Wine & Book Group Pick for Mar-Apr
This month's Wine & Book Group pick is Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown & Co 2008) the latest block-buster nonfiction title from the New Yorker staff writer who moonlights as a penetrating social anthropologist. His first two books, "Tipping Point" and "Blink", talked about things that combine to push us over the edge into a new paradigm, and conversely, the things that we conclude in a flash or blink of an eye based on all of our previously learned knowledge and assumptions. This time Gladwell examines success - both debunking our misconceptions and drawing upon new examples to explain why some people succeed where others do not. This should be a thought-provoking discussion and so we've paired it up with some complex, "heady" wines... Details of how to join the group and discussion points and added research enclosed. Why not discover great wines and good books together! Enjoy
March 01, 2009 —
How To Join The Wine & Book Group
Go to the www.bookbuffet.com home page
Click on JOIN
Select "Invited to join an EXISTING group"
Type "The Wine & Book Group" (no quotes) in the group name field
Fill in the rest of the data fields, or if you are already a BB member, click the check box.
All About Gladwell
It is no surprise that Gladwell is a brainiac who hails from the town where the Blackberry was invented. Elmira is just west the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Gladwell's father is a Civil Engineering professor and his mother is a Jamaican-born Psychotherapist. Put the two together and you get a geeky science, sociology pop journalist who loves to examine the intersection between human behavior, business, science and academic research.
"Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Gladwell's first work, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, discusses the potentially massive implications of small-scale social events, while his second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, explains how the human subconscious interprets events or cues and how past experiences allow people to make informed decisions very rapidly. His latest work, Outliers, examines how a person's environment affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success. Gladwell has stated, "The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances".—Wikipedia
Wine Picks
Elk Cove Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2007, Oregon USA $15
From the early pioneering days to now, our Willamette Valley Pinot Noir has remained the foundation of Elk Cove Vineyards. This Pinot Noir is blended from several select vineyard sites comprised of Pommard and Dijon plant material and shows the softest, most approachable drinking style Elk Cove makes. Vintage 2007 is one that is being discussed.
Joseph Phelps Chardonnay Carneros Sangiacomo Vineyard 1986 $16 US
These words say it all: butter, caramel, texture, complex, deep, intense, color descriptors, chemical, earthy, pome. This is my favorite style (and one of my favorite makers) of chardonnay.
Previous Book & Wine Picks
Jan-Feb Fifty Miles From Tomorrow set Alaska
Nov-Dec Distantly Related to Freud set Montreal, Canada
Sept-Oct Red Dog, Red Dog set the Interior, British Columbia
July-Aug A Romance On Three Legs set Toronto, Canada
May-June The Cellest From Sarajevo, set in Sarajevo
March-April Cellophane set in the Peruvian Rainforest
January-February Eat, Pray, Love set in New York, Italy and India
November-December Madonna:Like an Icon,
October-November Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, set in New England
August-September On Chesil Beach, set in England
July The Last Chinese Chef, set in Shanghai
June The Birth House, set in Nova Scotia
May Water for Elephants, set in Depression-era America
March-April Snowflower and the Secret Fan, set in China
February Cloudstreet, set in Perth, Australia
January The Good German, set in Berlin
December The Historian, set in Eastern Europe
November One Good Turn, set in Edinburgh
September Lost in the Forest, set in Napa Valley
August The Hummingbird's Daughter, set in Mexico
July The Devil Wears Prada, set in NYC
June Woolf in Ceylon, set in Ceylon
May Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Australia
April The Mermaid Chair, set in South Carolina
March Memoirs of a Geisha, set in Japan
February Get a Life, set in South Africa
January In the Shadow of the Wind, set in Barcelona
December Pride and Prejudice, set in England
November Beyond Measure, set in Renaissance Italy
October Breakfast at Tiffany's, set in New York
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