Queen Anne Books

Discussing September 25:

Here's what Lillian had to say about our next selection:

I think good Science Fiction uses an altered reality to reveal something
about the real world that couldn’t be revealed without that altered
setting. Great Science Fiction does this and entertains as well. China
Mieville’s The City and the City is really great Sci-fi. It
begins feeling like a dark, well-written, noir-style mystery – a body
has been found in the city of Beszel, detective Borlu has been assigned
to investigate – but the story quickly takes a sci-fi turn. Beszel
exists, somehow, in the same place as the completely separate, foreign
city of Ul Qomo. The book is both about the murder and about how these
two cities exist intermingled the way they are. Yes, it is sometimes a
little confusing, but I trusted Mieville to make it clear as I went
along and I was not disappointed. This is the best book I’ve read this
year. If you’re up to it, it would make a fantastic book club selection.
~Lillian

DISCUSSION POSTPONED... As of 8/10, this is backordered. We'll keep checking and announce it in the line-up when we can get enough to go around.: When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life: the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.

Discussed  March 27, 2010:
As a wealthy, young real-estate developer in Los Angeles, T. lives an isolated life. He has always kept his distance from people -- from his doting mother to his crass fraternity brothers -- but remains unaware of his loneliness until one night, while driving to Las Vegas, he hits a coyote on the highway. The experience unnerves him and inspires a transformation that leads T. to question his business pursuits for the first time in his life, to take a chance at falling in love, and finally to begin breaking into zoos across the country, where he finds solace in the presence of animals on the brink of extinction. A beautiful, heart-wrenching tale, "How the Dead Dream" is also a riveting commentary on inidividualism and community in the modern social landscape and how the lives of people and animals are deeply entwined. Judged by many-- including the "Los Angeles Times" and "The Washington Post Book World--" to be Millet's best work to date, it is, as "Time Out New York" perfectly states: "This beautiful writer's most ambitious novel yet, a captivating balancing act between full-bodied satire and bighearted insight."