Here is my Book Club reading list for the next six months. We read fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary. Meetings are the second Tuesday of each month, in Alexandria, Virginia. You're welcome to join us if you're in the area! Contact me for time and location. Book descriptions below are adapted from Amazon.com and book-jacket copy.


Tuesday, December 8
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver
This book chronicles the year that novelist Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tucson to a family farm in Virginia, where they got down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that nourishes us: body, heart, and soul.

Tuesday, January 12
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns much about her, and when she disappears, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and Michael soon wonders if she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As he follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? (Yes, this is the novel upon which last year's well-received Kate Winslet film was based.)

Tuesday, February 9
Anthem
by Ayn Rand
This dystopian novella by Ayn Rand, first published in 1938, takes place at some future date when mankind has entered another dark age as a result of the evils of irrationality and collectivism. Technological advancement is carefully planned, when it is allowed to occur at all, and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the word "I" has disappeared from the language). Many of the novella's core themes are echoed in Rand's later books, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Tuesday, March 9
The Nineteenth Wife
by David Ebershoff
This ambitious novel tells two parallel stories of polygamy. The first recounts Brigham Young's expulsion of one of his wives, Ann Eliza, from the Mormon Church; the second is a modern-day murder mystery set in a polygamous compound in Utah. Unfolding through a variety of narrative forms—Wikipedia entries, academic research papers, newspaper opinion pieces—the stories include fascinating historical details. We are told, for instance, of Brigham Young's ban at his community theater on dramas that romanticized monogamous love; as one of Young's followers says, "I ain't sitting through no play where a man makes such a cussed fuss over one woman." Ebershoff demonstrates virtuosity as he convincingly inhabits the voices of both a 19th-century Mormon wife and a contemporary gay youth excommunicated from the church, while also managing to say something about the mysterious power of faith.

Tuesday, April 13
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
It’s difficult to tell if critics’ reactions to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should be characterized as praise or astonishment. Some reviewers treated the book as a delightful gimmick. Others found that, beneath the surface, the book actually constituted an interesting way of looking at Austen’s novel. Zombies answer certain puzzling questions: Why were those troops stationed near Hertfordshire? Why did Charlotte Lucas actually marry Mr. Collins? (She had recently been bitten by zombies and wanted a husband who could be counted on to behead her—of course!) But critics also pointed out that this parody shows that Austen’s novel has remained so powerful over time that even the undead can’t spoil it.

Tuesday, May 11
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
This debut thriller is a serious page-turner about Mikael, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until he receives an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name. The catch is that he must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. This one has been racking up rave reviews.

Today I had my most productive NaNoWriMo day yet, writing 3,222 words. Most of that was at a write-in at the Ballston Commons food court, where I spent six or seven hours early today. I managed to write some more tonight at home, as well.

Probably due to extreme sleepiness and a dearth of caffeine, I did have some weird moments this morning when one scene in Chapter 4 kept trying to turn itself into erotica. I wrestled it back under control after assuring Lance Corporal Ramirez that he does not, in fact, have a crush on Dr. Jackson, and is not, in fact, gay. Sometimes you just have to tell your characters who's boss.

Now I'm in the middle of Chapter 5. I'm still not entirely sure where this is heading, but I keep managing to find the scenes I need when I need them, so I'm just going to keep plugging on.

Total Word Count: 13,227.

Second- through fifth-graders at my son's elementary school are due to get their first round of the H1N1 vaccine on Monday. But it's an injection. He hates shots, so he's been begging me to let him get the Flu Mist H1N1 nasal spray instead. The nasal spray won't be available at school, so I'd been watching for a chance to get it elsewhere for him. For me, too, if I could manage it.

I heard about an H1N1 vaccination clinic being run today by the City's Health Department that would be giving out only the Flu Mist spray, not the injection. I was disappointed to learn that it was only for children. But I was happy to drive over with my son today so that he could get it. The clinic was from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. He was due home from school at 3:00 and had a piano lesson at 3:30. So we rushed straight over from his piano lesson, and arrived a few minutes before 4:30.

As I was signing him in, the person taking his registration asked if I wanted the vaccine for myself, too. Yay! Response wasn't as heavy as expected, so they had enough vaccine to open it up to adults. I filled out the paperwork and waited our turn. Everyone was friendly and competent. The clinic was well-organized. And we were out of there in a half-hour.

My son will need another dose in a month or so. If I can find him the spray again, I will. Otherwise he'll have to get the injection in the second round of vaccinations being given at his school, sometime in December. As for me, I'm finished. And hoping to stay flu-free.

Final count on the novel, as of the end of the day: 10,005 words.

I almost gave up an hour ago and went to bed, but I really, really, really wanted to hit 10,000. And now to sleep....

In Chapter 3, a young Marine named Ramirez was guarding the conference-room door at the SGC. I never expected to see him again. Suddenly this morning, a team came through the Stargate onto a distant planet, and I realized that Ramirez had come along on the mission. I also realized he was fated not to return from this mission. I'm not sure yet how he'll meet his demise, though I believe he'll be killed by the monster Goa'uld.

I do know this: If this were the Star Trek universe instead of the Stargate universe, he'd be wearing a red shirt.

