Chi-town bound

Last Wednesday afternoon found me on a plane to Chicago for the long weekend! 4 hours in a middle seat on a Southwest airline flight. "Yay!" After getting our complimentary drinks and snacks I noticed a copy of Franny and Zooey peeking up in front of my flight neighbour. A smile came across my face when I saw the Skylight books bookmark between its pages. Justin lives in North Hollywood but is headed to Chicago for a friend's wedding. Justin has just started reading the book for his book club, still on Franny. The book is turning out alright. We started talking about Salinger a bit. I told him that I really enjoyed this book - it happens to be one of my favourites. I may actually say that I enjoy this book more than Catcher in the Rye, a book he hasn't yet read.

Justin's book club has been around for about 9 years. It was started by one of his friends and he's one of the co-founders. It was really neat to hear that his group has many members (40 or 50 if I heard correctly). They even get a special room/section at Skylight books from time to time for their meetings!

Other books they've read are Into the Wild, and Don Quixote. Justin shares that it took him about a year to finish the latter! It took about 4 to 5 book club discussions for this read because it was so dense.


Justin's favourite book would have to be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, a book he recommends through and through! It is a fictional work about comic book guys, kind of like the Superman creators. Another favourite is Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City about the "murder, magic and madness" behind the Chicago World's fair of 1893. "Hey, a little Chicago history for ya..."

Growing up he enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time (an oldie but goodie). The Narnia books are also up there.

Nowadays Justin prefers historical fiction and historical non-fiction - he just loves learning about historical events.

I couldn't help but poke and prod him more about his book club reads. Any books that stood out for him in an unsuspecting way? "I would have to say the book Eat Pray Love turned out to be a bit of a surprise for me. I had heard about the book and when it was assigned I didn't thikn I would like it. I thought it would be a silly chick book, a typical best seller. I actually ended up liking the book." He actually didn't finish it in time for the book club discussion but ended up doing so eventually. I told him that I had felt the same way when I had to read it for a book club I was in. We both agreed that Italy was our favourite city in the book. What can we say, we're gluttons! I didn't really read much about the last city, Indonesia, so I don't have an opinion on that part of the book but we shared similar sentiments about India. Though we liked those times in Elizabeth's life we felt it was very contained. Granted she was spending her time there in prayer and celibacy - abstaining from the "lavishness" that went on in Italy, for example. Then I told Justin about how my sister was in India visiting for a few weeks. Full circle of sorts, eh?

We spent the rest of the flight talking about our lives in Los Angeles, what we did for a living, and things I should do in Chicago (he grew up there), then went back to our reading - him with Franny, me with my Graveyard book.

Thanks, Justin, for keeping me company when I started to get antsy in my seat :)

Did you enjoy Franny and Zooey or Catcher in the Rye more?

Read an interesting book (fiction or non-fiction) about a city's history?