Hillside Club Book Lust Salon

Are you someone who can fall in love with a book? Do you have secret reading rendezvous with your favorite stories? Don't be ashamed - come join us!

Inspired by Nancy Pearl's Book Lust and starting in the new year, we are convening book lovers monthly to delve into and discuss the works of Nancy's "Too Good to Miss" Authors, A to Z.

Each month, we'll take up the Book Lust recommended titles from the next "Too Good to Miss" author. We'll select one primary title for everyone to read, though you're invited to take up the others or even read them all! Plan to come to the evening ready to engage. Each month, we'll have someone do a bit of research and share about the author, and then open the discussion to discover what themes emerged from our readings, what we learned, and how that is all relevant here and now.

The Hillside Club's Book Lust Salon occurs monthly 7:30-9:00 pm (see schedule below for dates), and is free for current Club members; guests are welcome with a $5 donation. Please plan to join us for one or all of the sessions. For more info, contact Yvonne Burgess at (510) 845-4870 or Anne Groves at 510/991-7684.

IAN McEWAN: TOO GOOD TO MISS

Book Lust Salon
Tuesday January 26th, 2010 - 7:30 to 9 pm
Admission: Free for Club members, $5 for non-members
The Berkeley Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley 94709

Our primary selections this month are two short novels by Ian McEwan: "The Comfort of Strangers" and "Saturday." Anyone who wants to can also read any of his other books to add breadth to the discussion.

Ian McEwan is he author of two collections of short stories (First Love Last Rites and In Between the Sheets) and ten novels: The Cement Garden; The Comfort of Strangers; The Child in Time; The Innocent; Black Dogs; The Daydreamer; Enduring Love; Amsterdam (which won the Booker Prize in 1998); Atonement (which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 2003); and Saturday.

You need a strong stomach for some of his early novels, which are drenched in elegantly well-writen violence (think about the early novels of Cormac McCarthy for a good comparison. He is wonderful at portraying the complexities of human relationships, including those between husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings, lovers, and the past and present. Although many readers believe that Atonement is his masterpiece, my favorite McEwan novel is Black Dogs, which describes the stormy marriage between June and Bernard Tremaine. Their fraught relationship begins during their honeymoon, when June is nearly attacked by two large, vicious black dogs. Or is she?