Poughkeepsie Book Club Forums

Nominations time!

The crucial pieces of information we want are:

1. Title and Author
2. Description
3. Length
4. Hardcover only?
5. Top Amazon review value and average review value
6. Availability in local libraries


Also, to try to select books that are more appropriate to the book club, we could use information such as:

* Availability of discussion guides
* Existence of other book clubs that read the book
* The title appears on college reading lists


These new items are aimed at trying to get books that lend themselves to discussion. If we all read the greatest book in the world but it's so straightforward that the only thing we can think to say about it at the meeting is that we all agree it's the greatest book in the world, that's rather lame. We would just like to put the "book" back in "Book Club" a bit.

I highly recommend it!

“The Great Escape” by Paul Brickhill
~300 pages
5/5 stars, 55 customer reviews
Available in paperback
3 copies in the library
3 audio CDs of the book also available at the library

A book that describes the real-life escape of 76 POWs from a maximum security German POW camp during WWII. Many were recaptured, but some were not. It also describes their previous escape efforts and goes into great detail of how they were able to make what they needed (forged papers, tools for digging, etc.). Reading about the huge efforts that went into all of this is amazing--I was amazed that mankind can be so resourceful and patient. I'm not sure I could be!

Wikipedia: "The Great Escape is an autobiographical account by Paul Brickhill about the mass escape from the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III for British and Commonwealth airmen. Though Brickhill himself did not escape, he did record the events."

The book was turned into a movie, which I have always liked, but I loved the more detail that the book had about this main escape and others. A really great book!

_________________
-Stephanie

"If I'm going to have delusions, I may as well go for the really satisfying ones."

The Monkey Wrench Gang Edward Abby.
at least 1 each copy of 3 editions at the libary.

rating: 50,000,000 stars from anyone who is looking to take down the man 1 wooden stake at a time.

Review:
"Excellent high adventure." -- -- Playboy
Description:
Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief. The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ("Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period"). Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.

352 pp

The Monkey Wrench Gang won.