January 2010

Dear Book Clubbers,
Last night’s meeting to discuss Fahrenheit 451 was a great success.  The book received an overall rating of 3.3 with some people loving it, some hating it and a lot in the middle.  As usual the disparate opinions fueled a super discussion.  We all agreed that the fact that the book was written in 1950 and the author foresaw so many social and techno trends is amazing.  Ina did a great job of hosting and the munchies were delicious as always.

The next meeting will be at 7:15 PM on Wednesday, March 10th at Terry Twitchell’s house.  The book will be The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates, and Jackie will lead the discussion.  Snack volunteers for the night are Katherine and Sue K. for appetizers, Jill and Barb for desserts and Ina, Sharon and Jill for wine.

In other news, we decided that anyone who wanted to share books that they had read and liked could not only mention them on our book club’s online forum, but could also bring them to meetings to pass to others to be returned later…sort of a Craneridge Book Club lending library.  Just be sure to put your name in the books.  That brought up the topic of a reportedly cool website (www.shelfari.com) that allows you to easily track the books you’ve read as well as to share your reading list with friends.  As long as it doesn’t become too time consuming we can also have a brief moment during the business part of the meeting for anyone looking for a specific book to ask around.

Also, stay tuned for more info about author, Margaret Atwood’s upcoming appearance at UB.
We tentatively decided to shoot for late August, just before the September book selection meeting, for those who are tackling David Copperfield to meet to discuss it.  Linda Hoffman will host that gathering.  Some thought was given to breaking the book down into smaller stages, but the upshot was that some people will read it a little at a time, while others will wait until it is closer and really sink their teeth into it as a steady diet.  I’m sure it will help maintain our motivation if we informally discuss it with each other now and then.

No doubt there is more that I am forgetting, but I’ll just shoot out another e-mail if and when I remember.
Jan