Treasure Island!!! Book club, here we come...

Just finished Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine. Fast, fun, sly, and oddly and unexpectedly sweet. 
I get to lead discussion of it Saturday night at Book Mixer. Here's hoping we get a good crowd!!! 

Music pairings for this book might be songs by The Decembrists, The Pogues, and Regina Spektor. Other suggestions?

Drink pairing: definitely something with rum. Perhaps a custom cocktail called "The Dead Parrot" made with rum, nutmeg, ginger ale, and lime. Serve with a side of mac & cheese.

A Visit from the Goon Squad chronologically

Back in July, my book group discussed A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I think the acclaim (NYT Top 10 book, Pulitzer Prize winner) left me a little disappointed-- I liked the depth, mystery, and gothic feel of Egan's The Keep more-- but we still had a wonderful discussion of this fascinating novel.
Is it a novel? In some ways, I preferred to think of it as an album, where each chapter is like a song: you can read them in pretty much any order, but the author/editor (like the musician/producer) decides on a set order for presentation and what they think will be maximum effect.
I also heard about the app for the book, which intrigued me. I decided to get all nerdy and figure out the timeline of the novel on my own. I found some other chronologies online (like this from readywhenyouarecb.blogspot), but here's mine, with my time cues included:

Chapter 4: Safari
Rolph= 11 (Rhea's age, Bennie's too)
Lou in late 30s

Chapter 3: Ask Me If I Care
1979
Rhea (and Rolph)= 17

Chapter 11: Goodbye, My Love
Sasha= 19 (ran away at 17)

Chapter 10: Out of Body
Sasha= 22
~1993 (Bill Clinton reference)

Chapter 6: X's and O's
Chris= 3 months old

Chapter 9: Forty-Minute Lunch
Kitty= 19
Jules is starting 5 year prison term

Chapter 7: A to B
Chris= 7 years old
Jules is back from 5 years in prison

Chapter 5: You (Plural)
"Twenty years have passed" (1999?)
Rhea/ Jacqueline= 43-- would indicate 2005, 26 years after Chapter 3

Chapter 2: The Gold Cure
Chris= 9
Bennie= 44
It's 5 years after 9/11, so 2006.
Sasha is still working for Bennie

Chapter 1: Found Objects
Sasha= 35 (post-Bennie)
Alex= ~24/ 28

Chapter 8: Selling the General
Kitty= 28 (9 years after Chapter 9)
Lulu= 9

Chapter 12: Great Rock and Roll Pauses
Alison= 12 (at least 13 years after Chapter 1)
This is the only one dated, but purposely ambiguous (p. 235)-- why?

Chapter 13: Pure Langauge
15 years after Chapter 1 (p. 317)
Lulu= "early 20s"
Bennie= "pushing 60"

Does anyone have any other ideas?

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Saturday's Book Mixer discussion was fantastic. I loved A Single Man, and I loved hearing all the other readers' different interpretations of it. There was spirited but respectful disagreement on the ending, the character's intentions, and major plot points. Most of us loved it, some were not quite as infatuated, but I think we all came away with great appreciation for the novel and the participants in the discussion.

About three quarters of the way through the book, I went to my fantastic local, indie video store (shout out to Video Isle and Alex, who makes movie magic happen!) and rented the movie. Yowzah. It was a very different story, but I thought the atmosphere and questions raised were in keeping with the spirit of the book. How does one take a very internal novel and make an Oscar-winning movie from it? Yup, you may need to add some big drama, change who's had affairs and why, substitute two adorable dogs for a garage-ful or animals, and attach geniuses like Colin Firth and Julianne Moore to the project. I have to say THANK YOU TOM FORD-- the changes added even more to my thoughts about the novel, and we had that much more to talk about! We discussed for two hours and could have kept going.

I highly recommend A Single Man for book clubs. If you can make everyone watch the movie, do that, too.