The Idle Book Club

This month, Italo Calvino sends Chris and Sean swirling through time and space with his enchanting book of short stories. The nuances of literary translation and the magic of Mr. DNA are also discussed.

Sean and Chris have mixed feelings about By Blood, a San Francisco-set novel told from a disturbing and compelling voyeuristic perspective, but they ultimately decided it was worth the read.

Chris, Sean, and Jake start to fill a hole in their reading history as they dive into Pynchon for the first time. Enjoy their inexpert but enthusiastic flailing amidst the baffling waters of postmodernism. Join us next month for a discussion of Ellen Ullman's By Blood.

Pop the champagne and don a pink seersucker because it's an Idle Thumbs reunion. Nick Breckon has traveled from the far eastern states to join Chris, Sean, and Jake in a lively discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby. Join us next month for The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

Chris and Sean are transported to post WWI America with the masterful Marianne Wiggins as their guide. While not without its hiccups, Evidence of Things Unseen is a small story about the incredible and is not to be missed. Next month: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Chris and Sean dig into Michael Chabon's latest, Telegraph Avenue. While swept up by Chabon's prose, they can't quite get over some aspects of the plot. Next month's book: Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins.

Chris and Sean heap praise upon the masterful David Mitchell, revel in their favorite passages of the book, and ponder the importance (or lack thereof) of authorial intent. Also Sean watches a film trailer and wishes he hadn't.

The Idle Book Club kicks off with discussions of the impermanence of memory, the importance of perspective, and what it means to be telling someone else's story, through the lens of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.