Book Group

Hi Von....thanks for the gentle boot up the backside.....I write ALL THE TIME in my head, so I may as well do it here, hey.

I just came home from book group.  Love it.  We are a relatively small group of six people who meet in one of our local cafes once a month for coffee and rigorous discussion that does not necessarily have anything to do with books coz sometimes we forget to read them.  Or in the case of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', read three chapters and not like it so don't bother finishing it.  Turns out you don't have to read a book in order to have an opinion on it.  Who knew?

We had a new member, A, join us tonight.  I invited her to join because I just so happened to be standing in my favourite local bookshop at the same time that she was asking the person working there if they knew of any book groups she could join.  After it was explained to her that they didn't co-ordinate book groups any more, I piped up and said she was most welcome to join ours.  The beauty of our book group is that it grew out of a notice a friend and I posted on our local community board at our local shops asking anyone who walked past the notice, if they would like to join.  We figured it would be a fun way to both be part of a book group, and also meet some new people in our neighbourhood.

Our group is a great collection of people, and as it's a community based group it was great to be able to just invite a new person and know that everyone would be fine with it..  And...she's a retired English Lit teacher, currently doing a fine arts degree.  A is a wonderful new addition.

The book for tonight was one of my suggestions...... Ransom by David Malouf.

The first few pages I read of this had my heart sinking.  I suggested it after seeing David Malouf appear on the  First Tuesday Book Group on ABC1.  He struck me as being very thoughtful and insightful, and I realised I had never read any of his work.  This is his latest so I thought...why not.  Turns out this is his imaginative retelling of the story of the Iliad; of Hector and Patroclus and Achilles and Troy and other historical literary figures and places of which I know just about nothing.  Classical history settings aren't my usual ilk, so I thought at first that I might be in for a long, dry read.  I am very glad that I decided to persevere beyond those first few pages, because this poetical book drew me in and opened up for me with beautiful language, a tale of a man throwing off the mantle of who people think he should be, in order to be who he really is.

Everybody in the group really enjoyed this book, and it made for great discussion...lots of different metaphors, images, parallels and questions to be debated.  I could tell you more, but you should probably just read the book.!  Ha Ha.