TC Boyle - The Harder They Come - Wednesday, October 5th

I'm traveling next week and will be somewhat out of touch, so I wanted to check in and remind you that our next meeting is coming up in a little less than two weeks.  The Harder They Come is rather short and plot driven, so there's still plenty of time to finish. Hope to see you there!

 

 Also, I wanted to make sure you saw that Paul Beatty's The Sellout made the shortlist for the Man Booker prize for fiction.  You can find his short, irreverent interview here. 

My Finnegan Moment and the Dangers of Reading

The Line Up

I was in Rhode Island over the weekend, still glowing in the aftermath of a great Barbarian Days discussion when I woke up on Sunday morning to brilliant skies, an offshore breeze and some very well formed waves (insert your favorite Finnegan description) driven in from Hermine.  Inspired by his writing, surmising he was probably in the water off Montauk in the same storm system and hey, I'm 8 years younger, I never hesitated to grab my paddle board and head out. It had been 3 years since I was out surfing and I quickly realized I was, literally, in over my head.  After 45 minutes and a couple of cautious attempts at the waves, I took a big fall and my leash snapped and my board took off for the rocks.  Suddenly my mind was full of rip currents, double wave hold downs,  and barefoot dashes across sharp slippery rocks to avoid annihilation.  In the end, I emerged from the water unscathed, but with a much more vivid appreciation for some of those passages and a new appreciation for the pleasures of living some experiences vicariously through reading.

Our next Book Group meeting is set for Wednesday, October 5th at 7pm.  We are reading TC Boyle's The Harder They Come. Boyle is a prolific writer, a gifted story teller and one of my favorite authors.  I've gone back and forth about which book we should read.  I had a chance to meet him a couple of years ago in Asheville at the ABA's Winter Institute when this book debuted.  We spent a lot of time talking about our Group's reading selections.  He convinced me this would be a great fit and I've been waiting for it to come out in paperback.