Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen

Summary

With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book. (May 26) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (from Publishers Weekly)

Eat, Pray, Love

One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert

Summary

At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.'" (from The New Yorker)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Oscar Wilde

Summary

A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." (from Amazon.com)

Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

Summary

"Atwood has visited the future before, in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. In her latest, the future is even bleaker. The triple whammy of runaway social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event. As Jimmy, apparently the last human being on earth, makes his way back to the RejoovenEsencecompound for supplies, the reader is transported backwards toward that cataclysmic event, its full dimensions gradually revealed. Jimmy grew up in a world split between corporate compounds (gated communities metastasized into city-states) and pleeblands (unsafe, populous and polluted urban centers). His best friend was "Crake," the name originally his handle in an interactive Net game, Extinctathon. Even Jimmy's mother-who ran off and joined an ecology guerrilla group when Jimmy was an adolescent-respected Crake, already a budding genius. The two friends first encountered Oryx on the Net; she was the eight-year-old star of a pedophilic film on a site called HottTotts. Oryx's story is a counterpoint to Jimmy and Crake's affluent adolescence. She was sold by her Southeast Asian parents, taken to the city and eventually made into a sex "pixie" in some distant country. Jimmy meets Oryx much later-after college, after Crake gets Jimmy a job with ReJoovenEsence. Crake is designing the Crakers-a new, multicolored placid race of human beings, smelling vaguely of citron. He's procured Oryx to be his personal assistant. She teaches the Crakers how to cope in the world and goes out on secret missions. The mystery on which this riveting, disturbing tale hinges is how Crake and Oryx and civilization vanished, and how Jimmy-who also calls himself "the Snowman," after that other rare, hunted specimen, the Abominable Snowman-survived. Chesterton once wrote of the "thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species." Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant."(From Publisher's Weekly)

Choke

by Chuck Palahniuk

Summary (Amazon)

Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)

by Andy Warhol

The private Andy Warhol talks: about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; about New York and America; and about himself--his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, good times and bad times in the Big Apple, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and life among celebrities. (Amazon.com)

Themes:

Context. Much of the book and A’s theories and philosophies seem relate back to the context in which they are conceived.

1. Discuss some of the theories and the way that their contexts make them relevant.
   1. McDonald’s is beautiful??
   2. “Free Countries” Idea (p. 146): Changing contexts. A references a lot of big picture ideas and localizes as a part of the everyday experience in order to make them read differently.
   3. Others?

2. What contextual elements are observed outside of these theories and philosophies that set the tone of the book or develop characters?
   1. Chapter 1: B and I
   2. Tape Recorder Wife
   3. Others?

3. What or how much contextual information are we expected to have and/or research in order to fully comprehend/appreciate this book and Warhol’s philosophies? Does it matter?
   1. Art Background (e.g.Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns)
   2. Factory & “Office Kid” knowledge
   3. 70s Culture Knowledge

4. How does “context” relate to Art, and more specifically, the following kinds of art:
   1. Pop Art
   2. Abstract Expressionism
   3. Conceptual Art

“Make something out of nothing”(Otherwise known as the Nothing theme).

1. What is the significance of this quote, found on page 183, and why would we consider it a theme?
2. Objective vs. Subjective
3. Nothing Special: What is behind the recurring mention of A’s talk show fantasy?

Conflict:

Side 1: It sometimes appears as though A is afraid of the spotlight and being singled out, and wants people not to notice him or see him. He relishes “nothing” and empty space. He cannot let anyone get close to him & is terrified of intimacy in the traditional sense.

Side 2: In actuality, it appears he’s afraid of being “a mirror” needs constant attention. He wants to invent something great to be remembered by. He craves and achieves untraditional forms of intimacy.

Other Discussion Topics:

1. Why A & B?

1. Why does Andy classify so many of his peers into one “B”? What differentiates the B’s from the people whose names are given?
2. What do these things say about his relationship with the rest of the world?

