Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Introductory Post

I'm participating in a read-along of Michael Chabon's new novel, Telegraph Avenue, hosted by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads!).  This is the first post in the read-along in which we discuss our history with Michael Chabon and why we're interested in reading his new novel.


I've finished only one Chabon novel - the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I started The Yiddish Policeman's Union a few years later and got about three-quarters of the way through it before life got in the way.  When I tried to pick it up again a few months later, I'd forgotten too much of the plot to make sense of what was happening.  


I bought Chabon's first collection of nonfiction, Maps and Legends, because it was beautiful.  I haven't read it.  When Borders was going out of business last summer, I picked up his second collection of nonfiction, Manhood for Amateurs for a dollar. A few months ago when I was in Augusta, Georgia for work, I picked up The Final Solution at a used book store.  

The Chabon Collection

I loved Kavalier & Clay and I really liked The Yiddish Policeman's Union.  Assuming that Telegraph Avenue is even half as good as those two books, I know I'll love it.  I'm really looking forward to this reading party.

Here's the post schedule

• Tuesday, 10 July -- Discussion of Part One--Dream of Cream
• Tuesday, 17 July -- Discussion of Part Two--The Church of Vinyl
• Tuesday, 24 July -- Discussion of Parts Three & Four--A Bird of Wide Experience & Return to Forever
• Tuesday, 31 July -- Discussion of Part Five--Brokeland--and a wrap up of the experience reading along for a not-yet-published work. 

Telegraph Avenue will be published on September 11, 2012 by HarperCollins.  You can preorder a copy here.

See you next Tuesday for the discussion of Part One!

Bonus Reading:

• Chabon on reading Joyce's Finnegan's Wake in the New York Review of Books
• "Against Dickitude"