Published: September 28, 2007 06:35 pm            

BOOK REPORT: Ignatius Reilly v. Sleep, 2007

Laura Wahler is reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

Am I the worst book club member ever, in the history of book clubs?

Let’s hope not, but I won’t deny that I’m probably in the running for that title. Some six weeks into the Tonawanda News book club, and I’m only halfway into chapter six. A chapter a week isn’t that bad, right? Well, it’s not that good, either, considering I’m not even halfway through the book.

I could offer some excuses — do I get pity points for having a 2-year-old to care for at home? — but I won’t. When it comes down to sleep vs. read, sleep will win. Every. Single. Time.

Night after night, I curl up on the sofa to read the book, only to wake up an hour later with the book on top of my face, my feet hanging over the side of the couch and the TV blaring whatever sports programming my husband has since switched over to watch.

Don’t get me wrong: I am really enjoying “A Confederacy of Dunces” — much more than I did the first time I read it for a high school assignment some 12 or 13 years ago.

It absolutely is an entertaining read. Ignatius’ mockery of anyone and everyone he encounters truly is comical. His new boss, office manager Mr. Gonzalez, is downright laughable as a manager. And poor Miss Trixie. All she wants to do is retire.

Unfortunately for me, and my fellow book club members, all I want to do is sleep. So I’ll keep reading, with the admirable goal of finishing this book in time for this session of the book club to wrap up.

Wish me luck. And buy me a coffee, while you’re at it.

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Eric DuVall is reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards



Probably the thing I dislike most in a book is when the author assumes I’m an idiot.

In newspaper writing, we’re taught to leave nothing to the reader’s imagination. Spell out the background. Put things in context. Communicate the information clearly.

And in novels, it’s largely the opposite. Let the reader do some thinking, OK, Ms. Edwards.

To wit: The first 1,000 words or so of the most recent chapter involving love-starved Norah and her distant husband David is spent highlighting their failing marriage. They go on vacation with their son, only to barely speak.

Norah and David encounter a stranger on the beach. She seems interested in the stranger. A page or two is spent on his innocuous compliment to Norah and how much in affects her.

Then she invites him to dinner. “And bring your wife,” she says.

He tells her that he’s recently divorced.

Then the sin of inclusion: “I’m sorry to hear that,” Norah said though she was not.

Really? I’m shocked. Edwards spends the pages before the encounter highlighting Norah’s loneliness, only to have her cross paths with an intriguing and complimentary stranger.

And then she tells us — in no uncertain terms — that Norah is glad to hear he’s single.

A high school phrase comes to mind: No duh!

Is anyone shocked that Norah later sleeps with the stranger? Of course not. The second he came jogging up the beach I saw it coming. Bad enough the plot line is obvious. Worse still that she spells it out for me.

Ms. Edwards, I am not an idiot.

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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

I just finished reading Chapter 23, called “Holes, Leeches, Tower.” This is a fast-paced 12 pages in which the story’s main character and the “chubby girl” are bolting through a subterranean cave with a river while avoiding all sorts of hazards. As they run along, tethered to a rope so as to not lose each other in the darkness, they squash leeches on the ground, have to be weary of countless holes from which the leeches surface, and, to make things more harrowing, at any second, the “chubby girl” reveals that her grandfather (the Professor) once told her that every so often a serious rush of water blasts from the holes in the ground and creates a whirlpool that could suck them under unless they reach the top of a “tower” of rocks where grandfather is waiting safely for them.

During this excursion, our lead character trips over one of the holes and smacks his head off of a rock. Thinking he’s suffered a concussion, he sits for awhile before coming to, only to hear the portly gal in pink yelling for him to get up before the water comes. The two eventually do reach the safe haven, where the Professor awaits their arrival.

In the next scene, the Professor explains some key details as to why the main character cannot remember but snippets of his past—before the Professor used his mind in an experiment during which the main character’s memories were stolen from him.

Looking forward to sharing more mayhem next week.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

Chapter 9, “The Waters of Paradise,” is exactly the kind of chapter I have been ready to read since I started this book. It features relevant background information on map thief Gilbert Bland, including discussions with people who bought maps from the man.

Not much else to say at this point, but the last few chapters have revitalized my interest in the book.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.



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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

I was all prepared for a wonderful entry last Thursday in the Book Report blog, but, wouldn’t ya know, like a high school student back in the day, I left my book at home.

