For March 2014 -- UND Writers Conference

Conference Reading List broken down by authors.

Writers Conference Schedule -- Tuesday, April 2nd -- Friday, April 4th

Featured authors and bios:  

Robert Pinsky
Jessica Lott
Sarah Leavitt
Colson Whitehead
Geoffrey Dyer

We are planning to read books by Colson Whitehead for this month, but you may choose any author from the line-up. We'll be meeting on Sunday, March 30th, 10:30 am at Carmyn's for brunch and discussion.

The RRVWP featured author this year is Sarah Leavitt and her book Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me.  Fellows who sign up will have an opportunity to meet the author and discuss her book with her on Thursday, April 3.

February 2014 -- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

We met at Andrea's for brunch at her new house yesterday. We enjoyed delicious coffee, fruit, Pam's mimosas, Katie's caramel rolls, Carmyn's egg bake and a great discussion about this charming young adult book. The biggest book discussion question: what were the three words?

January 2014 - Life of Pi

We celebrated our January bookclub choice (Life of Pi) by eating all things PIE!  We had pizza pie courtesy of me (Andrea) and a delicious pumpkin pie courtesy of Pam.   We didn’t all finish the book by the time that we met, but intended to finish (or at least watch the movie).  Those of us who were reading were surprised by the beginning of the book – more than half of the book is taken up by Pi talking about his life in India – what it’s like to run a zoo, strange animal relationships, his religious life, and generally his life.  The book is so universally touted as the book about the boy who survives at sea with a tiger that it’s shocking that it takes so long to get to the lifeboat and the tiger. 

Our next book is Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and we’ll be meeting at my place for brunch!

For February 2012 -- A Vist From the Goon Squad

A Visit From the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
Meeting at Carmyn's new place
on February 29, 2012 at 6:00 pm

January 2012 -- Provenance by Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo

Provenance: How One Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
by Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo
We met at Kristine's place on January 18, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Soup was served. Yum.

For November/December 2011 -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
We met on Tuesday, December 13, 2011
at Carmyn's place at 5:30 pm

On the menu:
chicken wild rice soup
mushroom beef soup
bread
fresh veggies and dip
dessert cheese ball

For October 2011 -- Divergent

Divergent
by Veronica Roth

We met at Pam's on Tuesday, October 25th at 6:00 pm

For September 2011 -- Bel Canto

Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett

For September's meeting we crashed the Grand Forks Public Library's Great Books book club meeting for that book. We met on Tuesday, September 20 from 7-8.

August 2011 -- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jamie Ford

We met at China Garden on Tuesday, August 16th
for our TENTH anniversary book club meeting.

July 2011 -- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell

We met at Pam's on July 12th at 6:00 pm

June 2011 -- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
by Aimee Bender

We met at Kristi's at June 21st

On the Menu:

Particularly sad lemon cake

May 2011 -- The Help

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

We met at Andrea's house
on May ?, 2011

On the menu:
Walking tacos
Chocolate pie

For April 2011 -- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
by Alan Bradley

UND Writers Conference -- Carl Phillips

As usual this year, the UND Writers Conference is letting us host one of the writers for dinner one night. This year “our” writer is Carl Phillips:

Carl Phillips is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Double Shadow (2011) and Speak Low (2009). He has also written a book of prose, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry (2004) and translated Sophocles's Philoctetes (2004). A graduate of Harvard, where he majored in Classics, Phillips taught high school Latin for eight years, while writing the poems which would result in his first book, In the Blood, recipient of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize.


Our dinner is scheduled for 5:30-7:15 on Tuesday, March 29, right before Phillips’ reading at the UND Union Ballroom at 8pm.

RRVWP dinner guests may contact Kim to get involved and you may select between the following two volumes of poetry: Speak Low and Quiver of Arrows

Here are some reviews:

Speak Low
“This 10th book from the prolific Phillips is a quiet yet wounded reflection on Phillips’ signature subjects: relationships, distances, identity, and damage. Phillips’ remarkable ability to be clear yet illusive, as well as his dizzying syntax, are ever- present…”


Quiver of Arrows
“Phillips is a scholar and translator of classical Greek and a writer of syntactically complex, desire-drenched love poems that subtly, and beautifully, reinvent classical tropes and forms.”


“Quiver of Arrows is a generous gathering from Carl Phillips's work that showcases the twenty-year evolution of one of America's most distinctive—and one of poetry's most essential—contemporary voices. Hailed from the beginning of his career for a poetry provocative in its candor, uncompromising in its inquiry, and at once rigorous and innovative in its attention to craft, Phillips has in the course of eight critically acclaimed collections generated a sustained meditation on the restless and ever-shifting myth of human identity. Desire and loss, mastery and subjugation, belief and doubt, sex, animal instinct, human reason: these are among the lenses through which Phillips examines what it means to be that most bewildering, irresolvable conundrum, a human being in the world.”

For February 2011 -- Q & A by Vikas Swarup

Q & A by Vikas Swarup

Meeting at Carmyn's place
February 16, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Date was switched to March 1st

I know we should have eaten Indian food, considering I did take those Indian cooking classes way back when but we opted for a soup night... perfect for a cold February night.

We (Pam, Brian, Carmyn & Andrea) did stick to the theme of the book in one way, however. I distributed a few trivial pursuit cards and we took turns asking one another questions. When someone knew an answer definitively, we asked him/her to explain the back story of "how" he/she learned that fact. It was fun to see how we each did have reasons or explanations for where we'd accumulated that nugget of knowledge.

Here's a bit about the book, from Publisher's Weekly:

When Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated waiter from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a quiz show, he finds himself thrown in jail. (Unable to pay out the prize, the program's producers bribed local authorities to declare Ram a cheater.) Enter attractive lawyer Smita Shah, to get Ram out of prison and listen to him explain, via flashbacks, how he knew the answers to all the show's questions. Indian diplomat Swarup's fanciful debut is based on a sound premise: you learn a lot about the world by living in it (Ram has survived abandonment, child abuse, murder). And just as the quiz show format is meant to distill his life story (each question prompts a separate flashback), Ram's life seems intended to distill the predicament of India's underclass in general.

Several of us had seen the movie and while the premise is the same the movie is quite different: the flashbacks, the relationships between the central characters, the level or type of violence our protagonist faces. Still, both were worth the time. Not only is the book on which the film is based a page turner and a fascinating look into the impoverished side of Indian culture, but the film was beautifully crafted and inspirational. I think we'd all agree that it's worth recommending.

For January 2011: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Meeting at Kristine's at 6 pm
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

For October/November: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
We met for the first part of the book discussion
at Bonzers on Nov. 3 at 5:00 pm

For September 2010 --The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Greater Grand Forks Big Read book selection
We met at Kon Nechi Wah's on Oct. 6th to discuss the book.

For August 2010: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

The Elegance of The Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
We met at Kristine's on Wed. August 25th

For July 2010: War by Sebastian Junger

War by Sebastian Junger
We met at 5:30 at Pam's on July 28th