February 2013: Dangerous Water

Just a placeholder for our first 2013 book, Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy who Became Mark Twain by Ron Powers. How about if we start discussing on Monday, February 11?

Just got notification that my ILL copy is available for pickup now. I'll be ahead of the group for a change!

I have the book and plan to join the group read. Sounds good!

Monday's when we start discussing! I finished the book last night, but I'd prefer it if someone else spoke first about it...my opinions were strong, and I don't want to be first!

IT's good I started early. It's dragging, says the lady who doesn't like biographies. Still, I'm finding some of his chapters interesting and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

I just finished. I guess I'll go first, since Terri is holding back. I wasn't impressed. I thought Powers cherry-picked details and pulled and stretched them to make connections. I don't know anything about Samuel Clemens, the man, so I can't judge whether the picture painted of him is very accurate. But it felt to me like Powers had a vision of what he wanted the end to look like and then arranged his evidence to support that. Having said that, though, I did enjoy the stories and anecdotes about the different incidents in Clemens' life - which is not to say that I believe everything he said was absolutely true.

Thank you, Sandy. Now I can let my hair down (such as it is). I HATED it. It was fine when he was actually talking about the young Mark Twain, and I got a few details out of it. But Sandy, you said so succinctly what I was thinking and trying to put into words without snarling. I agree with everything you said. The stories by themselves were interesting, and I'd love to read a decent biography of the young Sam Clemens. I felt that this author couldn't get over himself and how clever he was. And I swear, if he would have used the words "anneal" or "mimetic" just one more time, I was going to get on a plane and find him and punch him. There are very few books that I threw when I was finished with them. This was one of them.

Whew. I've been waiting for days to get that out!

>7 tloeffler:. Sandy, you were brave to go first--and Terri, you gave me a good laugh. Thanks to the both of you, I guess my copy of Dangerous Water can just stay on the shelf.

#8 I was thinking the same thing.

I've got too many good books to read to waste time reading ones that are likely to be unappealing.

After this book, I hope we'll draw Twain's autobiography as a group read sooner rather than later. The comparisons might be interesting.

Well, I'm still waiting for my copy to be processed by the library. For the life of me, I can't figure out why it should take this long. Unless someone says something redeeming about the book in the next day or two, I'll probably cancel my request. Like Linda and Becky, I've got too many other good books waiting in the wings.

Thanks, Terri and Sandy, for taking bullets for the group! I think Brenda read it too and was not impressed.

Maybe we should skip the draw & go straight to Twain's autobiography? It certainly can't be much worse...

I mean, really. Who uses the word "anneal?"

Are we talking about Twain's giant 2 volume autobiography? No thanks. . . I mean he's an interesting fellow, but really!?

Are both volumes out? I thought only the first had been published.

Just checked Sandy, and there are actually 3 volumes. The first is out and weighs in at 700+ pages.

Whoosh! 700 pages??? Okay, maybe I should get down the hat....

700 pages? 3 volumes? Maybe we should wait for the abridged version. Get down the hat, Terri. Let's do the random drawing thing.

OK, based on the comments here, this book stayed on my shelf (and will probably go in the box that I'm taking to the YMCA's book drive this summer). Thanks to those of you who read it and took one for the group!

I'd love to say it was my pleasure, Becky, but it really wasn't...