In Chapter 15 — titled “Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev” — a couple of punks bust into the main character’s apartment and trash the place, sparing not even his revered whiskey collection. Toward the end of the chapter, the rampage concluded, the main character casually retires to his bedroom and reads Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black.” He says he identifies with the main character, Julien Sorel, whose basic character flaws were all cemented by age 15. “It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon,” the book continues. “Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own room.”

Later, the main character falls asleep and dreams about “a world within walls.” That’s interesting because it’s actually a foreshadowing of the very next chapter. Readers may recall that the book I am reading is split into two alternating stories. Chapter 16 is titled “The Coming of Winter,” and in it we learn about the unique characteristics of the “perfect” Wall that surrounds the Town. “The Wall leaves nothing to chance. The Wall has its way with all who possess a mind, absorbing them or driving them out.”

It’s scenes like this that have changed my outlook on Haruki Murakami’s novel. At first, I thought it was a bizarre, twisted book about, well, I didn’t know exactly what it was about. Now, however, I’m becoming more and more intrigued with each new chapter. When I finish a chapter and put the book down, too tired to continue reading, I find myself reading the first sentence of the next chapter, and then reading that entire chapter.

While Murakami’s novel includes much philosophizing about the mind, it’s equally as humorous. Consider the following passage from Chapter 19 (“Hamburgers, Skyline, Deadline”). One of the characters is a chubby girl who loves to wear all pink outfits. The main character compliments her on her outfit, then thinks to himself: “Chubby girls in pink tend to conjure up images of big strawberry shortcakes waltzing on a dance floor, but in her case the color suited her.”

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Michele DeLuca is reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

I’m down to the last dregs of “Into the Wild.” I must admit, I would have been more appreciate of its stark storytelling if I hadn’t been gifted by its polar opposite, a book called “Eat, Pray, Love,” which is thick with exotic places, fabulous foods, meditative quests to meet the divine and the puzzle and challenge of human relationships.

While Jon Karakul writes like Hemingway with simple descriptive phrases and retelling, Elizabeth Gilbert uses words as if they were colors on a pallet and paints her adventures so richly and compellingly that as a writer, I am jealous of her skills.

In my life I’ve sampled both styles of living. I have been to Alaska and climbed a mountain, waded through a bog, and looked warily for bears. I’ve also sat in a cafe in Venice, sipping wine in the afternoon sunlight as children streamed from a nearby school, herded by nuns who calling out to them in Italian, veils flicking in the breeze. Guess which I prefer.

Sadly, I’ve finished “Eat, Pray and Love,” even though I tried to read it slowly, nibbling and savoring it like a piece of fine chocolate. I’m almost done with the last disc of my audiobook of “Into the Wild.” Both books have reignited my wish for a new adventure. And my certainty that every life enriched by a quest.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Kevin Purdy is reading "Big Russ and Me" by Tim Russert

In the introduction to "Big Russ & Me," Tim Russert reflects on the legal pads that his father seemed to always have handy. No matter how weighty or minor, simple or complex the problem in front of him, Tim Russert Sr. always wrote it out so he could understand it on a space eight and half inches wide, eleven inches long.

It's pretty well understood that Tim Russert Jr. embodies his father's sensibilities in a lot of ways, and the organization of "Big Russ & Me" reflects that. The chapters are organized into broad but simple categories, and while the narrative moves around, it never slips too far off the topic. I've just finished the chapters on "Faith" and "Food," and I feel like Tim Russert could have crossed "Faith" off the legal pad.

My problem, perhaps, is that I've heard a lot of stories of Catholic upbringings in a city stuffed with Irish and Polish immigrants. Russert's family never ate meat on Fridays, filled their house and yard with icons, gave up actual desires for Lent, put its children in heady church services and stern nun-taught schools at young ages, and was told by their priest to pray for Russia's salvation.

That is, more or less, what you learn from the "Faith" chapter. There are, like other sections of the book, a lot of assurances to the reader that church was serious, or that marching to the church to be altar boy meant getting up really early, but, for me at least, it adds up to a chapter-length list of things you often hear about Buffalo during the good old days. It's an occasional smirk, but it must be written for Russert's fans outside the Rust Belt.

Then we get to "Food," and Russert seems to snap back into storytelling mode -- and for this reader, Big Russ comes across more clearly in these stories. His son brings him to meet the Pope and he exclaims at being so close to Colonel Sanders. He goes to haute cuisine staple Spago and orders pizza and Budweiser. His daughter gets married, and all he can talk about is the roast he's offering at the end of the buffet line.

