Book clubs (open thread)

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?

Our book club marches through March

Last night, the Gibson's book club discussed March, by Geraldine Brooks. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was Brooks's reimagining of the story of Mr March, the father who is absent throughout Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. It's a passionate story of the Civil War, written quite well in the rhythms and language of the period, with slavery and abolitionism, New England utopianism, and the gritty realities of the time painted with a firm and steady brush. Guest appearances by Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne--and John Brown--thrill the reader.

And yet our group didn't really like it very much. "Paint by numbers," "stock characters," "improbable coincidences," "no growth in March or in Marmee," "saints and villains," "reads like YA," "reads like romance"--these were some of the critiques thrown around, even as we all protested that "we like it, but...." I guess the bottom line was that we thought it was well written but a superficial treatment of potentially great material, and that anything great in March was borrowed, not created.

Have any of your book groups read March? Well, I know you have, actually, since so many of you bought the book here. But would anyone care to comment, either to defend the book or to agree with us?

UPDATE (first)
A regular correspondent, whom I will only identify as Constant Reader, weighs in with the following: "Honestly, it was just an entertaining read that borrowed cleverly from a classic by adding to it and enriching the story - whenever a book wins a Pulitzer, we all have to figure out the justification for it, sometimes it is just good storytelling. Enjoy it!"

So there.