Our next meeting will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, October 21, at Café Borrone in Menlo Park. We will be discussing Haruki Murakami's novel Sputnik Sweetheart. Yes, yes—two consecutive books by non-American authors. Please e-mail me if you are interested in participating in our next book discussion.

Current book club selections: Sputnik Sweetheart by Huraki Murakami.

Previous book club selections:
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

People, People--

I am interested in starting a book club to read well-written works of literature, mostly American, of both fiction and nonfiction, since there is very, very little difference I can see between fiction and literary nonfiction--rendering the distinction mostly meaningless. I am looking for other people in their twenties and thirties who care intensely about literature (because reading is fun, above all else), and would like to get together to discuss what they've read. If you do not fit in the aforementioned age range, but your spirit does, that is okay as well. Also, I hope to find people who would like to attend literary events.

Just to give you an idea of what might be covered in the group and what won't, I should probably mention a couple things about the books I read. Currently, I am looking to read mainly to get a better grasp of authors' writing styles and to improve my own in the process. If the quality of writing is good enough, I'm willing to read just about anything. However, I do believe that pretty much all good novels worth reading are in some way funny--whether outrageously so like Pynchon's or more darkly humorous like Kafka's. When it comes to fiction, I care very much about characters and whether an author's prose can move me from one sentence to the next. I do not care about plot, and I do not care what happens next within a novel's plot. If I do find myself saying, "I want to know what happens next," it is in the sense of what happens next in--say--a given sentence. Jonathan Lethem is a wonderful and wonderfully inventive author who makes me say that.

Anyhow, some of the authors that we would consider using for book club selections off the top of my head are, in no specific order: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, Dave Eggers, Eric Schlosser, Roger Angell, David Halberstam, Paula Fox, Lorrie Moore, Janet Flanner, Anne Tyler, Henry Miller, Annie Dillard, Michael Cunningham, Edmund Wilson, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Robert Mailer Anderson, Louis Menand, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Sedaris, Donald Barthelme, J.D. Salinger, Don DeLillo, Saul Bellow, Roger Kahn, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Willa Cather, Paul Krugman, Francis Fukuyama, Meghan Daum, Mavis Gallant, Michael Chabon, Amanda Davis, Haynes Johnson, Richard Feynman...well, you get the idea.

There will be some short books, some long ones, some difficult ones, and some not-so-difficult ones.

A few of the non-American authors we would consider are: Kundera, Rimbaud, Sartre, Marquez, Kafka, Camus, Hornby, Nietzsche, Rilke.

Nonfiction works will be drawn from a variety of topics including, but not limited to: American history, literary essays, biography, medicine, science, baseball, current events, philosophy, literary (dare I say?) criticism, music, economics, and politics.

Additionally, we hope that new members will offer suggestions that will help guide our reading selections.

If you are interested in joining, please send me an e-mail with some information about yourself and your literary interests. Also, please note how often you would like to meet--weekly? monthly?--how much you will read--one book a month? two? three?--and what days and times are best for meeting.

Right now, I'm thinking about holding our discussion group in the late afternoon on weekends, but that is amenable. It all depends on what sort of response I get, when people are free, et cetera.

I would also like to note that people who think that Oprah Winfrey has great taste in books and who think that Jonathan Franzen is a jerk for suggesting otherwise may want to avoid this book club. People who believe that Barnes and Noble is a good bookstore are encouraged to do the same.

People who believe in bringing writers and readers together in building community, people who trust the makers of their art, people who like to laugh, people who think that literature can change and even save lives--you--you, are fully encouraged to join us!

That is all for now.

Best,
Ricky