I'll close out this long entry with an example of a good list, one that's concise, specific and tells a lot about where both Russerts came from without assertive padding:

"The variety of food at the Broadway Market was astonishing and constituted a vegetarian's worst nightmare. The display cases showed, among other offerings, pork neck bone, smoked pork neck bone, jellied tongue, Polish bacon, slab bacon, double smoked hunter bacon, German-style wieners, Italian sausage, pork roll sausage, hot or mild beef sausage, barley sausage, beer sausage, something called "smoked butt," which I'd rather not know about, chopped ham, smoked hocks, turkey gizzards, smoked turkey parts, chicken feet, chicken liver, chicken fat, fresh oxtails, and ribs of every type."

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

It’s become obvious that author Miles Harvey is a big fan of creating connections. He’s done it a few times, connecting people and incidents in the past to those in the present. I still can’t completely decide if it’s clever or annoying. Perhaps a little of both.

It’s happening again in chapter eight, where the author basically hypothesizes that because a young Gilbert Bland only got a slap on the wrist for possessing a stolen car when he was 18, he may have been more likely to continue to steal in the future.

There’s probably some truth to that. It also shows Harvey really did his homework on Bland, and I appreciate that, both as a journalist and a reader. But he takes it further, comparing Bland to explorer John Charles Fremont. He contrasts the personalities and family lives of the two men. It feels forced, and I don’t completely understand the point. Enough already.

Also, the back-and-forth between Bland and cartographic history is beginning to wear on me a bit. I’m interested in both aspects of the story, but I feel as if Harvey is continually getting me to sample a tasty dish before pulling it away just as I was starting to really enjoy it. When he puts that same dish in front of me again, I almost forget what it tasted like in the first place.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Eric DuVall is reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards

I find myself drawn to the storyline of Caroline, the nurse who kept Phoebe, far more than that of David and Norah.

Caroline has begun leading the charge to get Phoebe, who has Down Syndrome, into Pittsburgh public schools. Fighting a 1970 education establishment far less open-minded than today's, this is the first effective plot device in the book.

Norah and David are still mired in a loveless marriage. Norah is still an alcoholic. And I'm still going to bed rather than starting a new chapter if they are the focus.

— Managing Editor Eric DuVall

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

I have enjoyed some pretty solid reading this past week. I’m now halfway through “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” and things are starting to make a lot more sense.

The two stories, I have come to find, do have some unifying characteristics; namely, the slightly more “normal” character in the story “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” is dreaming up the character in “End of the World.” That’s an interesting development, because, up until this point, the two stories didn’t really mesh for me. Thankfully, I have achieved the “ah-hah” moment of the book.

Another interesting detail is the fact that the shadow in the “End of the World” represents the main character’s own mind. As you may recall, in the “End of the World” story, all comers to the Town are stripped of their shadow, or mind, upon entering the Town, never to get it back. This represents the fact that all residents of the Town have little or no recollection of their “previous world” upon entering the Town. They lead trite lives, each person relegated to perform a specific task.

What I’m delving into now pertains to the Town’s “Wall,” a mysterious thing residents are implored to avoid at all costs.

Check back next week, as there are likely to be more stirring developments to report. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to send the News’ Book Report an email with your thoughts on the books staffers are reading.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Michele DeLuca is reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

Oh, dear. It’s time to write my Wednesday contribution and I must admit, I’ve been distracted by another book. My friend Cindy sent it to me from Florida, and it’s a book that I’ve always wanted to read called, “Eat, Love, Pray.” So I started reading it and darn if I’ve been so engrossed I forgot to listen to the rest of my audiobook.Funny thing is that this new interloping book is a chick version of “Into the Wild.”

Forget going off into the wilderness with nothing but a knife. The female writer of the best selling “Eat, Love, Pray,” goes to three different countries all by herself—-Italy, India and Indonesia—to “experience everything.” And she does. She writes joyfully of her efforts to learn Italian while trying all the wonderful foods available there, then goes on to more spiritual journeys in India and Indonesia, all the while empowering and enlightening herself.

It’s “chick lit” and I’m a chick, so already I prefer this new book tenfold. But, in fairness, I haven’t finished either. The results next time, but for now, I am off to India with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Kevin Purdy is reading "Big Russ and Me" by Tim Russert

Okay, we're almost to Chapter 6 now and I have to say, Tim and Russ have started becoming more like-able characters.

Actually, I should say they're becoming easier to relate to, as the stories of Tim's youth and his father Big Russ' working life fill out their portraits. We've gone from an adoring young man and his unassumingly wise father — who was really starting to venture a little too close to "Tuesdays with Morrie" territory — to actual tales of growing up under the guy.

