Bangalore Meetup Groups

Hi Friends,

Welcome you all to our meetup of Bangalore Book Club [BBC] Meetup Group, The last meetup of the year 2009 Book Lovers - Festive Meetup.

Announcing a new Meetup for Bangalore Book Club [BBC] Meetup Group!

What: Book Lovers - Festive Meetup

www.woodstok.co.in

The agenda is very simple, First introduction by members & then discussion on Books, we love.

Secondly, Review & Discussion on the Books written on Fairy Tales !!

Thirdly, discussion on organising our next Special meetup on 9th January, 2010.

Please invite your friends to join this Book Club, http://BookClub.net.in

To get updated visit http://blog.bookclubonline.in

To Get Upcoming Meetup Details on Mobile Just sms: BOOKCLUB and send to 56070

Now you can follow us on Google SMS Channel - Subscribe to BookClub SMS channel to recieve instant updates on Book Club Meetups.

visit : http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/subscribe/bookclub

To subscribe using your phone, SMS ‘ON BookClub’ to 9870807070.

For example, if you wanted to subscribe to the BookClub channel, you will need to send the following SMS to 9870807070: ON BookClub

You’ll receive a confirmation message and the last message posted on the channel to confirm your subscription.

FREE Entry !! You need to pay for coffee or snack you order, cost may come to Rs.50 to Rs.100.

 See you all there at meetup !!

Have a Great day !!

regards,

Kushal Raj Jain

+91 9972 000018

kushal@WebExpress.in

Learn more here:
http://bookclub.net.in/calendar/12104242/

Dear Members,

Hi Friends,

Welcome you all to our meetup of Bangalore Book Club [BBC] Meetup Group, Book Lovers - Movie Buff’s Meetup.

Announcing a new Meetup for Bangalore Book Club [BBC] Meetup Group!

What: Book Lovers - Movie Buff’s Meetup

Where: A location will be updated shortly by Email.

The agenda is very simple, First introduction by members & then discussion on Books, we love.

Secondly, Review & Discussion on the Books written on Movies & Movies made on based of Books !!

Thirdly, choosing a topic & venue for next meetup.

Please invite your friends to join this Book Club, http://BookClub.net.in

To get updated visit http://blog.bookclubonline.in

To Get Upcoming Meetup Details on Mobile Just sms: BOOKCLUB and send to 56070

Now you can follow us on Google SMS Channel - Subscribe to BookClub SMS channel to recieve instant updates on Book Club Meetups.

visit : http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/subscribe/bookclub

To subscribe using your phone, SMS ‘ON BookClub’ to 9870807070.

For example, if you wanted to subscribe to the BookClub channel, you will need to send the following SMS to 9870807070: ON BookClub

You’ll receive a confirmation message and the last message posted on the channel to confirm your subscription.

 See you all there at meetup !!

Have a Great day !!

regards,

Kushal Raj Jain

+91 9972 000018

kushal@WebExpress.in

Learn more here:
http://bookclub.net.in/calendar/11972097/

Bangalore Book Club [BBC] Meetup Group

Book Lovers - Movie Buff’s Meetup

Anyone looking for trends in our selection of the best books of the ?00s might have a hard time finding them amid the wizards, 19th-century serial killers, dysfunctional families and such. Narrowing down our decisions was pretty tough, and the process required a number of back-and-forths about what was significant as well as beautifully executed, which book from a given author represented his or her best of the decade, and so on. So consider these alphabetically listed selections 30 of the many, many memorable books published this decade, and as always, let us know what we missed.
Non-fiction:
Devil In The White City (2003), Erik Larson
It?s easy to imagine Devil In The White City as a historic true-crime novel, devoted to telling the chilling story of the serial killer H.H. Holmes, with the Chicago World?s Fair simply serving as a backdrop. But what makes the book so remarkable is the level of detail provided by Larson?s research into the setting and the protagonists. Architect Daniel H. Burnham wanted to parlay the fair into a forum that would make Chicago a global city; his quest gets as much page time as the grim details about how Holmes murdered more than 27 young women, and it?s just as compelling. The result is a non-fiction thriller, a tale of creation and destruction filled with bizarre facts and stories that expose the best and worst of human ingenuity.

Fargo Rock City (2001), Chuck Klosterman
The trouble with High Fidelity is that it?s a great book about relationships and a miserably anachronistic one about music: Nick Hornby?s steadfast, monolithic devotion to the super soul hits of the ?70s fails to get anything right about the intersection of ?90s music and love. Enter Chuck Klosterman?s Fargo Rock City, the most trenchant book ever written about that ?80s punchline, ?hair metal.? Over the course of his engaging, infinitely quotable discursus, Klosterman unpretentiously maps what music can mean, both within its own imposed narrative, and once it reaches the outside world. He veers all over the place: one moment he?s giving readers a detailed analysis of Guns ?N Roses? Use Your Illusion video trilogy, and the next, he?s talking about why metal turned him into an alcoholic, and why it?s weird that Pavement never talked about the beer they were drinking. His passion is contagious: You don?t have to like (or even be familiar with) the music to be sucked into a world of beautifully argued, casually hilarious passion. In terms of books about what listening to music can mean when you love it to the point of idiocy, few are better.

