Links for the next meeting - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Robin writes:

You could pick any major newspaper/blog/podcast and find a kind interview/review - e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/may/07/jennifer-egan-life-goon-squad

This is a heavy-going but exhaustive interview by Heidi Julavits: (worth reading if you enjoyed the book!). http://bombsite.com/issues/112/articles/3524

The author also happens to be tweeting a new story this week, 120 characters at a time (more info. on this in Wired - http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/jennifer-egan-black-box-twitter/). Most critics seem to be sceptical about this, which is striking because most were very positive about Goon Squad.

Also, as a refresher, here's a list of the main characters in each chapter:

1 – Sasha & Alex

2 – Bennie & Sasha

3 – Alice, Bennie, Scotty, Lou, Jocelyn, Rhea

4 – Lou, Rolph, Charlene, Mindy

5 – Lou, Bennie, Jocelyn, Rhea, Alice

6 – Scotty & Bennie

7 – Stephanie & Bennie, Jules, La Doll, Bosco

8 – Dolly, Lulu, Kitty

9 – Jules & Kitty

10 – Drew, Bix, Sasha, Lizzie, Rob

11 – Sasha & Ted

12 – Alison, Sasha, Drew, Lincoln

13 – Bennie & Alex, Scotty

Links for the next meeting - The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

A quick video to get you started! The Wellcome Collection always has some interesting stuff...

This site has loads of links and information

...and he talks again...!

UCLA’s epidemiology department’s book review and John Snow site links

An interesting article about the more recent 2010 outbreak in Haiti, with a picture of the sort

of thing that I would be looking for at work! A sample requesting, or suspect for Vibrio cholerae

undergoes an enrichment stage before being plated onto selective agar with all the right ingredients that Cholera bacteria like! The result is the growth of these yellow colonies. You don’t really want to grow them!!

OK, perhaps a bit technical – Quorum Sensing is the name given when bacteria live together in a film and have to communicate with each other – basic survival. This is done through chemical sensing of the environment, and most weirdly, sensing the group’s needs. It has been revolutionary in helping to understand why infections persist within the body when antibiotics should have worked, and has been crucial, as with cholera, in understanding how bacteria know when to resume the next stage of their life cycle:

There’s any amount of book reviews on the internet, and even the Wikipedia page is worth a brief glance (though it wasn’t me what said that, honest guv!!) I’ll try and get hold of a diagram to show how the bacteria have such a devastating effect on the human body (always cheerful!), but in the meantime, happy reading!

Links for the next meeting - When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

A review on Huffington Post culture blog (favourable)

A review on the Canadia Globe and Mail (less-favourable)

Sarah Winman talks to Richard & Judy

A random bookshop owner (employee?) interviews Sarah Winman

And a podcast (courtesy of Robin), which talks about the book from the point of view of the publishers -- a rare insight

Some discussion questions to make you think before the meeting

See you on Wednesday!

Links for the next meeting - The Hare With The Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

Official site, including netsuke gallery, and reading guide

Black Book Swap - Saturday 3rd March

This upcoming event might be interesting:

"The first ever Black Book Swap event will take place on Saturday 3 March. There will be books to swap, authors to meet: Alex Wheatle; Chibundu Onuzo; Colin Grant; Sonja Lewis & Bim Adewunmi, and also the chance to meet other book lovers and dedicated readers. It’s free! We’re so excited! We can’t wait! Put this date in your diary now. (Saturday 3 March 2012, 1pm - 5.00pm Cottons Caribbean Restaurant, 70 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QP)

Bring a book to swap: whether you loved it and want others to know that joy; or hated it but cannot bring yourself to bin it, bring it along and swap it. You are bound to find an exciting read to replace it. Come along and join in even if you don’t have a book to swap. Any leftover books will be donated to charity.

Black Book Swap is free but as places are limited, so best to reserve a place, email: blackbookswap[at]gmail.com"

Site with more info here

Links for the next meeting - A Gothic Triple Bill

Here are some links for the next meeting, our Gothic treble of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a short story collection.

General themes - You can look at The Gothic using some of Freud's thoughts on 'Das Unheimliche', or 'The Uncanny' - that funny creeping feeling you get when that small part of you is screaming that something just isn't right, and WHY do they always insist on investigating strange noises in haunted houses dressed only in a dressing gown, and by candle-light...???!!!

Freud’s 1919 essay on Das Unheimliche is rather long, but some of the elements of ‘The Uncanny’ are very relevant to what we recognise as ‘The Gothic’ - and you'll see many of these themes occuring in our texts for this thursday. Freud listed 8 characteristics – 8 causes of fear used in literature:

Inanimate objects mistaken for animate – eg dolls, waxworks, severed limbs...

Animate objects behaving as if inanimate or mechanical eg trances, fits, epilepsy etc

Being blinded

The double – twins, doppelgangers

Coincidences or repetitions

Being buried alive

An all-controlling evil genius

Confusions between reality and imagination – waking dreams etc

(Taken from The New Uncanny, (2008). Ed Sarah Eyre and Ra Page)

Enotes on Udolpho

Analysis of Jekyll from Wikipedia

Joanne Harris in the Telegraph on Edgar Allan Poe

10 alternative book covers

Produced to promote a new competition, these covers are excellent. I particularly like this one for A Tale of Two Cities.

Full details of the competition are here. The closing date is 19th April