Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer
I am so happy that Kate has suggested the novel Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer. In the last 5 and a half years, the Desert Book Club has featured some pretty strange novels, but this one just might be the strangest one yet! Join us this month to use our desert survival skills to make some sense of this fascinating book.
UPDATE: April’s in-person Book Club meeting is cancelled, but we hope you still read this month’s book. If you are inclined, email 100 words with your questions, thoughts, or ramblings on Nog to info@highdeserttestsites.com. We will post responses on this webpage. We are excited about this new way to include our non-local Kip’s Book Club community in the conversation! Who knows, maybe this will become a regular occurrence…
We are looking forward to reading The Other Americans by Laila Lalami in May and The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem in June.
Kip’s response to this month’s book:
“Just finished Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer and my what a book this has turned out to be. I find it hard to summarize, but let’s say it’s a wild ride from a stormy beach to a supermarket to some kind of hippie commune to a desert mining town then to an ocean liner. I think there is a manufactured octopus following along for the ride as well. Definitely not your typical novel by far. I found the section that occurs in the Mojave desert mining town made the most sense to me personally, but that could be easily explained by my stay in the desert affecting my perceptions and creating a permanent altered state of consciousness.
I am interested in what you guys have to say about this book as well, and also what drinks and snacks you were partaking of while you write about it. I personally just took a snort of leftover holiday egg nog made from a recipe created by an MIT professor and finished off these fantastic hazelnut wafers you can get at the Yucca Valley Grocery Outlet.
In these trying times, it is important to have things to look forward to. I am happy to announce that the local author Steven Schindler just sent me a copy of his most recent book High Desert High and I look forward to featuring it in the Desert Book Club soon.”
—Kip
Every month from October 2014 until March 2020, Kip’s Desert Book Club gathered on the first Monday of the month at 7:00 pm in the home of a different resident of the Morongo Basin to discuss a book that in one way or another touches on the theme of “desert”.
Since the start of the pandemic, Kip has been hard at work making renovations to the kitchen and bathrooms at Copper Mountain Mesa Community Center, where he is the board President, and keeping their monthly USDA food drive alive. During this time, Kip’s Desert Book Club had largely been on pause, with the exception of a few virtual meetings. These virtual gatherings allowed us to welcome the participation of book club fans from beyond our local region.
Sixty-six books, more than seven years, and one pandemic later, Kip has decided to step back from being the primary book club organizer and join the rest of us as readers. Kip, we thank you for all the wonderful and eclectic desert books you’ve chosen over the years, as well as the unforgettable stories and knowledge you continue to share (if you know, you know!)
So, we are excited to announce that beginning in January 2022, our in-person book club will resume as the Desert Research Library Book Club (or DRL Book Club, for short). Each month, a member of the current Desert Research Library Artist Cohort will select a book from the library as that month’s book club selection.