It struck me while moving through "Big Russ" that most children don't really comprehend how hard their parents work just to keep things on an even keel. Russert's father worked two of the most tiring jobs I can think of — newspaper truck driver and city sanitation worker — while never missing a church service, family event or opportunity to help his friends or neighbors. Obviously Tim can look back now and see the strain on the man, but, as he points out, his South Buffalo neighborhood was full of hard-luck, tough-fought stories.

"I've worked in government and the media all my life, and I've come to know many fine and hardworking people. But I can only imagine how much this country could achieve if every one had Dad's work ethic." (page 128).

Anyone who grew up around Buffalo, its Catholic churches or schools or has even a faint memory of the old-time Bisons should get a nostalgic thrill from the book's mid-section. My only complaint, and I guess it can't be helped since it was such a part of Russert's childhood, is the large amount of baseball stuffed in here. He's not pandering at all, but I feel like I've heard about how great baseball used to be a few dozen times before.

— Kevin Purdy

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

Chapter seven, “A Brief History of Cartographic Crime,” is aptly named. It’s a long and worthwhile chapter, though it doesn’t read quite as well as some of the others. The end of the chapter starts putting the focus back on the present-day story of Gilbert Bland, the most prolific map thief in American history.

There is a short anecdote about campus cop Thomas W. Durrer, who was instrumental in bringing Bland to justice. Durrer was infatuated with the case, and his obsession apparently made the difference. The Durrer section in this chapter, however, was too short. A man like this needs more focus in the book, to learn more about him and what makes him tick. I hope he returns.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Laura Wahler is reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I just can’t seem to get over how much funnier this book is now, when I’m reading it as an adult and not as a high school student on assignment.

A scene in chapter 2 (Do books have “scenes,” or have I just been watching too many movies?) brings Patrolman Mancuso into the Reillys’ kitchen for a cup of coffee. Ignatius, meanwhile, is watching, presumably, “American Bandstand” in the other room.

“He don’t like the show at all, but he won’t miss it,” his mother tells Mancuso. “You oughta hear what he says about them poor kids.”

Later on in the same scene, Ignatius ponders the show: “The ironic thing about that program ... is that it is supposed to be an exemplum to the youth of our nation. I would like very much to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this.”

Hmm ... “American Idol,” anyone?

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

As evidenced in the paper, some things have kicked up in the City of Tonawanda/Town of Wheatfield beat over the past week.

Admittedly, that’s put a damper on my reading of Haruki Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.” However, I did plow through a handful of chapters (ok, the chapters really aren’t that long) since last week’s post.

I’m about a quarter of the way through the book, which, as readers may recall, is split into two alternating stories. I am enjoying “The End of the World” more so than “Hard-Boiled Wonderland.” “End” has a mysterious, fantasy-world feel to it; it’s full if imagery. The characters have names such as The Colonel, Gatekeeper, Librarian.

In keeping with sharing exceptional passages with readers, I have plucked the following from Page 113:

“All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. They may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach. Hence, we separate the rind from the pulp. Of course, there are idle souls out there who seem to enjoy just nibbling away on the rind.”

Til next week...

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Michele DeLuca is reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

So far I have listened to six of the seven discs of by audio book “Into the Wild.” I have to say audio books rock. On top of the fact that I seems to have the best book in the batch, I enjoyed “reading” during a long drive home from Philly, and have been “reading” on the way to and from work. For someone who loves books, the ability to fit one more in during drive time is the ultimate bonus prize.

A surprise to me was that author John Krakauer is telling more than just the story of Christopher McCandless, who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and was later found dead from starvation.

Turns out the author was a young man much like his subject. Krakauer also ventured into the Alaska wilds and placed himself into a life threatening situation climbing an Alaskan ice cap called the Devil’s Thumb.

Further, he recounts the stories of several other men who have done the same thing, turning their backs on society and venturing into the wilderness alone. The author is the only one who lives to tell his own story. The others all perish through their inability to completely understand and conquer the wild.

This far into the book I’m starting to tire of all these men who turn their backs on their world because they believe a solitary life in the mountains and woods has more to offer. Surely the occasional chunk of solitude in the splendor of nature refines anyone’s existence. But, these guys just seemed to be avoiding the real world.

Having read all their stories and now having the ability to contrast and compare, I’m thinking that if they wanted to challenge themselves with beauty and complexity and danger, they could have just stayed in town and dealt with the issues of their own lives.

