The winner is ...

Dulcy breaks the tie:

wow! this is actually hard cause I want to read them all. ok, oscar
wao, though like I said, I'm very torn!

More details will follow. In the meantime, start thinking of some Dominican dishes -- that is, anything besides stewed goat.

Ballot boxing

Here are the results, but not the final ones. Dulcy still hasn't voted.

Francine: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Nancy: Revolutionary Road
Carol: No preference. (Very post-bipartisanship of you.)
Cathy: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Apology accepted.)
Me: Revolutionary Road (I chose the one less traveled -- for a while.)
Amy: The Road
Seana: The Road (If you're a Viggo fan, be sure to see "A Walk on the Moon.")
Pam: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Laura: Revolutionary Road


The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Revolutionary Road each have three votes, so Dulcy will have to break the tie.

I will post her final choice tomorrow.

Dulcy's 3 Choices

The envelope please. And Dulcy's three choices for our next book are...

• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (Forget the movie. this book was recommended by three tough critics: Wook Kim, Rob Brunner and Sarina Israel--yes, a relation.)

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Originally, my first choice--but I'm equally interested in all three of these books.)

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (the NYT says it posseses "pure, savage beauty." (Wook said it's one of the best nonfiction books he's read in years.)

Let us know which one you'd prefer to read and get back to us in the next two days. Dulcy is suggesting that we meet on Sunday, May 10. Let us know if that date works for you.

Next book?

Just because we still read printed words on paper doesn't mean we can't embrace new technologies. With that in mind, I decided to start a blog. Hopefully, this will make it easier for us to schedule meetings, choose books, share our thoughts on what we've read -- or want to read, and swap recipes. (Helen, do you still have the recipe for Watergate Pudding?) Maybe we'll even be able to post links to audio files. I wish we had the recording of Mary's mom discussing her take on "Fear of Flying."

Dulcy has offered to host the next book club meeting in April. When she has some possible dates, they'll be posted on this blog and we can let her know which date works best. Also, we're going to start voting on book selections. Several people have mentioned to me that they wish they had more of a say in what we read. To make this more democratic, Dulcy will be providing us with three choices. So this doesn't become a long, drawn out process, we'll have two days to post our comments on which book we prefer.

I hope Between the Covers blog helps us stay in touch between meetings and gives us an opportunity to discuss books -- even ones we're not reading for the club. If anyone has any suggestions on making this blog or our group better, please let us know.

By the way. Mary's book choice, Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland," won the 2009 PEN/Faulkner award for fiction.