Do you belong to a book club? If you do, which books have been your favorites? And which books are you very, very sorry that your club read at all?
I'll kick off the conversation with a memory of the Gibson's book club--years ago, we read Time and Tide, a novel by Edna O'Brien which is now mercifully out of print. The publisher claimed that it was "a poignant, heart-felt exploration of one woman's struggle to be true to herself yet hold on to the things dearest to her... Nell Steadman, an innocent "country girl" desperate to gain experience in whatever manner possible, escapes from her overbearing family into an equally stifling marriage ... Nell must fight for her freedom and custody of her children."
I just couldn't stand it. The prose was overblown and pretentious, the situations were cliched--it was so obviously an attempt at an Important Novel, but to me it was like fingernails down a blackboard.
Anyone else?
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Sometimes you can start off liking a book and by the time the group is done disecting it, you can't remember why you liked it in the first place -- the danger of group discussion... or the opposite can happen -- once my group read Oscar Hijuelos' sensual story "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" and one member was adamant that the book was "slight" - but after a heated debate about the book we found out she was just uncomfortable with the excesses of sex, food and love depicted. A few glasses of wine and a couple of bawdy conversations later, she changed her tune and declared she really loved the book but had been afraid to admit to it. So you never know...
damn, I had a typo - I meant dissecting- ah well --
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