I will soon be listening to the one last disc which will detail the last days of Christopher McCandless. I expect the author will give his own take on this group of young men who walk into the wild.

As for me, the book has thus far engaged me to consider some of the things I onced planned to do at this stage in my life. A few days ago I began to think about skydiving...

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Kevin Purdy is reading "Big Russ and Me" by Tim Russert

One of my fellow book bloggers was overheard recently stating that having to talk about each chapter of the book they were reading made the whole thing kind of feel like school all over again.

If that’s the case, then I am, not for the first time, the boy who shows up to class and immediately begins sweating and scheming to make it sound like he’s done his assigned work.

But I learned long ago that, for what it’s worth, it’s better to just say what you couldn’t or wouldn’t do and spend the time instead catching up again.

So, to you, reader of the Tonawanda News Book Club: I am sorry. “Big Russ and Me” received only a cursory glance over a few pages this past week, and, unfortunately, it seemed remarkably similar to the previous chapter — you know, the one about how Big Russ didn’t talk all that much.

I pledge, however, to put a lot of Russert’s South Buffalo tale of stoic fatherhood behind me this weekend and give you the full scoop next week.

How do you know I’ll deliver on my promise? That’s easy — I’m going to visit my parents this weekend, and they fall asleep at 9 p.m. in a town that has some of the worst night life you’ll ever experience.

So I’ll be curled up with Big Russ, Little Russ and the whole diaspora of When Men Were Men characters this weekend, and I promise to bring a shiny red apple and a full report next week. No double-spacing or margin tweaking, I promise.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

- Kevin Purdy

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

I’m chugging along into chapter seven this week. At this point, I’ve met W. Graham Arader III, the man who, by many accounts, took antique map collecting to new levels of popularity. He is a rather fascinating figure, as is Gary L. Menges, a man who works to preserve historical books.

It’s always interesting to learn about the kinds of jobs that make you say, “Someone has to do that...but who?” Menges is that kind of a guy, and he’s passionate about his work.

I don’t understand the passions of many people, but I do respect anyone who’s passionate about anything. Passionate people are alive and unafraid.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Eric DuVall is reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards

Another 60 or so pages down and little has improved for our characters — or me, the reader.

The charictures that are our three main characters haven’t deepend much. The husband (no shock here) is growing distant as time passes. The wife is upset that her marriage is falling apart (did anyone not see that coming?) and the nurse has found her footing after blowing town in chapter three.

The only highlight is a colorful senile man that the nurse now lives with (her new job.) He’s crabby and throws things. In one memorable scene he leaves the house while Caroline, the nurse, is tending to Phoebe. When she realizes he’s gone she recalls the time he did this, sans clothing.

If it takes a crazy naked old man to make this interesting, we’re in trouble.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

— Managing Editor Eric DuVall

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Laura Wahler is reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

Well into my second chapter of the book, I'm struggling to get the cartoon-ish image of Ignatius J. Reilly, found on the book's cover, out of my head. So I Googled "Confederacy of Dunces" and came upon this virtual tour of the sites from the book.

It's interesting, really, that A., you can see pictures of the "real life" places you just read about in the novel, and that B., someone actually had time and interest enough to compile the photos and create the Web site.

Makes me feel a little guilty for falling asleep mid-chapter last night.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

As I mentioned in my first blog posting, I’m hoping that the two seemingly divergent stories in “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” will come together. Well....so far they still haven’t, but that’s fine by me because Haruki Murakami continues to author some fine passages that provoke serious independent thought on a range of topics.

Take for instance Chapters 5 and 6. In Chapter 5, “Tabulations, Evolution, Sex Drive,” the old man character says “We scientists see human traits as being in the process of evolution. ...Evolution is mighty gruelin’. What do you think the most gruelin’ thing about evolution is?”

He continues, “It’s being unable to pick and choose. Nobody chooses to evolve. It’s like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what’s happening until they hit, then it’s too late.”

Doesn’t that make you think? What about? Would it be better if we humans could “pick and choose” how we evolve, or does that take the guesswork and intrigue out of everything?

Chapter 6 has been my favorite thus far. Titled “Shadow,” it reveals that the main character in “The End of the World” story is, like everyone else, stripped of his shadow upon entering “the Town.” In this case, the shadow is actually the mind and, therefore, the main character cannot seem to recall any details of his previous ‘world’.

How’s this passage, in which the Town Gatekeeper tells the main character (known as the “Dreamreader”) he must surrender his shadow, for literary excellence:

“The Gatekeeper had me stand in an open space beside the Gate. The three-o’clock afternoon sun fixed my shadow fast to the ground.

