Welcome to the Holmes Evening Book Club Blog where we talk about books online. Read the monthly selection along with us and add your comments to the discussion posts using the Post Comments box at the end of each post. Put your email address in the Follow by Email box in the upper right-hand corner to get an email notification whenever there's a new blog post.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

What We Thought About Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins is a collection of stories about individuals, the choices they make and the results of those choices. Some of the lives of the characters turned out the way they wished and others, despite their best efforts, were ruined. Book club members felt like the stories were love stories, reality for the characters. However their lives turned out, it was their story to tell and to live. "Life is not like the movies."
 
Set against the backdrop of the romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during the filming of the multi-million dollar movie, Cleopatra, Beautiful Ruins is a grand story about how situations affect people by either spiraling out of control or being redirected. Do events control people or do people become the masters of their fate to ensure a happy and satisfactory life?
 
These quotes from the author describe the direction of the story:
“His life was two lives now; the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.” ...
“Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same, Pasquale. The smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.”
 
The author neatly ties up all loose ends at the conclusion of the book which group members wholeheartedly appreciated. It was easy to see whose life was on the right track and whose life was ruined. The book discussion elicited many personal connections to the characters' stories and general enjoyment of the book
 
The description of the Adequate View seemed realistic, and the group would have been happy to visit the cliffside hotel and meet Pasquale, his mother, and his aunt.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

This Month's Selection: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

cover image of Beautiful Ruins
This month's selection is Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Join the group for a face-to-face discussion on Tuesday, June 18, at 6:30 p.m. or join the discussion online starting June 19th.

From the publisher:
The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his  funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later. 
“Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” —Richard Russo 
“A ridiculously talented writer.” —New York Times

Browse inside the book at HarperCollins.