Monday, December 31, 2007

The Dog Ate My Homework

Hey Guys! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday. I wanted to offer some excuses as to why I haven't even begun to think about a reading schedule for MSFM.

1) I haven't fished my book out of the big purple bin where it lives with other books I haven't read in a long time
2) I'm figuring out how to use my new iPod (I know I'm coming late to the party on the iPod front--I just never really wanted one before)
3) The Goose got very sick, so we have been stuck in Dallas not wanting to make her travel in her current condition--it's sad and she cries all day
4) We received season 3 of Arrested Development on DVD and have been catching up with the Bluthes
5) I'm putting off writing a memo for work and it's taking up a lot of room in my mind

Is that enough to get me off the hook? We are hopefully headed back home tomorrow, so I'll try to get something up by the end of the week. Have a great New Year!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Book for January

Hey! I'm headed out of town in a few days, so I'm going to go ahead and post next month's reading assignment now. Never fear, I am going to the great State of Texas, where I will still have ample internet access and can comment my heart out on For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I am sure I will be flying through as I'm flying home.

Anyway. The Finer Things Book Club sorting hat has selected "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl as the book for January. (My, my, we are a very serious and studious bunch. Maybe we should ask Tracy to suggest some true escape literature -- maybe a Nancy Drew -- just for variety.) I think this is appropros for January, when we are all trying to set very meaningful goals. The discussion leader for that book will be none other than the Awesome Lindy Langston and we'll leave it to her to post the reading assignments sometime during the first week of the month.

Onward and upward -- and Happy Holidays!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Welcome, Tracy!

The Finer Things Book Club would like to officially welcome it's newest member, Ms. Tracy Dardick, of Chicago. Tracy works with Kris Tina at Jenner & Block and is in the Private Client practice group. Although I haven't met Tracy yet, she comes highly recommended by Kris Tina (and let's face it, when was the last time KTC led us wrong? -- cf., the Carklef Chronicles (http://carlklef.blogspot.com, blog posts dated Friday, Oct. 19, and Tues., Nov. 27, for some very close calls), and she is already half-way through "For Whom the Bell Tolls," which shows a serious commitment.

So, without further ado and with much rejoicing, we wish a warm, holiday welcome to Tracy!

Monday, December 10, 2007

What is with Hemingway’s writing?

I have a minor bone to pick with some of the writing in this book. Kitty grew tired of hearing me complain about it last week so I decided to blog about it. My point of contention is best demonstrated by the following single-sentence book excerpt of one Augustin’s lines:

“That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains.”

When I first read this I thought “what the freak does that mean?” It made no sense. Was Augustin really saying obscene and obscenity, because if he wasn’t, then he is clearly being misquoted. I am forced to assume (and you know what it means when you assume) that Hemingway was implying that Augustin cusses like a sailor, but the author was too modest to put the actual words in his book. Well, I think he went about it all wrong. I think he should have used parentheses for clarification, like this :

“That we blow up an (obscene) bridge and then have to (obscenely) well (obscenity) ourselves off out of these mountains.”

Or maybe even this:

“That we blow up an @$?&>^ bridge and then have to %@#! well ?$*&#@! ourselves off out of these mountains.”

Or better yet, just grow a pair and put in the words that you want us to believe Augustin is really using. We are adults here. It’s not like we haven’t heard those words before. Come on!

Bell Tolling

Here is the first question I would like to ask the group about our novel. Hopefully you are into the book a little bit. We learn that Pablo is a bit of a slacker these days. He cares more about the horses than the war it seems. However, through Pilar, we learn that this was not always so. He was once a leader in the movement. In fact, the things he did were pretty crazy. He seems to be "the" leader - at least in their town.

So what has happened in the last few years? How and why do you think he has changed now that they have been fighting for a while? It seems to be a big difference. Now all they can talk about is the train they blew up. Discuss . . . .

Also - keep in mind that, as Kris Tina pointed out last night, Maria represents Spain.

Happy reading.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Background Info for Bells Tolling

Okay, here is the skinny on our new book. I will try and throw in some Ernest Hemingway tidbits as I can. Hemingway is a favorite of mine and this is his longest novel.

As a brief background, Hemingway was born in a Chicago suburb and spent a lot of time fishing and hunting during the summers in Michigan. He started his writing career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and kept getting different writing gigs throughout his life. He spent time in Europe hanging out with the Paris literary elite such as Ezra Pound. When he visited Spain, he absolutely fell in love with it. He continued to write about Spain and follow bull fighting for the rest of his life. One of his jobs was to cover the Spanish Civil War for an American magazine. He "embeded" himself with the Republicans and was able to report from there. This gave his a first-hand view of the war which is our setting for the book. More on Hemingway later.

The Spanish Civil War

In just going to throw in enough so that you have the backdrop. It is actually fairly complicated and more info can easily be found on Wikipedia. The Spanish civil war was fought between the Republicans (reformers who were the legitimate government at the time) and the Nationalists (the right wingers or fascists). To break that out a little more, Spain had been going through a lot of reforms and changes in govenment in converting from a monarchy to a republic (republicans, get it?). In the elections leading up to the civil war (1930s) the government was increasingly being controlled by left wing coalitions that ran the gamut from moderates to socialists and even communists. Obviously it was much more complex than this, but they started making big changes like changing land ownership laws and redistributing land to the huge poor class. Spain, like many latin-american countries today, had a lot of poor peasant class people and then a few wealthy land-owners. The new government had been working to level the field. All of these social reforms naturally worried the wealthy and the conservative institutions like the Catholic church, factions of the military, and those that still wished there was a king. So they mounted a coup attempt led by military types. The most significant of those being Franco. Together they were the Nationalists. The civil war was marked by its brutality and cruelness on both sides and as is usually the case, the peasants were the ones that suffered greatly.

The Nationalists were backed by Italy and Germany who recognized that Franco was quite a bit like them and thought he would be a good ally. Spain ended up being almost a testing ground for many of the tactics and weapons used by the German army in WWII (blitzkrieg, airplanes, etc.). Interestingly enough, once WWII broke out and Franco was safely in control of Spain, he stayed out of the war.

The Republicans were backed by the Soviet Union and anti-fascists from all over including America. Many people went to Spain to fight fascism in the war.

Our novel is about one of these people - the American Robert Jordan who loves Spain and hates fascism - so basically how Hemingway saw himself there. RJ is with a group of Republican supporters who are behind the enemy lines. The novel's events take place in the mountains outside of Madrid. They mention several times Escorial which was the traditional palace and burying place of the Spanish kings.

So that's the background. Ask questions if you like. I will post more on the actual story soon.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Brace Yourself . . .


So because I am Ross's #2 I thought I would help him out by posting a reading schedule for the month of December (he is extra busy right now and me . . . not so much). There are 43 chapters in this book--yowser. So here goes nothing:


Week 1 (12/3 - 12/10)--Chapters 1-11

Week 2 (12/10 - 12/17)--Chapters 12-23

Week 3 (12/17 - 12/24) --Chapters 24-35

Week 4 (12/24 - 12/31) --Chapters 36-43


Ross will be posting a discussion question for each week accordingly - hopefully.


Now get reading!