The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Chapters 1 & 2

So here we go with the first impressions!

I'm surprised! That's the first thing that comes to my mind. I like the book so far (I'm in the middle of chapter 3), it intertwines recent history (yes, I had heard about Trujillo, but didn't know the details) with a very contemporanean story, inmigration. I enjoy a lot the language Mr.Diaz is using, combining very informal expressions, English and Dominican Spanish, but I guess maybe for the non Spanish speakers is not so much fun, because in the Kindle version at least, there is no foot notes explaining. And I like the characters, from La Inca to Oscar, I think that very quickly you get the feeling of what they are going through. And Oscar, even though he is totally nerdy, I have the feeling that he's going to turn into some kind of hero, what do you think? And what about the bad luck thing? He says something like "every caribbean family believes it is haunted", can that really influence the fate of a country? As we all think we are haunted, why should we try doing something better? Something bad will come for sure!!! It's a hard idea if it's really on everybody's psyche. So what are your thoughts so far?

Junot Díaz & The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

As I said in the suggestions email, since I am spending a couple of months woking in Dominican Republic, I thought reading a Dominican author would be a great way to learn more about the country and share a bit of these months with my No Cookies fellows :-)

Following Rocio's suggestion, I am adding here some info about the author of our next reading together. I always like learning something about the authors of the books we read, so I hope you do too:

Junot Díaz was born in 1968 in a neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He was the third child in a family of five. Throughout most of his early childhood, he lived with his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States. In 1974, Díaz was re-united with his father in New Jersey. There he lived less than a mile from what he has described as "one of the largest landfills in New Jersey".

He was a voracious reader during his elementary years, often walking four miles in order to borrow books from his public library. At this time, Díaz became fascinated with apocalyptic films and books. He graduated in 1992, majoring in English. In college he was involved in Demarest Hall, a creative-writing, living-learning, residence hall, and in various student organizations. He was exposed to the authors who would motivate him to become a writer: Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros. He worked his way through college by delivering pool tables, washing dishes, pumping gas, and working at Raritan River Steel. Reflecting on his experience growing up in America and working his way through college in 2010, Diaz said: "I can safely say I've seen the US from the bottom up… I may be a success story as an individual. But if you adjust the knob and just take it back one setting to the family unit, I would say my family tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty."

On 2010, it was announced that Diaz had been selected to sit on the 20-member Pulitzer Prize board of jurors. Diaz described his appointment, and the fact that he is the first Latino to be appointed to the panel, as an "extraordinary honor".

Currently, Díaz teaches creative writing at MIT and is also the fiction editor for the Boston Review. He is active in the Dominican American community and is a founding member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color.

In addition to the Pulitzer in 2008, The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao has been awarded many prizes and distinctions. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao... the saga of an immigrant family, but that wouldn't really be fair. It's an immigrant-family saga for people who don't read immigrant-family sagas." (Time)

Next reading

So the winner is "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" by author Junot Diaz. The reading schedule will be coming soon!!

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman - Final

So, we have finished the book, come on, don't tell me you didn't finish it! It was barely a two-hour read... So do you have any final comments? Feel free to keep posting about them, even though we open a new session. And, hey, don't forget to take part in the poll!

Thank you!

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a happy summer! Whether you will be working, like me :-( or on vacation, have a great one!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Macarena and Rocio for their great job keeping up this blog! It is my first experience both in a book club and in a ciber community and I am having a great time!
I have read a lot since I was young, but never really discussed books with other people, since most of my friends and colleagues read little or nothing. I think it is fantastic to share thoughts and impressions with others!
I have to say that before joining this club, for some reason, I was lazy or bored to read in English, not sure why. This has changed and I really enjoy reading in English now and realize this is a great habit.
Also, I love discovering books that otherwise I might have not picked. I am always looking forward to the next one.
What else can one ask for?
Thank you everybody!!

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman - First part

A short little book, compelling and fast moving, it starts with the narrator introducing us to the one event that shakes the peaceful conversations of a small group of people staying at a hotel on the Rivera.

Just in a few pages, plenty of feelings, characters, situations and values are presented for reflection. 

