To broaden the minds and enlighten the daily life with the glory of literature of New Yorkers in a mental rut, the birth of the NYC Book Club was inevitable.
The first Wednesday of each month, you will find a group of bookworms huddled in the back of a Westside coffee house talking about
latest in the list of books. Here is where you can keep up with what we are reading and how our discussions went.

We meet at:
The Coffee Pot
350 W. 49th Street
New York, NY 10019
Ninth Avenue and 49th Street (close to C/E subway @ 50th Street and 1/2 subway @ 50th Street)
Discussions start at 7:00 PM.

June 5, 2002 The Archivist by Martha Cooley	It was agreed that the themes of The Archivist were a little far reaching. Basically, there were just too many themes; including religous conversion, the holocaust, the distanced and ordered life of an archivist vs. the passionate life of his wife, the letters of T.S. Eliot to his long time confidant, Emily, and the woman as victim of her passions in a Victorianesque, structured world. If one of these themes could have been focused on, there would be much more driving force throughout the novel. All in all, there were many strenghts in the book, but the lack of consistancy was rather unnerving.
July 11, 2002 Alternate Date due to the July 4th holiday Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez	The discussion for Love in the Time of Cholera was not nearly as uniform as the previous month's discussion. First of all, only 2 of the 5 that made it actually finished reading the book. I have to admit that I was only halfway through it. I personally had a very hard time with the extensive descriptions of everything. On the other hand, it was argued that the details added a further depth to the writing. In any case, that was only one aspect of disagreement. Although I had only gotten through half the book, I had already decided that the book was misnamed. Although it was clearly about emotional interaction, but not really about love. My point was that although infatuation, lust, deceit, attraction, obsession and persistance have connections to love, they, indeed are not love itself. That is like saying teal, turquoise, periwinkle and lavender are blue. It was quickly pointed out that it makes more sense at the end when the main characters sacrifce the rest of the world for total and untarnished love for each other, sequestered on a ship flying the cholera flag. That will teach me not to finish a book!
August 7, 2002 Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik	This month's book was not quite up to the same level of discussion as the last two months. Actually, there was a general concensus of enjoyment, but there was not a whole lot to talk about. Basically, it is a book of observations and explanations about the world. You either agree or not. There is not a whole lot of juicy topics brewing within it.
September 4, 2002 Slut!: Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation by Leora Tanenbaum	This discussion was a bit harsh, partially because there were really only three of us discussing, and one of us was looking at the book in a different critical light. I was really interested in the subject matter of this book. Not that I had to go through my young life with a stigma of being a slut, but I have a lot of compassion for those that do. I found it very interesting that the girls that were studied, mostly came through the entire ordeal (after the initial shock and humiliation) much stronger people. Ultimately, I think it is another form of discrimination that is used far too regularly today, unbeknownst to most of us.
October 2, 2002 The Lovely Bones by ALice Sebold	We returned to a much more lively group for this discussion. For the most part, we all enjoyed this book. There was the slight discention of taking the topic of death too lightly. This book takes some very serious topics, teenage rape, unsolved murder, families coping with these tragedies and the disolution of the family unit and makes them less horrifying to read about. The main character, Susie, tells the entire story from beyond the grave. There are some amazing things that can be done, literarily speaking, coming from this perspective. The first person omniscient perspective is so very rare and hard to truly make appropriate in many books, yet it works very well here. (Can you tell I was an English major?) There is a certain feeling of "Everyman" in much of this novel which makes the characters alive and believable. Definitely worth reading.
November 6, 2002	Hiatus in order to finish reading the next book.
December 11, 2002 Alternate date due to travel plans. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen	There were two of us that showed up and I hadn't finished yet. (I am already chastizing myself for that, thank you.) Not much discussing.
January 8, 2003 Alternate date due to New Year's Day. The Awakening by Kate Chopin