April 21st. Meeting

Last night was our first meeting since our "March Break". Everyone was present and it was lovely to be back together. We took another stab at a Classic with Nathanial Hawthorn's most famous book, The Scarlett Letter. Happily everyone had read it. The opinions were, as usual ,varied. A couple of our members reported that although they did enjoy the story and appreciated the talent of the author,they still find they don't enjoy novels written pre -twentieth century. This is a perfectly legitimate opinion. For the most part we enjoyed the novel though and everyone participated in a lively discussion of the story, the characters and the social morals of the time. One of the things I found most interesting was the discussion of how important it was to address novels written in or about the past from the perspective of the people of that time. There is the temptation to apply our morals or standards on everyone and it can cloud our opinions. This also applies to novels written about different cultures. Not everyone thinks like we do. We discussed whether to continue selecting Classics, but did not come to a resolution. It will come up again I'm sure. Pat had an interesting idea about including some poetry in our meetings. We decided that if someone had a poem they would like to share, they could bring it along when they present their book. I look forward to that.
Next month we will discuss Fran's choice, American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. Apparently it is a loosely veiled account of the life of Laura Bush. I'm excited to read it. Till next month.....