Assed Book Club.

1. Finish the post’s title: That which we call a book club by any other name would ______ as _______

2. Submit suggestions for the book club’s name in the below comments. Yes, BABC was just a place holder to get the blog up and running. We can keep it if we want, but I’m sure such a creative bunch can come up with something better. Throw out multiple suggestions and we’ll pick the official name when first we meet.

He stood as tall as a 6' 2" tree...

As I'm sure your day was much too productive up to this point, I present to you the winners of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. While I believe most, if not all, of these submission were actually stolen from my college writings, I praise the winners' intentional lack of command of the language.

If you're considering penning a submission, the rules are simple:

-Entrants are challenged to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

-Sentences are recommended to be less than 60 words.

-The official deadline is April 15.

The Lyttony of previous winners stems back to 1983 and is also well worth a read.

-Eren

A Dirty Job...but somebody's gotta do it

I love Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs).

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's a tool utilized by Amazon on new & popular books to pull text phrases that one isn't likely to hear in the course of a normal day. SIPs offer glimpses into the odd little corners that make up a story.

For instance, let's say you were thinking of purchasing Spaceballs the Book (which I often do). You'd probably see SIPs like Druish Princess, Barfolemew, Ludicrous Speed, and Horse-faced Space Dog.

A Dirty Job's SIPS include: bobcat guy, fuck puppet, squirrel people, soul vessel, porcelain bear, dog drool, and big death. How can you not want to read this book?

Christopher Moore is a local Ohio boy--born in Toledo, raised in Mansfield, and educated at the Ohio State University. He moved to the West Coast when 19 and now splits his time between San Fransciso and Hawaii. While Chris has a number of best-selling books to his name, he is most well known for Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

Moore's novels often center on "everyman" characters thrust into absurd situations. One of the newest titles, A Dirty Job, is our first selection. I'm hoping it will be a fun, quick read that will well reflect Chris' style and provide a great start for the club.

-Eren

Christopher Moore's favorite author and other influences, in his own words:

John Steinbeck, but that's based on his comic work, not so much the heavy stuff that he's more known for. Steinbeck wrote about flawed people with great affection and forgiveness. I aspire to that in my own work.

As a kid I think I was influenced by Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury--it was in Ray's stories that I think I first realized that there was a craftsman behind the story, making everything work. That was about sixth grade, I guess. Later on I was influenced by horror story writers like Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson, and then as I was moving toward doing what I do now, in my twenties, I was influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and Douglas Adams, all of whom were writing funny books and getting away with it, which is what I wanted to do.

A Dirty Job, jacket cover:

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant -- you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male.

But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child.

Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie -- exhausted from the birth -- turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird. . . .

People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it.