‘Keep still now,’ the Gatekeeper told me. Then he produced a knife and deftly worked it in between the shadow and the ground. The shadow writhed in resistance. But to no avail. Its dark form peeled neatly away.

Severed from the body, it was an altogether poorer thing. It lost strength.”

It appears that in Chapter 10 the Dreamreader reunites with his shadow. More on that next week.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Michele DeLuca is reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

It’s good and bad that while I am reading “Into the Wild,” there is all kinds of media attention around the story.

Actor Sean Penn is producing a movie of the same name and it’s set to hit the big screen any minute. All of a sudden people’s reactions to the book are on the news and in the papers. I am trying not to let their opinions influence me, but I have to agree with those who admit that the story seems to linger like a hangover once you read it. It’s a little unsettling.

Christopher McCandless, the young man who abandoned his life and walked into the wild, was either boldly courageous or an arrogant idiot, and maybe a little of both. He’s become a a cult hero to many young people who are trying to follow his trail and live in the old abandoned school bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. That really tics off some of the locals. Many see it as disrespectful of the power of nature, and few appreciate having to watch the backs of similar idealist amateurs who venture out with no little thought to the wisdom or the tools one needs to survive.

I’m six chapters into the book and author Jon Krakauer has mostly offered up interview with people McCandless met as he made his way to Alaska.

Seems a likable enough guy, in fact, those that met him seem to fall a little in love with him, including an old man who offered to adopt him.

McCandless sloughed off all those who cared about him and walked into the wild alone. I’m still waiting for the author to take me there with him I can learn if the experience offered up anything he had hoped for.

Regardless, as I read it, the story of Chris McCandless is staying with me. He wanted to learn what he was made out of. It makes me ponder the same questions. Will the fact that he died while trying stop me from examining the brink of my courage or will it lure me to move a little further towards it.

We’ll see.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Kevin Purdy is reading "Big Russ and Me" by Tim Russert

Just a few quick notes on chapter one, and part of chapter two, of "Big Russ and Me":

• I kind of wish Tim Russert didn't feel the need to remind me, about twice a page, that his dad didn't talk much. It is, of course, a book about a man who seemed to be a definition of stoic, but I kind of picked up how little he talked about himself from the introduction. Chapter One, which deals a lot with his father's World War II experience, is just chock-full of repetitive lines that start with "He never talked about ..." or end with " ... but he didn't want to discuss it."

• On the other hand, a short anecdote about Tim's effort to track down the man who basically saved his father's life after a plane crash was a personal favorite. He tracks the guy down and convinces his father to chat with him on Christmas, but the only warm feelings back and forth were about a dog, Red, that they brought overseas with them. He asks his dad why he'd waste such a momentous occasion on small talk about a mutt. Big Russ' reply (paraphrased): "He knows, and I know. That's it." Kind of true about a lot of seemingly small-talk relationships.

• Russert does score a major perspective point with a mention of how the huge number of soldiers that enlisted for WWII from South Buffalo had to have their own kind of "orientation" on the way to Britain. Being hugely Irish or died-in-the-wool patriots, they had to be firmly reminded that:

- This is not the country that oppressed your family in the green hills of Ireland

- These are not the redcoats that your ancestors chased out

- These are our allies, and they've been getting beaten for years before we showed up.

• Overall, there are enough moments of revealing insight and good storytelling to keep me moving forward, but I really hope the overall tone changes or adapts soon.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

- Kevin Purdy

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Eric DuVall is reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards

It sounded interesting.

If you're going to talk about "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" you have to explain the premise. Unfortunately, as yet, it's about all I've read in the first 60 pages. But there are enough clues to offer some insight into the rest of the book that I've got a pretty good idea where this is headed.

It isn't good.

The premise — and let me start by saying I dislike books that require a premise to define characters — is fairly interesting. A doctor in the 1960s drives his pregnant wife to the clinic where he works to give birth during the middle of a freak late night Kentucky blizzard (more on the snow later). When he arrives, only the nurse — a shy-to-a-fault woman who carries a not-so-secret torch for the doctor — is there. The obstetrician’s car has skidded into a ditch and he isn't coming. The husband proceeds to deliver the couple's perfect baby boy.

Then the problems start. The boy has a twin, a girl who very obviously is a "Mongoloid" (60s terminology for a child with Down syndrome.) Making a snap decision based on the painful memories of his own childhood with a sister who died of a heart defect, the husband hands his daughter off to the nurse while the wife is still sedated and asks her to take the girl to a group home several hours away to spare his new family the heartache and difficulties of a child with a birth defect.

The nurse, who realizes the child she's been instructed to hand off is the closest she's every going to get to a real relationship (with the handsome doctor or otherwise), keeps the baby for herself.

The husband lies to the wife after birth, saying they had twins, but the girl was a still-birth and she's already been whisked off to the graveyard.

All of this in the first 60 pages.

So there's the premise. Revealing characteristics abound for our three main characters: A grief-stricken mother, a selfish father and a homely, love-starved nurse.

It's too early to tell whether there are more distinctive characteristics when so much of the writing in the opening pages is meant to set up later discourse, but plot devices aside, there hasn't been much to go on.

The most significant metaphor thus far — and as a reader, I yearn for books with subtle deeper meaning — is the snow falling on that fateful night. Any natural disaster could have sufficed. In Kentucky, snow of the magnitude described is rare. The visual, described delicately by author Kim Edwards, carries somewhat heavy-handed connotations. Anyone who's read the essential Joyce (that is, anyone with a college education), will remember the snow metaphor. Austere, smothering tranquility.

As was observed by the professor with whom I read that famous short story, Joyce sort of owns snow . My first thought when reading the opening passage was "this has been done before ... "

It's a little early to call this novel good or bad for several reasons. The writing is simple, but accessible and effective. It's the decisions by Edwards that I'm questioning. Given, the characterization is still very much developing, but if the remaining pages don't deliver something profound to top an already soap opera-esque premise, this book will fall flat for me.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

— Managing Editor Eric DuVall

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

All right, so last week, I said “I should be flying through this thing.” Since then, I’ve read a little more than one chapter. Not exactly flying.

This is not the book or the author’s fault, this is my fault. It was an extremely busy week. Plus, the chapters have gotten longer.

The story itself is still smashing to this point. There’s a part in the second chapter that points out all the crazy fictional creatures that were on some maps of the past. Things like sea serpents in the water. I don’t see any reason why newer maps can’t continue the tradition.

Fine, we’re (relatively) sure these creatures don’t actually exist, but why can’t some new maps have such creative drawings? Not every map. Just a few maps. You know, liven it up a bit. Throw a three-eyed giant squid in Lake Erie, or a gargoyle over Batavia.

That way, if you have kids, you can drive by certain parts of the country and casually say things like, “Shh, you have to be quiet now. Monsters live around here. We don’t want them to hear us.” When the children express disbelief, just show them the map.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Laura Wahler is reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

Just one chapter into “A Confederacy of Dunces,” and I already feel like I owe author John Kennedy Toole an apology.

(And I would gladly do so, of course, if Pulitzer Prize-winning authors were made readily available to me and if Toole hadn’t committed suicide nearly 30 years ago.)

You see, I had to read this book in high school, and I didn’t like it at all. Tenth grade, 11th grade, Mrs. Gardner or Mrs. O’Neal. I don’t remember which grade or which teacher, but both women had a passion for books and literature that was passed on to many — if not all — of their students.

But at the time, this was just another assignment, another chore I had to take care of before I could tune into “Seinfeld” or “Friends” or any other mid-‘90s TV show.

Today, Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character, is just as unlikeable as he was the first time I read the book: He’s fat, he’s a slob, he’s rude and he’s socially challenged. But suddenly, I’m laughing out loud at the book’s hilarious satire.

An excerpt from the first page, for example:

“In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.”

The next paragraph goes on to describe Reilly’s attire: the afore-mentioned green hunting cap, pleated tweed trousers and a plaid flannel shirt, an outfit he believes suggested “a rich inner life.”

Bad taste, indeed.

So to Mr. Toole, I’m sorry. And to Mrs. Gardner and/or Mrs. O’Neal, thank you. You were right, I suppose. Just don’t tell anyone I said that.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Dave Hill is reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

I must admit, the opening chapters of Haruki Murakami’s novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” really threw me off.

In fact, immediately upon beginning to read the second chapter, I closed the book.

Not at all because I didn’t like what I was reading. Rather, the first and second chapters are so distinct that I honestly thought that I somehow subconsciously put Murakami’s book down and started reading a different novel. That’s how stark the contrast is.

Fortunately for my piece of mind, though, I was indeed reading the same novel. I applaud my colleague Phil Dzikiy for selecting this work. For as complex and strangely different as the first handful of chapters are, I am beginning to see that things at some point should start to come together and make more sense.

