Greetings, book club!
Many thanks to Kathryn for hosting dinner and discussion last night! So nice to get out of the cold for hot food and rousing discussion. Those macaroons were really delicious. The book averaged a 3.5 rating, and if Kathryn just could have played ball, we would have had a binomial distribution of ratings. Nice work, Kathryn. Evidenced by the rating, I think everyone has suffered enough with this book. In short, the consensus was that the book tried to tackle too many big issues--death, afterlife, grief, family, sex, etc, etc, etc--and generally fails to do justice to any of them. Fearless Leader was the lone dissenter, thinking the book was about a family dealing with grief and that the rest of it was just 'stuff'. Actually, Fearless Leader read only even-numbered pages, greatly reducing the 'stuff' he had to read. The whole thing makes a lot more sense now that we've learned that the author was raped and that the book was perhaps the capstone of her recovery. Whatever, it still doesn't work.
That aside, Dr. Matt noted that the book did contain 7 of the 10 "Tips for First Time Novelists" as complied by his fiction workshop. Hilary the Librarian has agreed to do a Lexis Nexis search for 'racial minorities portrayed as mystics in modern fiction'. Hilary, we anxiously await the results. Jeanne is taking wagers for how long it will take Lifetime, WE, or Oxygen to turn the book into an acclaimed (insert network here) exclusive movie. And Nate is really sorry he panned An American Tragedy so severely.
Our next meeting will be hosted by Scott at Fearless Leader's apartment on March 25. In a bold executive-style decision, Scott has chosen Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead". (Nice work there, Scott.) Tom, clear your intern's schedule, it's 752 pages!
Chris? Drew? Sherry? Are you out there? Please respond, we're beginning to think you've left us for New Jersey. If all the reading is a problem, I'm sure Tom has an extra intern you can borrow!
Don't forget Nate's birthday party this Friday, 8 pm on, at Copperfield's, 74th and York! Hilary is bringing three other librarians with her, Nancy is bringing her husband, and Kathryn will have been drinking since noon!
Bibliophilically yours,
FS