2. Is this chronological? Is it relevant?
3. Art Chapter: Damian. Through an uncomfortable episode and a “cornered” A, a lot of things become clear.
4. Hairdressers.
5. A’s thoughts/fears/indifference regarding SEX.
6. Taxi.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Summary (Publisher's Weekly)

Eugenides's tantalizing, macabre first novel begins with a suicide, the first of the five bizarre deaths of the teenage daughters in the Lisbon family; the rest of the work, set in the author's native Michigan in the early 1970s, is a backward-looking quest as the male narrator and his nosy, horny pals describe how they strove to understand the odd clan of this first chapter, which appeared in the Paris Review , where it won the 1991 Aga Khan Prize for fiction. The sensationalism of the subject matter (based loosely on a factual account) may be off-putting to some readers, but Eugenides's voice is so fresh and compelling, his powers of observation so startling and acute, that most will be mesmerized. The title derives from a song by the fictional rock band Cruel Crux, a favorite of the Lisbon daughter Lux--who, unlike her sisters Therese, Mary, Bonnie and Cecilia, is anything but a virgin by the tale's end. Her mother forces Lux to burn the album along with others she considers dangerously provocative. Mr. Lisbon, a mild-mannered high school math teacher, is driven to resign by parents who believe his control of their children may be as deficient as his control of his own brood. Eugenides risks sounding sophomoric in his attempt to convey the immaturity of high-school boys; while initially somewhat discomfiting, the narrator's voice (representing the collective memories of the group) acquires the ring of authenticity. The author is equally convincing when he describes the older locals' reactions to the suicide attempts. Under the narrator's goofy, posturing banter are some hard truths: mortality is a fact of life; teenage girls are more attracted to brawn than to brains (contrary to the testimony of the narrator's male relatives). This is an auspicious debut from an imaginative and talented writer. Literary Guild selection.

Discussion Points

Themes:

• Control, paranoia--holding something so tight that it spirals out of control.
• 70s era coming of age: youth’s first experience with personal pain, sadness, death
• The Libson house--highly visible metaphor for the Lisbon family’s demise
• Pubescent infatuation--mystery and allure of the girls bred by their confinement
• Suicide

Suicide theories:

• Purity of the girls--too good for the world. Purposely predeceased the neighborhood, city, and nation’s downturn.
• Ending unhappy, suffocated lives of confinement
• Author’s perspective--selfish act, leaves no legacy, just belongings and questions, leaves those behind forever haunted and bewildered

Noteworthy happenings:

• Cutting down of the trees--symbolism
• Fish flies
• Significance of ‘Virgin’--4 of the 5 girls were virgins, Cecilia held laminated Virgin Mary, Cruel Crux song
• Head in the oven--what???

Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish

by G. Bruce Knecht

Summary (from the publisher):

This modern pirate yarn has all the makings of a great true adventure tale and is also an exploration of the ways our culinary tastes have all manner of unintended consequences for the world around us.

Hooked is a story about the poaching of the Patagonian toothfish (known to gourmands as Chilean Sea Bass) and is built around the pursuit of the illegal fishing vessel Viarsa by an Australian patrol boat, Southern Supporter, in one of the longest pursuits in maritime history.

Author G. Bruce Knecht chronicles how an obscure fish merchant in California "discovered" and renamed the fish, kicking off a worldwide craze for a fish no one had ever heard of—and everyone had to have. And with demand exploding, pirates were only too happy to satisfy our taste for Chilean Sea Bass.

Knecht—whose previous book The Proving Ground was hailed by Walter Cronkite as "a sailing masterpiece...a tale more thrilling than fiction"—captivates readers by deftly shifting among the story's nail-biting elements: The perilous chase at sea through frenzied winds, punishing waves, and an obstacle course of icebergs; the high-stakes environmental battle and courtroom drama; and the competitive battle among the world's restaurants to serve the perfect, flaky, white-fleshed fish.

From the world's most treacherous waters to its most fabulous kitchens, Hooked is at once a thrilling tale and a revelatory popular history that will appeal to a diverse group of readers. Think Kitchen Confidential meets The Hungry Ocean.

Discussion Points

1. Are we responsible consumers?
   a. How connected or disconnected are we with the food products we buy?
   b. Eating farmed vs. wild animals


2. What factors influence our culinary choices?
   a. Media
   b. Diet/health
   c. Income
   d. Peers


3. How do our choices influence the food industry?
   a. Domino effect – supply and demand
   b. Food security all around the world


4. Fish dilemma – parallels with other species
   a. Repeating mistakes of the past?
   b. Poaching/endangered species and exotics
   i. Bear gall bladders
   ii. Ivory


5. What can we do to change the problem?
   a. Different choices?
   b. Increase awareness
   c. Do all humans have the “selfish gene”? If so, are we doomed?
   i. Selfishness vs. altruism