“Hard-Boiled” thus far alternates between two different stories.

But until I truly figure out how it all connects, I am content with sharing some of my favorite passages from “Hard-Boiled” thus far:

• “I always come prepared with pockets full of loose change. In my right pocket I keep one-hundred- and five-hundred yen coins, in my left fifties and tens. ...What I do is thrust my hands simultaneously into both pockets, the right hand tallying the hundreds and five-hundreds in tandem with the left hand adding up the fifties and tens.”

• “On the whole, I think of myself as one of those people who take a convenience-sake view of prevailing world conditions, events, existence in general. Not that I’m such a blase, convenience-sake sort of guy–although I do have tendencies in that direction–but because more often than not I’ve observed that convenient approximations bring you closer to comprehending the true nature of things.”

• “The lower I got, the louder and more distinct the sound of water became. What was going on here? A closet in an office building with a river chasm at the bottom? And smack in the middle of Tokyo!”

And finally...

• “What is one meant to feel here? All is adrift in a vague sense of loss.”

Intrigued? I know I am.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Michele DeLuca is reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

I feel lucky I got this book in the swap.

I’ve just started listening to “Into the Wild” on audio tape and I must admit, two chapters in and the book already has me hooked.

It helps that I spent time last year in Alaska and was in many of the areas described. I climbed mountains there, walked through dense bogs and through forests of pine trees just as described by the author.

But, I don’t think you have to go to Alaska to be drawn in by this story.

It’s about an upper middle class kid who gives up everything to go off into the wild with barely the clothes on his back, in an effort to learn about what he is made of. It doesn’t end well for him. You know that pretty much from the start. Still, I am struck by his story and the idea of self-challenge because the older I get the more I face the same questions. Have I reached high enough? Am I going far enough?

Wisdom, I suppose, comes when one attempts to answer questions like that.

I’ll be looking forward to hearing from other bloggers who may have read this book and found that it impacted their own lives.

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Kevin Purdy is reading "Big Russ and Me" by Tim Russert

There have been, in my opinion, as many necessary memoirs released in the last few years as truly great albums propelled by creative ingenuity rather than expansive marketing.

In other words, maybe ... 10, shall we say? Okay, perhaps 11, if we include Bill Clinton’s tome as mandatory.

I have to guess that Michele DeLuca, my features co-worker, knows me well enough to figure that “Big Russ and Me” would have to knock down many tall, deep-rooted pillars of cynicism before it could move me.

I don’t like Hallmark moments. I like people to explain up-front why their personal history is interesting and different. And vague blue-collar eulogizing drives me right up the wall.

Having only read only the introduction to NBC journalist and “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert’s memoir of growing up in South Buffalo, I feel like the book has a shot at getting through, but liking the book might depend in large part on how you feel about Russert in general.

My own father is a man who has only missed the Sunday morning news shows on occasions where he absolutely had to be out of the house. I have known Russert, therefore, as a man who asks straightforward (and therefore short) questions, thinks in a logical progression and gives the Bills (and, in recent times, the Sabres) a shout-out whenever it’s called for.

This alone might win him some local-boy-makes-good points. And then you hit a line like this:

“The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t remember or rely on something Big Russ taught me.”

It’s so ... simple. And so is his story of how he came up with a winning method of describing national elections using a dry-erase board — it came, of course, from his own father’s life-long reliance on a legal pad to plan everything from a budget to his future son-in-law’s prospects.

In a way, it’s also refreshing to hear somebody explain how they made a room full of “grizzled” American Legion veterans cry by praising one of their own, his father, without sounding like his ego needs to hear it. But we’re about to enter growing-up territory, which is a land rife with opportunities for turning random memories into Deep Moral Moments.

I’ll check back after a few more chapters and explain where Big Russ, Little Russ and Slightly Taller Than Average Kevin stand.

--Kevin Purdy

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

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Phil Dzikiy is reading "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime" by Miles Harvey

Thank you, David J. Hill. I read the introduction and chapter one last night, and I'm already enthralled by this tale of a man who became the most prolific map thief in American history.

First off, let me say that I'm generally a map guy. Maps, and geography in general, have always been very interesting to me. Pair that with a well-written story (which has the potential to be great, if the beginning is any indication) and I should be flying through this thing.

Early kudos to Mr. Hill for his pick. Time to get back to the story.

--Staff reporter Phil Dzikiy

Send a question to the Book Club. We will select submitted questions and answer them in Sunday's entry.

        

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