BOOKS WE'VE READ

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser
Tuesday, November 9, 6:30pm-8:00pm
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Tuesday, October 5, 6:30pm-8:00pm
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett
Tuesday, August 24, 7:00pm-8:30pm
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Tuesday, July 13, 7:00pm-8:30pm
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
June 1, Tuesday, 7:00pm-8:30pm
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Cynthia Saltzman
April 27, 2004, 7:00PM-8:30PM
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

SCNE Book Club Review: "This book follows Vincent Van Gogh’s final masterpiece, “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” from its creation through its final sale to a Japanese businessman in 1990. The author beautifully weaves themes of political influence, international economics, religion and culture into the one hundred year journey of this painting. The author highlights public conflicts about the content of the painting that reflect the ideology of the time, which make the book as rich in its historical cultural education as in telling the story of a particular painting. For example, when first conceived, Vincent Van Gogh was thought to have portrayed the inner life of his own depressed and disturbed psyche through his depiction of Dr. Gachet, a physician who treated him following one of his major “episodes”. However, as ideas about the purpose of art changed with the evolution into the post-impressionist period, the views about the significance of Van Gogh’s painting evolved from personal to a reflection of the new role of art in shaping society’s larger collective psyche. Thus, the book beautifully conveys the role of art in both reflecting and shaping political, religious, and cultural ideology. In addition, the author masterfully told the story of what happened to art as a result of war-time, narrating the path of Dr. Gachet through multiple hands while also illustrating the significant impact of Nazi Germany on stifling creative expression and destroying works of those artists who did not fit within their approved mold. Cynthia Salzman does a wonderful job of telling a riveting story while also leaving you with a solid understanding of the evolution of art over the past century. Highly recommended!!" (Reviewer: Amy West, 5/23/04)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
March 16, 2004, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge.

SCNE Book Club Review: "The book focuses on the life of an unemployed, rude loaf who at 30+ still lives with his mother. His appeal is his witty scathing commentary on everything around him. No one escapes his creative insults. His lively mind weaves hilarious lies as he finds excuses to avoid responsibility or work. He believes humanity's best days were during the medieval times. And he loathes the commercial and self improvement credo of modern times. He finds himself trying to find purpose or direction when a series of coincident events slowly unravels his sedentary life. The plot progresses slowly if not appearing pointless. The seemingly unconnected events do come together at the end. The best part of the book is the dialogue between the odd misfit characters and the situations they find themselves in. You may find yourself openly laughing throughout the book. There is little the author doesn't caricature in New Orleans life. The character development is sometimes thin. Some of the body related humor may not be funny to all. But you'll find yourself wanting to read some of the dialogue a second or third time. The group who met to discuss the book mostly agreed it was a very good book, not necessarily great." (Reviewer: David Chen, 4/14/04)

The Feast of the Goat: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa
February 3, 2004
Dado Tea Cafe, 955 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

SCNE Book Club Review: "Imagine a highly accomplished fiction writer thirty years from now pouring over news archives in Arabic and English on the Era of Saddam Hussein. He also interviews a few survivors of the dictatorship, including some who were tortured and some who quietly went along with the crimes of the Baathist Party. He reads 20th-century memoirs, biographies, histories, and general studies of the psychology and sociology of totalitarian regimes. Now watch him invent the narrative frame of an accomplished woman's first visit to her homeland after thirty-five years of exile in the United States. But the omniscient third-person narrator reveals not only this one character's perspective, but also those of Saddam, his sons, his wife, his top aides, a few CIA operatives, and a small group of Iraqi dissidents who plot to kill Saddam. This is what Mario Vargas Llosa has done for the Dominican Republic's Era of Trujillo, which culminated in Trujillo's ("The Goat's") assassination in March 1960. The Stanford Book Club members who got together to discuss the novel on a rainy evening in Cambridge were unanimous in finding it a riveting, repulsive, and haunting tale. Although no one felt qualified to comment on the accuracy of the translation from Spanish, we all agreed that Llosa's style came across as lively, wry, and elegant in the English version. Highly recommended!!" (Reviewer: Barbara Hyams, 2/4/04)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
December 16, 2003
Cafe Algiers, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Disgrace by JM Coetze
March 18, 2003
Diesel Cafe, Davis Sq., Somerville

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
February 11, 2003
Cafe Algers, Harvard Sq., Cambridge

Audios Muchachos by Daniel Chavarria
January 7, 2003
Ras Cafe in Central Square, Cambridge

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
December 3, 2002
Peets Coffee in Harvard Square, Cambridge

Empire Falls by Richard Russo
August 27, 2002
Mama Gaia's Cafe, Central Square, Cambridge

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
July 16, 2002
Cafe Algiers, Harvard Square, Cambridge

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
June 4, 2002
Mama Gaia's Cafe, Central Square, Cambridge

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
March 26, 2002
Ras Cafe, Central Square, Cambridge

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
February 26, 2002
Someday Cafe, Davis Square, Somerville

Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks
January 15, 2002
Mama Gaia's Cafe, Central Square, Cambridge

Related recommendations as a result of our Bobos discussion:
The Clustered World : How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means About Who We Are by Michael J. Weiss
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
December 11, 2001
Cafe Algiers, Harvard Square, Cambridge

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
November 13, 2001
Diesel Cafe, Davis Square, Somerville

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic ofÊ1918 by Gina Bari Kolata
October 16, 2001
Ras Cafe, Central Square, Cambridge

How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
September 18, 2001
Carberry's, Central Square, Cambridge

Additionally, some of us have read and recommend:
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Interpreter of Maladies : Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Cold Mountain : A Novel by Charles Frazier
All Hail the New Puritans, eds. Nicholas Blincoe, Matt Phorne
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Another Country by James Baldwin
Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson