Twenty Thousand Roads by David Meyer, August 10, 2009

This month's book was Twenty Thousand Roads - The Ballad of Gram Parsons and his Cosmic American Music by David Meyer, a detailed biography of the life and death of the pioneer country rock musician. Tom was the host and held the meeting at Viva Cantina, apparently a hot spot for local country musicians and a place that Tom frequents. Sadly there was no music on this night, but the enchilada and lard-free beans were good so I was content.

In attendance were Emily, Meghan, Tom, Sohrab, Chris R, Me, Mike, Summer, Lisa, Randy. Unfortunately only Tom got through the whole book with it's whopping 450 pages (and over 100 more of supplemental stuff) I made it through 150 and was bummed because I had it all plotted out to read the whole dang thing on Sunday but an impromptu photo shoot was called and my day disappeared. Randy had not read the book however he was a Gram Parsons fan and had read at least one other biography, one of which written by his friend, Jessica Hundley entitled Grievous Angel.

Tom seemed quite satisfied with the book though he felt it could be considerably shorter. He wasn't particularly interested in the early beginnings of Parsons, but that was all I had read and I had enjoyed that all very much. My beef, if you can call it that, was that in that all that time (150 pages and he's just graduated high school) I felt the author wasn't quite tapping into Gram's personality and felt very detached. I suppose that made it honest since clearly he's trying to present his information for what it was: accounts from people who knew him. I'm told as the book goes on, he takes to more editorialising and makes his hatred for The Eagles loud and clear. My husband Gregg, a huge fan of Gram, ended up reading most of my book while I napped on planes and trains from Ireland to Prague to England. He told me that understanding Gram came together toward the end of the book and Tom concurred when I mentioned that. Gregg has read several biographies on Gram and thinks this one is certainly the best. The supplement the discussion, Tom brought a book documenting the work of a guy named Nudie who was the tailor to the country stars who did costumes for all the big names, including Gram Parsons.

While my husband is a big Gram Parson fan, so some reason I never really hear him talk about him or play his stuff so just 20 minutes before leaving for book club, I got a taste of his work from a playlist that Gregg made for me and I must say I liked it and would like to hear more. Tom was also really into his stuff and mentioned that in his youth he would say that he liked all music EXCEPT country but not that's turned around so much that he would say that was his favourite type of music. Funny how that happens.

Before we got stuck into Gram Parsons, City of Quartz by Mike Davis, our book-to-read-over-the-course-of-a-year book, made a promising appearance as usually only Lisa and Chris R have read their chapters. I have given up on that and try to focus on the monthly book. It does sound good though and this chapter in particular seemed to capture the interest of the gang as it discussed LA's public spaces and Sohrab went into detail of there are pretty much no places to gather in downtown LA. Interesting! Hopefully I'll get to this book someday because I really am interested in the city.

As usual, by the end of book club the conversation deviates far from the book/s. I am not ashamed to divulge that we ended up discussing dog balls and I don't mean the kind you play "fetch" with.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, July 13 2009

After searching since before our book club was even born, Lisa finally landed herself a new apartment, a fabulous treasure in Echo Park, as so she was able to host in her own home. Oddly enough, though she now has a home that can accommodate our group, the meeting was held outside. It was a wonderful night and the outside area is so awesome too that I had complaints, and I am prone to coldness year round.

This month's book was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a book I wasn't sure I wanted to read, but only based on the fact that it has the sort of cover I don't like. But, you know what they say about the covers and books and judgement. In attendance this month were Lisa, Mike, Summer, Meghan, Andrea, Chris R, Tom and myself. Since I am writing this a month after the fact sorry if I left anyone out or included someone who wasn't there. I'll tell you who WASN'T there and that was Sohrab. We were a little disappointed since there is a character of the same name in the book and...I dunno, I guess we were hoping he could give us some personal insight on the region in which the book is set and what it's like having a name like Sohrab in America and people thinking you just said "Rob".

The book is set in a few different times, opening with a short, San Francisco, early 2000's chapter that seems to forge the way for a reflection into the main character's childhood in Afghanistan in the 70s. I think most of us were struck by how little we knew about Afghanistan and were surprised to learn that apparently they had once known far less restrictive times than the Taliban and war torn period we've come to know as the country has come more into our consciousness.

The cultural lesson aside, I think we all really enjoyed the book. I was late so I missed some of the initial discussion, (and knocked over my own bottle of beer just to heighten my disruption while I was at it) but I got the idea everyone quite liked it. If I am not mistaken, Summer totally hates another one of Hosseini's books, though perhaps she was talking about a different author. I brought up the fact that after I read the book, I looked it up and found reviews that seemed to reduce it to the likes of a Da Vinci Code type phenomenon. I found this a little disappointing as it brought into question my ability to critique a book, but I think we generally agreed we didn't give a fuck, because the story was enjoyable, emotional and engaging.

Lisa put the seal on a great night with some regional dish she cooked up that was quite delunckulous. With the addition of hummus and baba ganoush it was a satisfying feed.

Once the book discussion was concluded, the conversation shifted into talks about various teachers we had had after Lisa divulged she was soon to be placed in her first job as a qualified teacher. We then moved onto pressing issues of the day such as Michael Jackson's passing which had been just three weeks before.

Lisa had brought the film version of The Kite Runner but since it was about two hours long, it didn't seem like anyone was willing to stick around for the whole thing. I for one don't fancy watching just part of a movie, so I voted "no". The following Monday, Tom and I returned to Lisa's and the three of us watched the film over beer, wine and popcorn. As we had all just recently read the book, we were all too aware of how much was missing from the story. Because of this feeling, I try to avoid reading a book close to a movie viewing (an important policy as a Harry Potter fan) but in this case, as we were all wrapped up in book club, I couldn't resist. The little boy who played Hassan was just the cutest thing ever and I started crying as soon as I saw him, not able to bear thinking of the future events of the story happening to this sweet little imp. Aside from the shock of the missing bits of story, it was a damn good film adaptation.

Hassan (left) and Amir (right). Hassan is so cute, it made an already painful story more painful.