Closing this dumb thing

Switching to facebook full time.

This was a nice idea, but the facebook groups do all the same things with better features & easier to use in my opinion.

My First Big Post aka Details on Next meeting

Hello, book mates! Sooo, the meeting is the 26th at my house...hows about 1 pm? If you want to grill something fancy go ahead and bring it. Otherwise I'll probably pick up some burger stuff and fixins for you all. You'll just need to bring a beverage of choice and perhaps if people want to bring side items that would be rad as well. If we tally a list of people who are wanting to eat and who, if anyone, is bringing anything then it will help me prepare. Place to be: 1209 Stinson Ave. On west side near Howell Wetlands. 2nd house from the end of the street on the left. I suppose we'll eat, discuss, and then get drunk playing games or just staring at each other menacingly...while Gary complains about the music. Hope everyone is enjoying the reading! Talk to you all soon :)

Note to self (and book club)

Add The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem to list of books. Also, hi fellas.

For Colleen

The book is wonderful. Almost done.

Where is the meeting? Which is to say "where do you live?" Please tell us little Ms. "Waaaah, nobody posts anything".

And what about you? Why haven't YOU posted something other than a comment?

Checking in with y'all

2 things:

1. Haven't heard from anyone regarding June dates. Colleen, I'd say just pick whichever one works best for you. (personally I vote for the 26th cuz I only got the book today)

2. How are you guys liking it so far?

June Meeting - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay - Michael Chabon

Straw poll:
Does June 19th or June 26th work better for y'all.

(Sorry if I stepped on your organizational toes Colleen!)

Cryptogram on the bottom of the pages

I have been saying for a while that I was going to post this here. This is not the solution, just the words from the bottom of the pages put into paragraph form.

Qrerx'f frperg nqiragher

Guebhtu gur pybhql raqf bs uvf ovabphynef. Zvqfuvczna Qrerx Netb, ba jngpu pnhtug fvtug bs n funcr nzvqfg gur hapunatvat fcrpgnpyr bs gur uvtu frn. N tubfg fuvc! Jvgu vgf tevaavat Wbyyl Ebtre naq vgf znva fnvy synccat yvxr n ubjy Qrerx dhvpxyl fvtanyrq gur pnyy gb nynez. Ohg va n synfu gur tybijvat irffrg unq nyernql qenja nsg naq vauhzna unaqf jrer hcba uvz dhvpx. Orsber Qrerx, pbhyq jnea uvf fuvczngrf ur jnf obhaq gb gur vaivfxoyr znva znfg bs gur qnfgneqyl irffry xvqanccrg! Gur tubhyf tngurerq nebhaq erbql gb cyhaqre gur hafhfcrpgvat fuvc, gurve fhorefnaq tbyq grrgu ybbxvat srnefbzr. Qrerx, oenir naq gehr, pybfrq uvf rlrf naq ortna gb juvfgyr n qnevat zrybql juvpu oebxr gur phefr bs rnpu bs guvre tubfgyl vzcevfbarq urnegf. Gur cvengrf, abj yvxr qbirf, sryy gb gurve zarrf, naq gbtrgure, jvgu Qrerx unccl ng gur uryz gur fuvc qvfnccrnerq vagb gur punezvat sbt bs gur frn. Naq guhf raq bhe uvqqra nqiragher - nfghgr ernqre, vs lbh unir znqr vg guxf sne, cyrnfr fraq na r-znvy gb qrerx@chaxcynargobbxf.pbz sbe n frperg fbecevfr!

The key to this puzzle is A=N.

Have fun!

5/8/10 - May Meeting: The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

Assuming this date works for everybody, here are details for May's meeting:

Time: 1pm - whenever
Place: 3310 E. Mulberry Street

BYOB, a lawn chair if you have one & anything particular you'd like to grill. I'll be doing burgers/dogs & will have a few sides.

After we have book club, feel free to hang out. We have cornhole/bocce ball & likely do a campfire around dark.

If I feel squirrelly I may get a keg.

4/3/10 - April Meeting

Awesome meeting today @ the Pub, AKA the restaurant with the world's scariest bathroom.

