July Selection

Marta has selected Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill for our July discussion. The genre is fantasy/fable/fairy tale.

From the publisher's web site:

The publication of Joe Hill’s beautifully textured, deliciously scary debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was greeted with the sort of overwhelming critical acclaim that is rare for a work of skin-crawling supernatural terror. It was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Atlanta magazine, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Village Voice, to name but a few. Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Neil Gaiman of The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and Anansi Boys fame calls Joe Hill’s story of a jaded rock star haunted by a ghost he purchased on the internet, “relentless, gripping, powerful.” Open this Heart-Shaped Box from two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Hill if you dare and see what all the well-deserved hoopla is about. 

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest purchase, an item he discovered on the Internet: I will sell my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder . . . For a thousand dollars, Jude has become the owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. Suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored Mustang . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one hand . . .

The Book Snobs gathered at Marta's house on Monday, July 29. Marta served home made Mexican food that was outstanding.

November 2010 Selection

Sandra has selected Kindred by Octavia Butler as the November selection from the Fantasy genre.

The Best Notes says this about Kindred.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is abruptly snatched from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, has summoned her across time to save him from drowning. After this first summons, she is drawn back, again and again, to protect Rufus and ensure he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana’s ancestor.

Each time she arrives in the past, Dana’s sojourns will become more and more dangerous because of Rufus’ obsessive need for her. The reader never knows whether she will survive one journey or the next. It’s only when she finally must save herself from rape ... that she is finally freed from the pull of the past.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Book Snobs gathered at Sandra's home on Monday, November 29 for dinner, drinks and discussion. Sandra served a great salad and delicious homemade lasagna and, of course, a variety of wines.

Kindred was a great book for discussion. The story is of a modern-day black woman, married to a white man, who time travels back to the antebellum south. She is faced with many moral dilemmas as she meets her ancestors both slave and free and must learn to live among them yet still remain a modern American woman. She faces the possibility of changing history which will inevitably change her own future.