<p>Its time for a new release! Our April CC book club selection is The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin.</p>
<p>Per goodreads: In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions.</p>
<p>From Amazon:</p>
<p>There are echoes of John Steinbeck in this beautiful and haunting debut novel set in early-20th -century Washington State…Coplin depicts the frontier landscape and the plainspoken characters who inhabit it with dazzling clarity. (Entertainment Weekly)</p>
<p>Many contemporary novelists have revisited the question of what constitutes a family, but few have responded in a voice as resolute and fiercely poetic. (New York Times Book Review)</p>
<p>Just posting to express my appreciation of this club, to bump this thread, and to be able to see a star next to the listing when I check the forum.</p>
<p>*The Orchardist * looks like a very rewarding book. I found that I was not too crazy about either of the last two selections. It is nice to be able to look forward to this one with much more enthusiasm!</p>
<p>I look forward to the discussion. I hope to reread the book and join in the discussion. Some characters in certain novels cry out for more time spent in their company: I consider Talmadge in The Orchardist to be one.</p>
<p>Commenting to get the thread starred as well.</p>
<p>Last month’s selection and CC discussion were just wonderful. I have a copy of The Orchardist from the library, and a paperback edition on order to mark up. I can’t wait!</p>
<p>I tried to get a copy at the bookstore and the paperback doesn’t seem to be available until March 5. There were no hardcover copies. I ordered something on Amazon instead. Just a heads up in case you are planning on picking up a copy. In the meantime, I’m still working on one of Emile Zola’s masterpieces :).</p>
<p>Thanks sylvan. For those shopping around, the hardcover of The Orchardist is currently $14.66 at Amazon (less if you go through the Marketplace, which has used copies) and the Kindle version is $9.99. You can pre-order the paperback for $10.87.</p>
<p>I’ve started our “off” month with YA fiction – I’m reading Unwind by Neal Shusterman at the behest of my youngest, who has been after me to read it for a while. Not exactly Emile Zola, but entertaining :).</p>
<p>Don’t forget the library. Hardback copies are available at my local library. Our electronic branch has it available for download on Kindle. You don’t even need to leave home to check it out through our eBranch … and it’s free. ;)</p>
<p>Me … I read a library copy a while back but this time I ordered a hardback from Amazon.</p>
<p>I got mine new through the Amazon Marketplace - $5.99 plus $3.99 for shipping. I wanted to use a real book this time instead of my Kindle. I love reading on the Kindle, but I think I might like marking pages and making notes in a real book for book club discussions. I’ll give it try this time and see if it’s better. (NJTM - I also wanted to post to get my star on this thread. :))</p>
<p>I recommended using the eBranch (Kindle) for The Orchardist without thinking beyond the reading of the book. I honestly don’t know whether or not you can “check it out” for over two weeks, so it might not work for discussion. I know eAudio stays on my iPod into I check back into the system to download another book. I’ve had two books on my iPod for the longest time now. I haven’t listened to them but know I can whenever I want. However, should I try to download something else, the books will disappear since I’m long past the checkout period. Maybe the Kindle download works the same way but maybe it doesn’t.</p>
<p>^ At my local library, Kindle books can be checked out for two weeks. After that time, the book magically disappears, but only if you activate the wireless connection. As long as the wireless is disabled, the book will remain on your Kindle (and there are no late fees once you connect and “return” the book).</p>
<p>Here’s my book report on some interim reading. I recently finished Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation, a short German novel in translation that has some thematic similarities to Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room.</p>
<p>I liked Visitation – in fact, I almost couldn’t put it down – but it was a rather odd book…not like anything else I have ever read.</p>
<p>The writing could be described as poetic, because it is spare and almost impressionistic, but at the same time it struck me (especially at first) as strangely formal and almost stiff.</p>
<p>I think the German could perhaps have been translated more gracefully. I also feel that it was the author’s intention to make the reader work a bit to grasp the deeper meanings hidden behind the somewhat flat narrative.</p>
<p>In Visitation, there is NO rhapsodizing about the house, as there was in The Glass Room. In fact, there is no rhapsodizing about anything. The focus is more on how the ownership and boundaries and husbandry of the land shifted over several decades, and how these transformations related to the experiences and actions of the characters.</p>
<p>The characters themselves drift in and out of the narrative in sort of a confusing kaleidoscope (if I were going to read the book again, I would take notes to try to keep them straight); however, the “who’s who” doesn’t matter as much as the overall patterns of behavior that are revealed.</p>
<p>The reader is presented with a relatively in-depth look at a few of the characters. Some of these people undergo startling experiences or are the victims of tragic occurrences, but the book’s relatively few harsh episodes are not overly dramatized. They emerge form the flat and repetitive rhythms of the narrative in a manner that is all the more powerful for being restrained. </p>
<p>NJTM: You ought to add your post to the end of The Glass Room thread, so that readers who want something thematically similar can look for it.</p>
<p>I started rereading The Orchardist; I read it first shortly after its publication date. I am struck anew by how quickly I care what happens to Talmadge and the girls. I thought the scene in which Talmadge goes in search of answers to the girls’ past lives happens later in the book; but, of course, it doesn’t … wouldn’t … shouldn’t.</p>
<p>I am about 25 pages into The Orchardist and liking it. Interestingly, Visitations talks a lot about the fruit trees and other landscape elements on the property in Germany that the book focuses on, and it follows the story of “the gardener,” a solitary, laconic individual who acts as the steward of the land over many decades.</p>
<p>I need to check out this one. I’ve missed several months of club books.</p>
<p>I have to admit I kept reading it as orchidist and wondered if it was about someone who raised orchids but I had never heard the term and also thought Washington a strange place for that. Oops!</p>