September's meeting

Dear Book Clubbers,

Last week’s meeting at Marilyn’s to discuss The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet was a small, but spirited gathering.  Although there were only eight of us, Jen led a great discussion of this interesting book depicting a historical period and region that we had not experienced through previous club selections.  I think the overall rating was somewhere around a 3.5, with most of us glad that we had read it.  One thing we all seemed to agree on was that David Mitchell was a tremendously skilled writer, weaving a well-crafted story.  Thanks go out to Marilyn and Jen for doing such a great job.

The next meeting is at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 19th at Jill’s.  The selection is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  Jill has promised to do some side reading to enlighten us on the author herself, so it promises to be a very intriguing meeting.  Please let Jill know if you will be attending.  Because everyone who was at Marilyn’s brought something, we did not pick snack and wine volunteers for the October meeting.  Please consider offering to bring something when you call Jill.  It would be great if she could hear from people willing to bring food and wine ASAP so that she doesn’t have to figure those logistics out at the last minute.

Because of the small group and the close proximity to the book selection night, there wasn’t really any new business.  One interesting suggestion did arise out of our discussion of Jacob, however.  As we chatted about the book, most of us seemed to have a specific question that we wanted to ask the group.  In some cases it was a part we didn’t quite understand or something that we just wanted to hear the others’ opinions about.  The observation was made that one way we could ease the burden on the moderator and also make the discussions more meaningful to all of us, would be to have each of us consider, while reading, what they might like to ask the group.  The intent wouldn’t be to go around the room and systematically address those questions, but rather just to have additional input beyond the moderator’s perspective to broaden the range of our discussion.  Worth a try, right?

That’s all for now.  Hope everyone is enjoying these great fall days!

Jan