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 [...]