The Keepin’ It Real Book Club

‘Twas the book club before Christmas and we all gathered at Nic’s for the usual heady mix of recommending, heckling, and overconsumption. We kicked things off with the Present Game Bonanza (basically the book nerd equivalent of Storage Wars) and mulled wine in hand and treats within arm’s reach we got down to the business of recommending books.

Sarah & Erin (with support from JK): The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

Its not about baseball –  its’ about life and Moby-Dick!
(But it’s a bit about baseball — a young prodigy losing his gift.)
The “universal recommendation”
About life not turning out the way you expect it to
Nostalgia for academic life
Grips you totally, immersing you in the world Harbach creates
(Erin and I talked about it here.)

Jordan: Life: A Natural History of the First 4 Billion Years of Life on Earth, Richard Fortay

Head curator of paleontology at the London natural history museum, one of Jord’s personal heroes
Erin and Jord almost come to fisticuffs over whether trilobites are interesting
Narrative of geological periods
Very proper prose
“It has pictures, which I like, but also poetry & classic lit that he relates to geology”
Relevance ring true within human lifetime

Nic: The Dylan Dog Casefiles, Tizlano Sclavi

It’s huge! (Kelvin: “Nic’s presenting the phone book.”)
Italian [...]

After a record-breaking attendance at our Very Special Christmas KIRBC, for our February meeting we had a return to the original intimate format with a smaller group. This meant a bit more discussion of the books themselves, but also a healthy dose of digressions, including: the shape of Nathan’s larynx, strollers & cloth diapers, Homeward Bound, and nominations for the-all criminal Canada Reads panel. Here’s a rundown of the books that found passionate advocates this time ’round:

JK + Erin – Friday Night Lights, Henry Bissinger

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist moves to a small-town in Texas to write about the winningest team in High School football, focusing specifically on a few of the team’s stars and the town itself
A portrait that traces the history of this oil town, trying to figure out why Friday night football elicits fanatical devotion (2-day line ups to get tickets, 20,000 fans in the stands)
Also a scathing expose of deeply entrenched racism and sexism, and a school system that exists [...]