Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Name that book club!

Feel free to suggest names for the book club - so far there are just a few ideas.

K suggests The Foul Weather Readers (because both times we've met so far the weather has been awful, and so have the books! But, we still managed to have a lot of fun!)

G suggested Fantastic Four (if I recall correctly) because so far we've had a (fantastic) group of four gals.

Oh, I also have another esoteric idea if we can agree on a common author - turns out in the 19th c, groups of women called themselves Janeites, after Jane Austen. So, I thought maybe we could be the Sedarisites or the Atwoodites, or something like that...


Leave your ideas in comments!

The next book is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and we'll meet on June 27th! From Amazon: Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Running with Scissors


Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs was largely panned by all in attendance at the latest book club meeting. Despite high hopes and not a bad review out there, for the most part we found the book dull, terribly written, and kind of whiny.

Your thoughts?

Friday, April 25, 2008

Twilight

Twilight was the first book we discussed at our newly created book club. It's by Stephanie Meyer, and a YA book. Most agreed that the book was terribly in many ways - misogyonist, melodramatic, silly, poorly written, even boring - and yet, most of us went on to read the second and even the third book of the series. Why this strange hold over us?

Me? I broke free!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Welcome!

Welcome to the (as yet unnamed) book club blog site! Thanks to the powers of the internets, this site will provide not only a forum for those lucky members of the elite, intellectual, stimulating, wine-guzzling book club but, indeed, just about anyone who's interested.