Before I get into the details of what transpired at book club I thought that I would do a recap of the past year. Below are the books that we read (or not) for book club:
-The Circle-Dave Eggers (2013)- -The House in the Sky-Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett (2013)
- -The Dog Lived and So Will I-Teresa Rhyne (2013)
- -The Infatuations-Javier Marias (2013)
- -We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves-Karen Joy Fowler (2013)
- -And the Mountains Echoed-Khaled Hosseini (2013)
- -Maya's Notebook-Isabel Allende (2013)
- -The Appointment-Herta Mueller (2013)
- -The Orchardist-Amanda Coplin (2013)
- -The Dinner-Herman Koch (2013)
- -Where'd You Go Bernadette-Maria Semple (2013)
- -End Of Your Life Book Club-Will Schwalbe (2013)
- -Some Girls: My Life In a Harem-Jillian Lauren (2013)
- -In the Shadow of the Banyan-Vaddey Ratner (2013)
We had some good books in there, but also some duds. We even had one author come and talk to our group! I think out of the selection we read the best books were End of Your Life Book Club, Where'd You Go Bernadette, The Orchardist (although some did not like this book], and And the Mountains Echoed.
Speaking of duds, let's get to this book! We discussed The Circle by Dave Eggers
Now, I didn't read this book because I had talked to some members that did and they didn't have really anything good to say about it. Overall, it sounds like no one enjoyed this book. The concept was interesting and many in the group thought that it would have been good as a short story and not a long novel. The dialogue was boring and someone said that there didn't seem to be much character development. They thought that the main character was horrible with no redeeming qualities. It actually seemed like there was only one character in the book that everyone liked. We discussed the theme of how we don't have privacy with all of this technology and how it was affecting us. We talked a lot about Facebook and the younger generation and how they act with technology. We talked about "big brother" issues and what we thought about that. Everyone agreed that the ideas presented in this book were interesting enough, but the author just didn't do a good job at writing the story. There were a couple of us that did read some of his other books and we weren't super impressed with those. Although, the book of his that I did read didn't sound nearly as bad as this. We were all kind of confused how this book got such great reviews and ratings.
Michelle told us that Dave Eggers gave a great TED Talk and it sort of redeems him for this book :]
There was lots of other talk going on and we all had a lovely time. We also got to hear a Cooper story about a crazy lady!
The book for the next book club was already chosen, so hopefully most of you have already gotten a head start on it since it is a long one! I hear that it is really good though!
Here are the details of book club next month:
Where: Rhonda's house
When: Wednesday January, 15th at 7pm
What we are reading: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
If you have already read this book and are looking for a good quick read then I suggested reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. I really enjoyed this book!
