This past week Suspicious Minds, Northbrook's crime fiction book club, met to discuss Blue Heaven, by C.J. Box. Blue Heaven was the first stand-alone novel written by Box, author of the popular Joe Pickett series. All of his books take place in the American West...which make sense once you see his author photo... See what I mean? Total cowboy. His heroes tend to be the Clint Eastwood type - misunderstood, independent, and know how to take care of cattle. (is there a name for that?? I'm such a city girl...)
Anyways, I picked this book for several reasons but mainly because it won the Edgar Award in 2009, and generally the Edgar Award is reliably awesome. For any others running a similar type of book club, check out the Edgar lists. There a great resource. But I also picked Blue Heaven because it isn't a traditional mystery novel. It is the story of two children who witness a murder, and the men who try to silence them before the children can tell someone what they saw. And since this murder takes place right in the very beginning of the novel, you know who the killers are from the get go. Blue Heaven reads extremely fast, very much like a thriller, which worried me at first - will this book be discussable? It turned out we had plenty to talk about at Suspicious Minds. Of the 12 attendees at the discussion, all 12 really enjoyed the book, which again worried me. Sometimes when everybody loves a book, the discussion just dies, but thankfully that was not the case with this group. Some of the words and phrases used to describe the book were: different levels of evil, well-written, good sense of place, city slickers vs country folk, special, and morality tale. When I asked the group if they still considered the book a mystery, they emphatically said yes. I asked what makes a mystery if it isn't finding out "whodunit" and they answered it's the secrets and knowing what happened that matters most. The discussion then turned towards understanding people's motivations, and what selfishness makes people do. The "levels of evil" in the story are fascinating, and really what takes this book from commercial crime fiction to something more. Overall, it was a great book. Fun to read. Fun to talk about. I would suggest it to other book clubs that focus on crime fiction.
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Whenever I make a display, I like to ask for a little help from my friends. And since August is upon us (already!), I decided a "Back to School" themed book display would be a lot of fun and hopefully something that the adults would find entertaining. When you think about it, there are SO many amazing adult books with school-themes. For example, The Magicians immediately sprang to mind. But I knew there were TONS that I was missing. So I took to Twitter and Facebook, and of course, people were more than willing to list their favorite books about school. Here are the suggestions:
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace The Magicians by Lev Grossman The Secret History by Donna Tartt Old School by Tobias Wolff Prep by Curtis Sittenfield The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman Discworld series (any books that take place at Unseen University) by Terry Pratchett Skippy Dies by Paul Murray Straight Man by Richard Russo The Human Stain by Phillip Roth Foolscap by Michael Malone Moo by Jane Smiley Project X by Jim Shephard The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller Ms Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro All Souls by Christine Schutt A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner Election by Tom Perrotta Attachments by Rainbow Rowell A Separate Peace by John Knowles The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd Mike and Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse Carrie by Stephen King On Beauty by Zadie Smith The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers Murder of a Pink Elephant by Denise Swanson Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Admission Korelitz by Jean Hanff Disgrace by J.M. Coetze Blue Angel by Francine Prose Testimony by Anita Shreve The Big U by Neal Stephenson The Book Thief by Markus Zusak The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook And of course...The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling This list is limited to Adult fiction titles (also crossover titles like Book Thief and HP), and is by no means complete! You can add the titles you think are missing in the comments below. Happy reading! |
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