The good news is our agenda has basically turned into 3 items: discussion, nomination & angry fistfights.

Notes from todays' discussion about 100 Years of Solitude by Gabrial Garcia Marquez:

General discussion:
confusion of aurelianos & arcadios – at once makes for difficult reading but is intentional to reflect the cyclic aspect of human nature.

Supernatural reality – the mundane as fantastic and the fantastic is mundane.

Fatalism, pessimistic view of human nature. Non-family members living in the house without exception submit & are overwhelmed by the will of the Buendia.

City planning at first is very simple & easy. As more of modern civilization is introduced to the town, the worse conditions get. This is corollated more strongly when introduced by a Buendia family member. Religion, technology, politics, war.

Narration of the banana workers' massacre recited as an excellent example of the narrative poetry of the novel as a whole.

I'll make a new post when I find a location for our next meeting. Our book for next month is "The Boy Detective Fails" by Joe Meno.

Any objections to making it a May Day cookout/drunk fest @ my place? I have a frisbee, cornhole, & will have a fucking bitching kite by then. Plus grillin' drinkin' philosophizin' etc. etc.

March Meeting transforms! March Meeting is now known as April Meeting

As per my fb message to y'all (let me know if you're not in that message feed & I'll add you), we're pushing March's meeting back 2 (two) (II) weeks to April 3. 1 PM @ The Pub.

Be there or be Charles Grodin

March Meeting - The Pub, March 20, 2010 1-3 PM

Hi guys,

The formality of getting a room @ Central library kind of scared me. No fee but I have to sign an agreement & apparently they can shoot us if we get caught with booze.

But the Pub has a nice private room so we'll do that instead.

2/20/10 - Book list brainstorming session

Here's a list of books to consider as we come up with new nominations each month:
Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Final Solution
Herman Hesse
Steppenwolfe
Siddhartha
Isabel Allende
The House of Spirits
J.T. LeRoy
The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things
Joe Meno
Hairstyles of the Damned
The Boy Detective Fails
Donna Tarte
The Secret History
Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow
Haruki Murakami
Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Hardboiled Wonderland & the End of the World
After Dark
Kafka on the Shore
Dennis Lehane
Shutter Island
Books in his first series
Mark Danielewski
House of Leaves
Bret Easton Ellis
Lunar Park
The Rules of Attraction
American Psycho
Chuck Palahniuk
Choke
Arturo Perez-Riverte
Club Dumonde
Kurt Vonnegut
Every goddamn thing he ever wrote
J.D. Salinger
Ditto
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood
William Faulkner
Ummmmm
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
James Joyce
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Ulysses
John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath
Umberto Eco
lol jk

2/20/10 - 100 Years of Solitude

Howdy fellas,

Welcome to this blog, which we will use from this point forward to communicate about our book club, so that we don't spam the crap out of facebook friends.

Here are notes from today's meeting:

Present: Mike Balich, Rebecca Balich, Glen Seay, Ryan Grisham, Sabyn Braun, Andy Keeping, Colleen McGovern

1. Group Name
Nobody had strong opinions so I went with "In the memo line" both because it's topical and less potentially offensive to new members than say... "Why am I on cops?" Also it makes for a clean blogspot address. Fuckittearouthisvocalchords.blogspot.com is kind of hard to yell @ somebody in a bar.


2. Website
http://inthememoline.blogspot.com

3. Book discussion: The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Reaction & discussion was varied. Some revulsion to the theme – it's just not a pleasant story for most of the book. Agreement that the sister's character is an interesting & ultimately uplifting. Some of the passages where Susie interacted with the real world were confusing. Some discussion about the contrast between Ray & Susie's mothers. Mike was interested in the presence of several short passages, which seemed offset from the main text & serve as poetic pauses. Agreement that this setting & characters tend to evoke real people from our lives. My final thought is that we mostly "hate this book," not because it's poorly written, but because it's an incredibly uncomfortable theme & mostly a very sad story. 

4. Book for March

After a brainstorming session, we settled on 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.