Freakonomics (2005), Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
There?s often profit and acclaim in writing books that make abstruse fields of study accessible to the layman: Stephen Hawking?s A Brief History Of Time, for instance. But there?s even more glory in writing books that make those fields fun. The bestseller Freakonomics, co-authored by journalist Steven J. Dubner and ?rogue economist? Steven D. Levitt, is an excellent example. By defining economics as ?the study of incentives? rather than anything specifically tied to money or commercial interests, Levitt freed himself up for economics-style analysis of everything from dropping crime rates to the outcomes of sumo-wrestling matches. Like any mass-appeal, pop reevaluation of a scientific field, Freakonomics was controversial, with detractors questioning Levitt?s premises, processes, and conclusions. But just opening up the field to a wider consideration and discussion was a victory, and Levitt and Dubner?s lively prose and intriguing conclusions were icing on the cake.

Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich?s exploratory journey through the struggling underbelly of American society, undertaken when she realized how many women were being forced into minimum-wage jobs, and decided to try some herself, is emotionally draining but intellectually illuminating. Now, after the great financial collapse of 2008, the work reads more and more like prophecy, as untold millions struggle to scrape up enough change to just make rent, to say nothing of trying to buy food, or care for their kids. Ehrenreich?s travels take her from waitressing to Wal-Mart, and at all turns, she feels desperate and belittled, a feeling many people rudely tossed atop the unemployment line now share. It?s rare that a social-issues book becomes more prescient as time goes by, but Nickel And Dimed is an urgent exception.

Nixonland (2008), Rick Perlstein
The long 5 o?clock shadow over American politics gets his due in Perlstein?s exhaustively detailed tome on how the 37th president shaped his country. Richard Nixon?s long-building resentment toward the privileged, plus his conviction that disadvantaged men like himself deserved to be in charge, allowed him to exploit a widening gap between the counterculture and the counter-counterculture, invoking the cues that built a majority to carry him to the White House. Rejecting facile explanations of the aftermath of the 1960s, Perlstein redraws the map of two turbulent decades and picks apart the faux-populism that still inflects political discourse today, drawing those parallels without emphasizing them.

Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood (2008), Mark Harris
This account of the making of the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar of 1967?Bonnie And Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who?s Coming To Dinner?, and the winner, In The Heat Of The Night?is one of the great Hollywood books: deeply reported, sharply nuanced, and hugely entertaining even when ping into production minutiae. Harris doesn?t caricature subjects even when the temptation must have been overwhelming, such as drunken, racist Dolittle star Rex Harrison, soft-liberal Dinner producer-director Stanley Kramer, and haughtyNew York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, whose one-man crusade against Bonnie And Clyde cost him his job. And the great stories are innumerable, as when The Graduate director Mike Nichols breaks down the skepticism of producer Joseph Levine over Nichols? multiple uses of Simon & Garfunkel?s ?Sounds Of Silence? in its first 40 minutes: ?I ran it, and he said, ?I smell money!?? says Nichols, ?thereby endearing himself to Paul Simon for all time.?

Them: A Memoir Of Parents (2005), Francine Du Plessix Gray
In a decade marked by the memoirs of angry children determined to mine some authorial gold from their unhappy early lives, Du Plessix Gray?s chronicle of growing up as an immigrant in mid-century New York relates history rather than agony, building subtly toward judgment while still acknowledging a debt of gratitude. Francine?s mother and stepfather, Russian émigrés who fell in love in Paris while they were both married to other people, were artistic geniuses and unrepentant social climbers, too exhausted or indifferent to be proper parents. With her eye to the keyhole, Du Plessix Gray weaves her early recollections into a riveting biography of two strangers she happened to live with, balancing memories of their often-irrational behavior with a sparkling account of their talents as celebrated by the world.

The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell?s bestseller looked to epidemiology to explain how ideas and phenomena blew up, and ended up becoming its own proof for the theory. Who doesn?t know what a tipping point is now? Who could have said that a decade ago, before Gladwell started playing with the idea, then saw others popularize and spread it? While some of Gladwell?s example have been challenged?The Tipping Point?s view of declining crime rates contrasts sharply with the one found in Freakonomics?the concept seems not only solid, but downright prescient, arriving as it did before talk of Internet memes became a part of casual conversation.