How did you first feel about the narrator? What would you answer to Mrs C's question considering what it implies about prejudice, acceptance and respect? If you were married, would you introduce such a woman to your wife as if nothing had happened?

Do you think times have changed with regard to the perception, consideration and value given to virtue, love and passions?

What about the gentleman of Mrs C' story? What are your thoughts and feelings about this character? 

At one point, Mrs C expresses that she would find it difficult to give a clear name to the feeling that drew her so compulsively after the unfortunate man. Could you give a name to that feeling?

As always, looking forward to reading your long, short, deep, or first-impression thoughts on the book.

And the winner is ...

… Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman, by Stefan Zweig


Thanks everybody for your participation in the poll.


Although this is a short book, we are going to take it easy this time - so members can recover for the previous long books! Find the suggested reading pace for sharing at the "Book Discussion Schedule" page.

Freedom - Final Discussion

Some questions to follow the interesting discussion already started with Jorge's post and the comments from Kristen and Rocio - and even Nayra's! if we want to extract conclusions from her statement...


Did you got annoyed by the book or did you enjoy it? 
Did you feel the characters were not interesting, boring, not redeeming, or did you like them?  Even if you did not like them, did any of them arose any feelings in you that make it attractive to keep reading?
What about the end? Do you think it is a happy end or a tragic end?
If Walter had written a memoir, what might he have said about his victories and his suffering?
What character do you think is the least free? And the most free?
How is Lalitha different from the other characters? How does her motivation for working with the Cerulean Mountain Trust compare to Walter's? 


Too many questions! and still, there is much more we want to hear from you.
THE last one: As Rocio said, do you think you will read another Franzen?

Freedom. Final discussion, by Jorge

I have to say that I voted for this book, the description provided and the commercial success seemed to me that I could be an interesting book to read. I was mistaken.

Continuing with the masterpiece debate I like in every book, I think Freedom is not a masterpiece at all. The one who wrote “a masterpiece of American fiction… Like all great novels, FREEDOM does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew” was either drunk or was earning a lot of money just telling that (maybe both). I find this book a very good one for Oprah’s followers: middle class bored people with marital problems that only want to project their lives into others’ problems. I don’t see neither a deep description of today’s American society nor an intense, well written story. Some of the characters are really unnecessary and overall I find this book an accumulation of disgraces, without sense, only chronological in Patty’s life.

Patty is annoying, Walter boring, Katz funny but all are a stereotype. If I have to choose a character I’d rather choose the cerulean warbler: is the best character, is the only one that is really suffering on the main characters’ decisions and the only one that does not have the freedom to decide its own fate.

The book is increasingly tragic (sometimes too tragic, why has Lalitha died? Was it necessary?) but the end of it is really disappointing: it is a happy ending, in which the couple reconciles and everything is allright again (come on! What was the writer thinking about?? I think only commercial success). I think this is the kind of ending that mass, main street, readers want, but betrays the way the book is written, the dramatic evolution of facts that builds the story line of the book.

I have found this book long, boring, "too many pages" as some of you said for Vargas Llosa’s. It tries to be a complex description of a couple difficult life in current society, but in my opinion only gets that done in part, it ends being an addition of characters, clichés and stereotypes that could be summarized in half of the pages (and could be done with a more profound description of the couple and less waffle around it). I think that this book is good for soap opera (culebron) followers, not for anyone with a little bit of interest in literature.

That said I would like to ask for a shorter book next time; good or bad, shorter will be better for all!

Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno. :)

Freedom, part three

We are getting to the end of the book (at least some of us! ;-) and each page turned seems to bring more unhappiness, more conflict. No character is good or bad, but they all bring their problems with them, their fears, their frustrations, and that is something I really like about the book: characters, though extreme, feel so human.

But however, I want to bring the discussion to the politicals that the narration tells us. What do you think of the way the Cerulean Wabbler Park assures its existance? Does the end, keeping nature only for nature, justify the means (the implications with the mean corporations)?

And second, what do you think of the phrase "Kenny Bartles was clearly one of those daredevil clowns, a bush-league sociopath who would end up in jail or in Congress soon enough"? Isn't it just too real?