Nicholas and the Gang by Rene Goscinny, July 14th 2008

This month's book club was hosted by Mike H in Echo Park and for a change of pace, our book was the children's book Nicholas and The Gang by René Goscinny. Goscinny is also the author of the famous Asterix series. In attendance was Mike H, Mike L, Summer, Lisa, Andrea, Chris R, Dana and myself. There were an additional five people there, but since three were guests of Mike's and two were brought along with Dana, I'm not sure they count. Don't get me wrong, they count in the grand scheme of things, just not at book club.

Asterix, The Gaul by René Goscinny

The food theme was supposed to be French, so I brought brie and a baguette while Summer brought some delicious French pastries from the French bakery on Vermont. Someone else brought French wine. Mike H provided us with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, something frequently consumed by Alec in the book, and I turned many heads with my declaration that I had never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Seriously, I felt like I'd made an unsavoury racial slur or something! It's not a staple in Australia, but I must say, I am new fan! (though I still prefer Vegemite.)

As it turns out, the book was quite hard to find with some bookstores claiming that the book was not even out yet! Skylight claimed to have three copies of which I was lucky enough to nab one. Dana got another and the whereabouts of the third copy shall remain a mystery as Mike H suffered multiple fruitless searches there for it. Dana read most of it which left only me as having read the whole thing. I also borrowed a copy of the first book, Nicholas, in the series from the library, so I came along having read two of the books, thus solidifying my reputation as a book club goody-two-shoes. I'd like to remind everyone about the The Brain, The Music and Ecstasy meeting from last year at which I was the grand loser having read all of two pages.

Lisa came to the table having read Nicholas Again while Mike H had previously read the first three (Nicholas, Nicholas Again and Nicholas on Vacation) but was yet to (and unable) to read Nicholas and the Gang. Given he nature of the book, it hardly mattered. Nicholas is more or less a series of self contained stories of just five or so pages each about the inadvertent naughtiness the French school boy, Nicholas and his friends get up to. All the stories are told from Nicholas' perspective which makes them really fun. The books were written in the 60s and have only recently been translated into English, according to Mike H. There was no huge loss for not having read the series from start to finish, though if one didn't read the first book, they didn't know how the teacher, Mr Goodman wound up with the nickname, Old Spuds. Instead you'd be teased with something like "I'll have to tell you sometime how that he got the name" sort of thing. Quite simply, Old Spuds is always saying "Look me in the eye..." and potatoes have eyes, hence "Old Spuds".

The complete Nicholas series

For those of us who read it, we enjoyed it a lot. The writing was really fun and playful and had a great enthusiastic schoolboy tone to it. We went over all the characters which we came to rely on as we read, such as Alec who is fat and always eating, Cuthbert the teacher's pet who wears glasses, Geoffrey the kid with the rich dad who buys him cool stuff that none of the other boys have and Matthew the boy who comes last in all his school work. There was some debate as to the amount of girls in the book as Lisa found none in Nicholas Again. The rest of us were acquainted with Mary Jane, the girl next door who Nicholas initially just tolerates, but ends up thinking is alright after she makes a most excellent soccer kick. Dana told of the story where Mary Jane was the only girl at Nicholas' party and all the boys swore they would ignore her, but in the end, they all ended up jumping over each other to impress her with various tricks and feats. In the last story of Nicholas and the Gang, Nicholas is forced to attend Mary Jane's birthday party where he is the only boy, is forced to play girly games and watch the girls pretend to feed their dolls. When he is finally collected by his mother to go home, he starts crying when asked how the party was. His understanding dad takes him to a cowboy movie that night to counter the estrogen overload suffered by poor Nicholas.

