July 2011 Selection

Janna has selected Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier as the July selection.

From Google Books:

In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.

 The Book Snobs Gathering

The Book Snobs met at Janna's home on Monday, August 1. As always, the Snobs spent the first half hour or so enjoying wine and conversation. The dinner menu included a large salad bar with many, many choices, two soups, and a delicious artichoke dip along with an assortment of crackers and croutons. For dessert we enjoyed a refreshingly light Dreamsicle Cake.

After dinner, we moved to the living room and discussion began. Many (most) of the Snobs did not enjoy Cold Mountain. Some thought the writer was too detailed in his descriptions. Others thought the action was too slow. We talked about the development of each character and how they changed over the course of the novel. We also discussed how both Ada and Ruby were influenced by their fathers and the loss of their mothers in their infancy. It was also fun for each of us to choose two items, one old and one current, that we would want to take with us on a trek like Inman's. We talked about the perceptions of the Civil War and the difference between those perceptions in the North and the South.

July 2010 Selection

Janna has selected The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. Her genre is New York Times Bestselling Paperbacks.

Publishers Weekly says -- Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Snobs gathered at Janna's house on August 2 for dinner and discussion.  Okay, there was also some wine.  Janna served a delicious "southern smorgasbord" that included ham, biscuits, cucumber salad, 7-layer salad, assorted relishes, corn, and green beans.  We also enjoyed a yummy, but lite, orange cake.

The Snobs were unanimous in liking this book, although some found the subject matter disturbing. We agreed that it got off to a slow start, but once you made it past the first 100 pages, the pace definitely picked up. Everyone's favorite character from the book was Lisbeth Salandar.

Some of the Snobs have already started reading the second book in the series.

September 2009 Selection

In the spring of 1948 on a small Texas ranch, sixteen year old John Grady Cole attends the funeral of his grandfather, with whom he has lived since his parents' separation. The grandfather's ranch has been left to John Grady's mother, a small-time actress who has no interest in it and will sell it. John Grady's father, psychologically damaged by World War II and now physically ill as well, tells his son goodbye. With no apparent future in Texas, and sensing the threat of the new era to the traditional life he values, John Grady urges his old friend Rawlins to accompany him to Mexico. There, John Grady will find that his innocence, or ignorance, will ultimately lead him close to destruction.

This novel follows a young man's journey to the regions of the unknown. John Grady Cole confronts the evil that is an inescapable part of the universe as well as the evil that grows out of his own ignorance and pride. His story is told in a style often restrained and simple, embedded with lyrical passages that echo his dreams and memory.

All the Pretty Horses was selected by Janna for the Western genre.

The Book Snobs Gathering
The Snobs gathered at Janna's home on September 28, 2009.  Snobs were offered a choice of traditional sangria or white sangria.  In keeping with the western theme, Janna served a delicious meal of turkey chili with cornbread and a layered salad.  The evening was capped off with a very tasty apple cake.

All the Pretty Horses proved to be a challenging read for some of the snobs who had not finished the novel.  But, as usual, discussion was lively.  Cormac McCarthy's prose is beautifully written, but the Snobs agreed that at times it was difficult to tell who was speaking in the novel.  The discussion of the novel's setting and each character's role was very interesting.

January 2009 Selection

The January 2009 selection is Left to Tell - Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.

Immaculée Ilibagiza was born in Rwanda and studied Electronic and Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Rwanda. Her life transformed dramatically in 1994 during the Rwanda genocide when she and seven other women huddled silently together in a cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s house for 91 days! During this horrific ordeal, Immaculée lost most of her family, but she survived to share the story and her miraculous transition into forgiveness and a profound relationship with God.

This book was selected by Janna for the "Current Events" genre.

The Book Snobs Gathering
The Book Snobs gathering was held at Janna's home on January 26.  She served yummy chicken enchiladas, broccoli and raisin salad, and a selection of wine.  Discussion covered a wide range of topics including the U.S. governments lack of intervention in Rwanda and how we each might react if our own faith was so tested.