Current word count: 9,468.

I'm really hoping to break 10,000 today.

For only the second time since the month started, I've met the daily writing goal of 1,667 words! I'm still way behind a lot of people (such asklingonguy, who is a writing machine) but I'm inching forward.

In fact, I'm at 1,918 words for the day. So far. My total word count now stands at 8,380.

I'm trying not to spend time reading over what I've written. That would be dangerous; there be dragons thar. We've only got a month for this, and the idea is to get a first draft down on the page (well, screen) this month, and hold off on editing until December. My impression is that I've got too much dialog and not enough action. Very bad, in an action-adventure type science-fiction novel, even in a character-driven franchise like the Stargate universe. But like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow. Right now, I'll just write....

Or I would just write, if I could figure out what happens next. Hmmmmm....

I guess the team (minus, for now, the injured Major Carter) will return to the planet of their recent mishap. Once they step through the Stargate, I'm hoping they'll discover something there that they haven't told me about yet.

Well, that was weird. I was saying goodnight to my son, planning to come right downstairs to my computer and write for the next two hours. And suddenly, the house went black. In fact, the whole neighborhood went black. We had a lovely, clear 70-degree day today, and now it was a lovely, clear 60-degree evening, yet the power went out for at least a few blocks around us.

So instead of heading right to the computer, I checked outside to see how widespread this seemed to be. Then I searched for the battery-powered lantern. And the candles. And the phone number of Virginia Dominion Power. Called the power company and left an automated power-outage call. Reassured my son that it was probably no big deal, told him no you cannot come downstairs, and yes, you can sleep when it's dark. I finally managed to set up my laptop in the dark. No online service, since the wireless router depends on electricity, but at least I can write, on battery power, for a while. Unfortunately, by the time I got started, an hour of my two-hour writing window was gone.

LATE UPDATE: I just read online that the power outage was caused by an electrical fire in an apartment building. I don't know if power's been restored everywhere yet.

I did sit down to write for an hour, and I drafted a scene between O'Neill and Hammond. I like some of the dynamic in it, but it goes on too long. But that's what second drafts are for. I think I've written maybe 800 words so far today, a little less than half of what I should have written today. I may go back to it later this evening, but I've got to get some other stuff done now that the lights are back on.

Finally, I've had a day in which I surpassed the daily word-count goal for my Stargate SG1 novel. In order to make it to 50,000 words by the end of November, we should be averaging 1,667 words per day. Today is the first day I hit that average. In fact, I was over it, at 2,108 words written today. I think I've also finished Chapter Two.

Of course, I'm still way behind where I should be by now on the total word count. And as for the quality of the writing, well, we're not going there. But progress is progress. So it's all good.

Total word count so far: 5,695.

NaNoWriMo continues. I attended a write-in this morning, which was more productive than I was expecting. The idea of writing my book while sitting in a room with a lot of other people who are writing their own books seemed problematic at first. I tend to think of myself as a no-noise and no-distractions kind of writer. But once we stopped gabbing and got down to work, it was really quite pleasant to write while knowing I wasn't in it alone. I had to leave early for an 11:45 appointment to give blood. (Write a novel, give blood. Same thing.) But I'm looking forward to doing some more of these.

One reason is because I've realized that my house is distracting, even when it's quiet and contains no other people. There are the living room filled with elementary-school arts contest entries I could be matting, the laundry I could be folding, the ringing phone I could be answering, the stacks of junk mail I could be sorting, and the DVDs I could be watching. When the house also contains a husband and small child, well, my chances of finding uninterrupted time plummet even further.

I finished Chapter One this morning.

As the chapter ends, Sam is taking soil samples by the edge of a deep, slow-moving river on a distant planet when a large, powerful water creature lunges out of the purplish water and knocks her over. She screams, Daniel comes running, and Teal'c raises his weapon. But before they can help her, the creature pulls her under the water.

That's my cliff hanger. I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen in Chapter Two, but we can rest assured Sam will survive the attack, since I'm setting this book sometime in Season One or Two, and we all know that the television series continued through Season Ten.

Total word count after today's session: 3,587.

Maybe I'll try to up my wordage tonight, after i finally eat some dinner.

National Novel Writing Month total at end of day today: 2,959 words. I was hoping  at least to make it to 3,000 today, but I'm so tired I can barely string along any sentence right now, even an incoherent one. Better luck tomorrow. I'm going to bed early.

I'm still well behind where I should be by now, but I did make some progress on writing the Stargate novel today, in between driving my mom to the surgical center for her eye surgery, working at the polls, sending the entries for one contest category to the judge, and carrying out general mom-related duties.

Today's word count: 1,374

Total word count so far: 1,691

It was expected, but it still hurts. The Republicans won the governor's race. My biggest consolation is the good sense exhibited by my own city.

Results for Virginia:
Bob McDonnell (R) 59%
Creigh Deeds (D) 41%

Results for Alexandria:
Bob McDOnnell (R) 37%
Creigh Deeds (D) 63%

My excellent state delegate, Dave Englin (D), also won re-election. As did my neighbor, newly re-elected Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, also a Democrat. So there were a few happy returns.