June and July

 We're searching for a new home for our meetings since our favorite spot closed down and in June we met on the patio of Lazlos, a local brew pub. The sun and gnats, a new member, and some personal drama all contributed to our not talking about J. Courtney Sullivan's The Engagements as much as we might have. It's not a brilliant book but there is a lot of material for book clubs - a lot of different kinds of women and relationships, the history of the diamond ad campaign, women's roles, and that ring. Of those who read it, everyone seemed to have their favorite story line; Ann's favorite was Delphine's. We were interested in knowing the history behind the adverting phrase "A Diamond Is Forever" and liked how Sullivan had taken the story of its creator as a running thread throughout the book. We did all agree that having so many different storylines and characters really made the book hard to follow.

In July we read B. A. Paris' Behind Closed Doors. We used to have a rule that we wouldn't read a book unless someone had read it first and could vouch for it. But when Lisa picked this one, it was solely based on reviews. Yikes! Only Grace really liked the book. Otherwise, we really, really didn't like this one at all. Ann had read it the month before and had already told us that she didn't like it. We could have scratched it then and picked up something else. But Lisa S pointed out that sometimes books that aren't universally loved make for great discussion. Turns out to be true about books that most people didn't like as well. We actually spent more time taking about this book than we do most of our books! We talked a lot about whether or not we found any of it believable. We talked about how hard it was to read about a woman being abused. We talked about that ending (which, we must admit, was fairly satisfying). Movie rights have actually been optioned and we talked about whether or not we thought we would like the story more as a movie and if we thought it would be more believable in movie form.

In August we'll be headed to the movie theater to watch the film adaptation of Jeanette Wall's The Glass Castle.

**Those of you who were in the club when Mari was leading it may notice that I've removed Bookworm With A View from the lists of sites we love. Mari's blog no longer goes by that title and it now more about other things than books. Also, that link went to an entirely different site, which seemed odd!