After that, we went on to talk about our other favourite books when we were kids. Chris' favourite was The Story of Ping about a duck who gets separated from his family, Mike L might have initially said The Giving Tree but then changed it to Choose Your Own Adventure books which I heartily seconded. Mike H chose Absolutely, Positively Alexander, while Summer spoke highly of The Magic Catalogue which was a book posing as a catalogue of magical items for everyday use. Lisa stuck firmly behind Dr Seuss books, and I couldn't decided between Tikki Tikki Tembo (which Andrea also liked but could not choose a favourite) The BFG and The Monster at the End of This Book starring Grover from Sesame Street. Lo and behold, but the only Little Golden Book Mike had in his home was that very one, so I proceeded to read it to the group with as much Grover-ish conviction as I could muster. Mike also read from the book entitled That's Disgusting where a little girl gleefully sticks her finger up a cat's but, vomits onto the table, molds things from cat feces and defecates in the bath. The bottom line being, THAT'S DISGUSTING!

The rest of the evening was spent being entertained by the antics of Mike's kitten, Tilly and some time admiring his older cat Logan who is quite a handsome specimen. No-one seemed to tire of watching Tilly roaming around with that bouncing raspberry in her mouth.

Tilly and Logan

Next month's book is Spook Country by William Gibson and will be hosted by Summer in Los Feliz!

Black Postcards by Dean Wareham, June 8th 2008

It's been a while since the last book club blog entry. I was about to apologise until I was remembered I was the only one willing to do it, so to hell with all of you.

So yikes! June hits and it's the first entry for the year. I suppose there have only been two other meetings this year and I missed one of them and dropped the ball on the other one, so hopefully this sees us back on track.

So this month was hosted by Chris Rogers at his new apartment, much my chagrin (it was previously across the street from me and I had big plans to get loaded and stumble home) In the end I was driven by Lisa so the option for heavy drinking was still available, but it turns out I might not quite be the drunkard I though I was.

In attendance was Chris (of course), Lisa, Mike, Lien, myself and first timer Andrea. Hats off to her for making it despite her deep felt shame over not reading the book. As it turned out only Chris and I had read the book, so our new, disgraced recruit was in good company with the others.

Chris opened the discussion by giving an overview of the Black Postcards by singer/songwriter Dean Wareham on his life and times with the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna. He read from the first page which everyone found quite titillating. Wareham quotes an interview with his former band mate who expresses shock and horror over an incident where it seems that Dean has arranged with the sound and lighting people to have a spotlight on him at an opportune moment during an LA show with bigwigs in the audience. When I read this, I thought I was up for a rollicking good time of famous rock n' roll cuntism, but alas, he was never that conniving as the story went on.

Nonetheless, without that little teaser ever coming into fruition, both Chris and I reported great enjoyment of the book despite me never having heard of Dean Wareham, Galaxie 500 or Luna and Chris believing them to be a boring band. It's a good rock n' roll also ran story detailing some of the trials and misadventures of an almost successful band. Since we all in the club tend to be music fans, it prompted a lot of discussion and questions and general understanding of the plight of the protagonist.

Chris recalled the hilarious story of after a show one night in Majorca, Spain, Dean hooked up with a hottie he'd been eyeing from the stage. She was hanging around after the show, so he went home with her, and rolled around with her for a while. The following morning, she asked him if he would like her to sing him her favourite song. He said "sure", only to have her whisper in his ear the lyrics to "More Than Words" by Extreme. Gah!

The book conversation wrapped up soon after and we went on to tell Andrea more about book club and the frequency of reading. Funnily enough, further discussion (somewhat) ensued on the topic of Music, The Brain and Ecstasy from our December meeting and previous blog entry. Lien talked at length about an HBO documentary she saw about a deaf couple who excelled in life, raised a family but then went for cochlear implants in their 60s. I was really impressed that we got through the whole conversation without anyone mocking deaf talk. I must admit, I came close. I also checked in on Lien's ear attack which she had experienced before that other meeting and was delighted to hear that it was much better, though she still can hear some ringing in certain circumstances.

We also discussed learning French, broken English, boxing and cunts, pussies and bitches. I think that, not despite all that, but because of it, Andrea is willing to come back.

Next month will be hosted by Mike Hensel and the book will be...Nicholas and the Gang by Rene Goscinny which should be available at Skylight soon!

Until next time...