Next Meeting

New book... The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie King.

Are we all still on for next Saturday, January 9? I've been so busy I haven't had any time to blog, so we haven't kept on on the next meeting. Let me know if 1/9/10 at 5:00 at Sue's house works. If it doesn't work, we can reschedule. I've read about 75 pages and I'm loving this book so far! Great choice!

David Copperfield

A few weeks ago I felt that the time had come for me to revisit "Great Expectations". So off to the library I went. Unfortunately someone else must have also felt it was their time. So after a brief moment of consideration (noisy little ones in a library don't allow for much of that) I grabbed the next best thing, "David Copperfield". At my first opportunity, I began reading the prologue. Unfortunately, the author of that felt it important to inform the reader of all the similarities between the author's life and his work. The result was that the book was slowly being ruined for me. What was put before the book would have been much better suited for after the book. So I stopped that and turned to the story itself. I did have some concern that this would be another dark and gloomy Victorian novel, but I am so glad to have found it otherwise. It certainly had some terrible moments in the early chapters, but by the end I felt they were vindicated. Those were character shaping moments and they were close reflections to at least the emotional trials of Dickens's early life.
Now I really want to reread"Great Expectations" and see if it is as gloomy as I remember it. I am older now and have a different view of things and also I will read it by choice as compared to being forced by a High School English Teacher.