It's Been a While. . .

It's been a long time since I posted any reports. So this will be more about the last meeting and a little bit about the previous ones.

The book for March was Robert Chandler's The Long Goodbye and, in keeping with the '50s theme, we dined at the 59 Diner. Great milkshakes! Great chicken-fried steak! In keeping with the drinking theme we repaired to Mary's for discussion and gimlets. The gimlets were great and Mary's Samoyed, Nina, wanted one too.

We all enjoyed reading The Long Goodbye (Marilyn's suggestion)--it was a great change from the usual. I can't say much about the discussion--like many enjoyable (to everyone) genre novels there were no arguments, not much discussion. We did talk about how much we liked (and were puzzled by) some of the slang used. Why is a woman a "frail"? And the wonderful, noirish descriptions. Also, Philip Marlow seemed to notice birds a lot. A sensitive tough guy.

The saddest part of this meeting for us was that Mary Ann wasn't with us. She has left us!!! She and her husband have moved to Arizona. We miss her--and hope to visit her en masse soon.

February Meeting
We met at my house for a discussion of When Love Calls, You Better Answer by Bertice Berry. I thought this was positively the worst book I'd ever read (or the worst I'd ever finished and/or been forced to read because of class assignment or group pressure). I assumed everyone would agree. But no. . . .a number of Zodiacs enjoyed it, and it led to an interesting discussion. Some said that it reminded them of their dating travails in the past--so we veered off into personal stories. We all agreed that we had learned a lot from becoming involved with Mr. Wrongs. Some of us (including me) thought that When Love was really a self-help book in fiction clothing and that all of that "everything happens for a reason" stuff is trite, sentimental B.S. At least one person commented that this would be a really bad book for young women because it would lead to false expectations.

January Meeting