As we begin LTGWS...

Let the Great World Spin is such an incredible book and I'm glad we've chosen it for our next meeting! I finished up what I had left the other night and I loved it. Colum McCann has an amazing attention to detail, background, and an overall sense of the characters. As you read through the book you discover how each person's story is interwoven with the others. Every character is so diverse, and yet there's still a powerful sense of universal community.

In case anyone is interested in learning more about the tightrope walker in the story (Philippe Petit, who walked between the World Trade Center towers in August 1974), he wrote his own book called "To Reach the Clouds", detailing the adventure. In addition, there's a documentary based on that memoir called "Man on Wire."

Depending on the version of the book you get, see if there is a section added on at the end (after the Author's Note and the Acknowledgments) called "Walking an Inch Off the Ground." It's just four pages or so, written by McCann, and offers a great introduction to the book and what inspired him to write it. If you want a little background before reading, without discovering any "secrets" or spoilers, it's very touching. (That said, I wouldn't read the following section "A Conversation with Colum McCann and Nathan Englander" before actually reading the book.)

Lastly, I will leave you with a quote that I absolutely loved! From page 314: "Everything falls into the hands of music eventually."

Love you all!

Hello fellow readers, it's Christine! I felt it was time for a blog contribution, and wanted to say thank you for all coming over on Monday night. It truly made me feel incredible to have good friends, old and new, over to the apartment to share some wonderful times and intelligent discussion. I only wish Jenna could have been there of course!

An interesting point to share: I worked today at the American Choral Directors Association convention in Minneapolis (at the booth for St. Olaf) and chatted quite a bit with some other Oles (Jocelyn Hagen and Tim Takach, who run Graphite Publishing and had a booth right next to ours). Somehow our book club came up (...okay, so I brag about it to people, sue me...) and I mentioned the books we've read so far. Tim got really animated when I said we read House of Leaves, and apparently he's read it twice! He said he heard somewhere that there's actually some kind of code to those long, seemingly-random lists in the book. He didn't know what it was for sure, but for example, on the pages with smaller boxes of words - some forwards, some backwards - there's actually some meaning to it! But what? I have no idea...

Well, until next time then, into the world of James Joyce. I, too, had a little trouble getting started with it, largely because of the grammar (or lack thereof). I just get bothered by the absence of quotation marks/periods/etc. Also, the character detail is very limited. Anyone else have thoughts so far?

~Christine