February

 

Has it really been an entire year since I've updated this blog?! Bad book club leader, very bad! I've posted this year's reading list and moved our 2023 list to the Books Read tab. 

We're off to a slow start in 2024 - sorry to say that I'm not picking books that have been popular with the group. 

In January we read Melanie Benjamin's latest, California Golden. While we found a lot to discuss about the book, about the time period, parenting, women's place in history, we also had a lot to issues with it. Those of us who've recall reading others of Benjamin's books in book club, found this one to be not up to her usual standards. We just didn't feel like the writing was as good as other books and there were too many times when she chose overused phrases and similes. 

This month we read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I've read it before and even I had to admit, on reread, that it's a bit of a slog to read. There is a lot of dialogue. A. Lot. Much of it is worked into paragraphs, rather than standing on its own, which slowed down the reading. Most people found that none of the characters were likable; some even found that the heroine of the book, Fanny, might well have been the hardest to like. We finished the evening playing a Jane Austen matching card game (think Memory). Things didn't start off well because someone (me!) hadn't read the instructions. Even when we were on the right track, things got a little silly. There are a lot of cards and the makers had to dig deep to come up with so many couples; that meant that even those who had read a lot of Austen had a hard time remembering which character went with which other character. Oh well, we got in some laughs and it was fun to do something different. 

Ann forewarns us that next month's book, The Buddha In The Attic, is going to be depressing. It is, at least, much, much shorter than Mansfield Park!