recently i decided to kick start another attempt at increasing my literary consumption -- i joined/started a book club with some friends... sure, our focus is heavily based on the fact that this is a "wine & cheese book club" involving a number of young women looking to gulp delicious vino, chat, laugh, indulge in fine cheeses and ultimately have a read a book somewhere in there too... so far we've tasted a vast array of wines, eaten an intoxicating assortment of cheeses (including two different concepts of baked brie) and gotten through our first book selection... well, some of us did...
i'll admit it was my choice... nikolski by nicolas dickner -- winner of the 2010 canada reads competition on cbc radio.
i chose it off my bookshelf and put it forward because: 1. it won a reading battle, duh, 2. it had been sitting there untouched for about a year now, 3. it sounded intriguing... obviously my fellow literary ladies agreed when i read the back cover aloud and thus it became our first pick... *please note the use of the term "sounded intriguing"
and now, 290 pages later, i wish in some ways it had stayed untouched on the shelf... i do not understand the love affair that so many people have with this book... sure, it is beautifully written at times and certain paragraphs evoked me to read them twice to savour the artistic voice... however, nothing happens... nothing.
the character i was itching to find out more about was joyce, who was under developed (in my opinion) and didn't appear half as much as i would have liked... i felt that the characters often made choices that were unlike what i'd expected or ever imagined they would... the connection between the three (noah, joyce and the narrator) never came together in any exciting, let alone poetic way and i was left wanting something, anything in the end... i'm not the sort of a reader that urges an author to tie it all up in a pretty bow at the end, but i'm also not a fan of feeling like chapter after chapter not a thing is going on to make me care... even after all the character development that devoured the first portion of the book, i still didn't feel like i cared about any of the individuals whose lives i was expected to follow in the pages to come...
the only other selection from the 2010 canada reads list that i happen to have read before is ann-marie macdonald's fall on your knees... that was an epic tale riddled with drama, devastation and had me gripping the 800+ pages by candlelight at all hours of the morning during my university years... yes, it was slow at times, but it took me on an adventure... it didn't tease me with simply the idea of one...
next book club selection: the gum thief by douglas coupland
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the saying may go that "actions speak louder than words," but in my opinion words actually shout decibels above any move one could make... so expressive, interpretive and intense... all you need to find is a method to your madness to avoid rambling nonsense...