The Wisdom Of Crowds (2004), James Surowiecki
Crowdsourcing would have remained an empty dot-com buzzword if James Surowiecki, the perceptive New Yorker business writer, hadn?t put real-life example and surprising science behind it. His persuasive book shows how properly constituted groups outperform inpidual experts, even on tasks where no member of the group seems to contain the relevant expertise. From the very first example?a county-fair guess-the-number-of-gumballs-in-the-jar contest?through the much-maligned terrorism-predicting ?markets? set up by U.S. intelligence in the wake of 9/11, Surowiecki cuts through common-sense solutions to show that our reliance on pundits and geniuses is misplaced. Together, we know more than Alan Greenspan knows separately, which reveals our culture of overpaid technocrats to be thoroughly backasswards. Pair this book with Malcolm Gladwell?s Outliers, and you have a blueprint for a truly enlightened democratic capitalism.

The World Without Us (2007), Alan Weisman
The environmental-writing market boomed in the ?00s, as more and more people became convinced that climate change would doom us all within the century. But few environmental books have the terrific gimmick or evocative writing of Weisman?s The World Without Us. Weisman starts from an irresistible premise?how long would it take the planet to erase all traces of human society if we all disappeared tomorrow??but bolsters it with a tremendous feel for place, sticking readers in the middle of the quiet solitude of the last old-growth forest in Europe, or the controlled chaos of an oil refinery, with equal ease. Weisman managed the rare feat of getting readers to consider their impermanence while also thinking about how it might be a good thing.

Fiction:
The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Michael Chabon
By the end of the decade, it had almost become a cliché for authors to wed pulp influences to the sorts of epic family sagas that defined American fiction. But when Michael Chabon tried it with Kavalier & Clay, it felt fresh and new. Though he wasn?t the first to dabble in blending these influences, his was the breakthrough novel that made the technique safe for others to try. And even now, after all the imitators, his book still feels alive in a way that few pulp novels or epic family sagas do, as it follows two boys in Great Depression New York City who invent a comic-book superhero. While the book?s occasional trips off into pulp adventure can seem a little goofy, its wistful, romantic heart and longing for Golden Age archetypes to chart a course for truth and justice remain potent.

Atonement (2001), Ian McEwan
On paper, it sounds like the most boring novel ever: yet another examination of repressed Britons on the eve of World War II. Instead, Ian McEwan turned the story of a forbidden love affair and a young girl on the edge of comprehending adult interaction, but not quite there yet, into a moving examination of guilt, forgiveness, and the power of fiction. The novel?s opening passages?where said young girl makes a terrible mistake and accuses her sister?s lover of a crime he didn?t commit?are written with keen psychological insight and leisurely pacing that nonetheless remains tense. But in the book?s following sections, McEwan?s games with narrative structure and unreliable narrators become something else altogether, an increasingly sad look at how little power stories have over real life.

Bel Canto (2001), Ann Patchett
In December 1996, a group of Peruvian revolutionaries began a hostage crisis in the official residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima that ended violently more than four months later. Ann Patchett was paying attention, and her novel finds a bittersweet lyricism in a fictionalized take on the same event. Stuck together, hostages and hostage-takers find the factors piding them?politics, language, and in one of the central relationships, the distance between a famous opera singer and a devoted fan?matter less than the needs that unite them. The grace they find can?t last, however, and like the music that helped inspire the novel, Patchett earns her novel?s heartache by suggesting the possibility of a sweeter, more beautiful world.

The Blind Assassin (2000), Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has shown a career-long interest in gender relations and generational changes, particularly how the past gives way to a present that only dimly and incorrectly remembers what came before. That obsession gets worked out in a number of absorbing ways in one of her most ambitious, artful novels to date: The Blind Assassin follows several interlocked threads, as Atwood plays games with identities, connections, parallels, and altered histories. In one thread, she explores the childhood of two sisters, Iris and Laura; in another, Iris is a cantankerous, elderly widow, and Laura is an apparent suicide whose posthumously published novel became an enduring classic. Atwood only gradually reveals what happened between these bookends, and she keeps readers guessing, as it becomes clear that what the world remembers about Laura has very little bearing on what actually happened. Like many Atwood novels, Assassin is a puzzle box, but luminous writing, well-drawn characters, and the keenly melancholy theme of generational amnesia have more to do with the novel?s success than the series of reveals Atwood puts her readers through.

Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007), Junot Díaz
addthis_pub = 'blogcoin'; addthis_logo = 'http://blog.co.in/logo_header.jpg'; addthis_logo_background = 'FFFFFF'; addthis_logo_color = 'red'; addthis_brand = 'Blog.co.in'; addthis_options = 'favorites, email, digg, delicious, stumbleupon, technorati, reddit, furl, yahoobkm, myspace, magnolia, myweb, facebook, google, live, more';