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Welcome to BlogHer Book Club's first e-book selection: Amor Towles' debut novel, Rules of Civility, which will be coming to BlogHer Book Club on August 17. As both readers and writers know, there's a lot to be said for setting up a scene well. Let us set the scene for you and get you in the mood to read Rules of Civility. We've got an excerpt, a cocktail recipe and a playlist -- so sit back, relax, and get ready to enjoy the ride.
I like jazz -- it's one of my favorite types of music to have on in the background when we have friends over for dinner. To me, it means relaxation and happy times. While jazz is not central to the narrative of Rules of Civility, the music and its various formulations are an important component of the book’s backdrop. Here is a sample from a wider list that Amor Towles has put together, which can be accessed through iTunes from his website in the “Music” section.
- “Don’t Be That Way” Benny Goodman and his Orchestra
- “Undecided” Chick Web and his Orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald
- “Little Jazz” Artie Shaw with Roy Eldridge
- “Swing, Brother, Swing” Billie Holiday
- “Christopher Columbus” Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
- “Putting on the Ritz” Fred Astaire
- “I’m Coming Virginia (Live)” Benny Goodman
- “Body and Soul” Coleman Hawkins
- “Relaxin’ with Lee (Alternate Take)” Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie
- “Memories of You” Benny Goodman
- “I’m in the Mood for Love” Charlie Parker
- “I Remember You” Charlie Parker
- “After You’ve Gone” Benny Goodman Trio
- “Steppin’ Out with my Baby” Fred Astaire
Now that you've got the music queued up, it's time to put on the Ritz and make yourself a little cocktail.
And, enjoy.
It was the last night of 1937.
With no better plans or prospects, my roommate Eve had dragged me back to The Hotspot, a wishfully named nightclub in Greenwich Village that was four feet underground.
From a look around the club, you couldn’t tell that it was New Year’s Eve. There were no hats or streamers; no paper trumpets. At the back of the club, looming over a small empty dance floor, a jazz quartet was playing loved-me-and-left-me standards without a vocalist. The saxophonist, a mournful giant with skin as black as motor oil, had apparently lost his way in the labyrinth of one of his long, lonely solos. While the bass player, a coffee-and-cream mulatto with a small deferential mustache, was being careful not to hurry him. Boom, boom, boom, he went, at half the pace of a heartbeat.
The spare clientele were almost as downbeat as the band. No one was in their finery. There were a few couples here and there, but no romance. Anyone in love or money was around the corner at Café Society dancing to swing. In another twenty years all the world would be sitting in basement clubs like this one, listening to antisocial soloists explore their inner malaise; but on the last night of 1937, if you were watching a quartet it was because you couldn’t afford to see the whole ensemble, or because you had no good reason to ring in the new year.
We found it all very comforting.
We didn’t really understand what we were listening to, but we could tell that it had its advantages. It wasn’t going to raise our hopes or spoil them. It had a semblance of rhythm and a surfeit of sincerity; it was just enough of an excuse to get us out of our room and we treated it accordingly, both of us wearing comfortable flats and a simple black dress. Though under her little number, I noted that Eve was wearing the best of her stolen lingerie.
Eve Ross . . .
Eve was one of those surprising beauties from the American Midwest.
In New York it becomes so easy to assume that the city’s most alluring women have flown in from Paris or Milan. But they’re just a minority. A much larger covey hails from the stalwart states that begin with the letter I—like Iowa and Indiana and Illinois. Bred with just the right amount of fresh air, roughhousing, and ignorance, these primitive blondes set out from the cornfields looking like starlight with limbs. Every morning in early spring one of them skips off her porch with a sandwich wrapped in cellophane ready to flag down the first Greyhound headed to Manhattan — this city where all things beautiful are welcomed and
