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The Joy Luck Club ~ Amy Tan ~ Book Club Online for July ~ August. Opens July 16
BooksAdmin:
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
"Powerful as myth." —The Washington Post Book World
"Beautifully written...a jewel of a book." —The New York Times Book Review
The Joy Luck Club won the National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Award, and was made into a movie in 1993.
"Powerful...full of magic...you won't be doing anything of importance until you have finished this book." —Los Angeles Times
Comment on Goodreads: "I know this is really late, but I think this book would be perfect for a book club. I really wish I was buddy reading this with someone so I could..."
"Wonderful...a significant lesson in what storytelling has to do with memory and inheritance." —San Francisco Chronicle
“Reading it really changed the way I thought about Asian-American history. Our heritage has a lot of difficult stuff in it — a lot of misogyny, a lot of fear and rage and death. It showed me a past that reached beyond borders and languages and cultures to bring together these disparate elements of who we are. I hadn’t seen our history like that before. At that time, we hadn’t seen a lot of Asian-American representations anywhere, so it was a big deal that it even existed. It made me feel validated and seen. That’s what’s so important about books like that. You feel like, Oh my god, I exist here. I exist in this landscape of literature and memoir. I’m here, and I have a story to tell, and it’s among the canon of Asian-American stories that are feminist and that are true to our being. It’s a book that has stayed with me and lived in me.” —Margaret Cho
Tentative Discussion Schedule:
Week I: July 16-22 Chapter 1: The Joy Luck Club/ Feathers From a Thousand Li Away
Week II: July 23-29 Chapter 2: The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
Week III: July 30- August 5 Chapter 3: American Translation
Week IV: August 6-12 Chapter 4: Queen Mother of the Western Skies
Get a leg up this July and August on the PBS Great American Reads voting in October by discussing one of the candidates: The Joy Luck Club.
Be swept away into a different culture and world, while at the same time examining how our lives and families are shaped by stories handed down which may or may not be true.
How well can we really ever know somebody else, no matter how long we've known them?
Join us July 16 for a wonderful trip to a strange culture...or is it?
ginny:
Welcome to our July- August Book Club Selection, the last of our Summer Book Club/ Seasonal reads for the year: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
If you are new to our book club discussions, you will want to know that this one follows our tradition of discussing the book chapter by chapter as we come to each, sort of as we read it in private, rather than discussing the book as a whole on the first day. The authors we've had participating with us online really appreciated our detailed approach to their writing, and we've continued that, at least in this one. So for the first week, July 16-22 we will focus on Chapter 1: Jing-Mei Woo: The Joy Luck Club. Of course you can have read the entire book, many times over. And many of us have.
I've just reread Remains of the Day and saw a lot in it I did not see when we first discussed it. I led that original discussion in 2002, and there aren't that many people here now that were here then.
I'd like to propose something new for the future, in 2019, that we have a "Mini Discussion" of Remains, lasting one day, or maybe two, (however long it takes for folks to have their say), covering the entire book: sort of like a face to face book club in person.
Just a "One Off," perhaps, because I'd like to see if anybody else sees what I see in it. The reviews, particularly in The Guardian, miss the mark and the point, I think. I'd like to see if anybody else sees it, but that's in the future.
For now, since I now see something different in Remains, I can't wait to see what I now see in The Joy Luck Club, and I look forward to seeing what YOU all bring to the table!
Everyone is welcome! Grab a seat, and let us know what YOU think. We'll begin Monday July 16.
Jonathan:
Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see my neighbor going for a stroll with her two daughters...one is ten, and the other barely one. What has life in store for the three of them? I sense the joy. Good luck is sure to follow.
Remains revisited. Splendid idea. The soul-searching butler did have much to discover as we found out in the discussion. You were brilliant as DL, Ginny, and I don't doubt that 15 years along you've discovered more of great interest. Let's have a snap symposium!
I read something interesting the other day. The opinion that Evelyn Waugh's best book is A Handful of Dust. What do you think of that? Have you read it? I've found a copy on my shelf. It says on the cover that A Handful of Dust 'is well flavoured with his shrewd and astringent humour.' Is that the laughable kind? Would the butler read it?
ginny:
Jonathan, I am so glad to see you here!! Snap symposium, I like that. I appreciate the kind words, too, I reread that old discussion a bit and think all the insightful and in depth questions needed are right there for anybody to see, that one's done. This time I want to talk about...something else. :)
I hope nobody is expecting that here, because I am expecting our always astute readers to do the hard work, it's summer, and the living is easy: let's see what we can come up with together as a group.
I have heard SO much about Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. I also have it somewhere here on my shelf. I have no idea where or why I bought it. Brideshead was a masterpiece so if they think Handful of Dust is better it must be something else. Are you going to dip into it and give us your rating as far as you go?
I don't know why I was put off it initially. Astringent humor, is that like the Sardonic humor Caesar supposedly had? Makes you wonder what it is, huh?
Welcome, Everybody, pull up a chair in the shade and some lemonade and let's talk Monday about this great book.
Everyone is welcome. The "schedule" of reading is in the heading (with the picture of the bookcover if you are new) but there won't be any questions there, let's just talk amongst ourselves.
Frybabe:
Picked the book up today. Will be reading it this weekend. Will read posts a bit later. Just marking my space.
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