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| 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.
Well, I didn't like the book. By page 70 I was so sick of him tediously surfing with his boring friends on mystical waves, that I put the book down and never finished it. So, as one who did not attend the last session, I think someone should summarize the discussion and convincing me --and perhaps others-- that the book was worth finishing.
ReplyDeleteHi Dennis, thanks for checking in. The book was well received at the meeting, although I will admit that another Dennis did not (will not) finish it. The first time he has failed to complete a book, so there were some dissenters. Those who liked it, I think, focused more on the relationships (there were many throughout the book) and the journey. Much of the discussion focused around the style of the writing and whether in this era, do readers have a tolerance for long-style reporting. Finnegan has been a staff writer for The New Yorker for decades. In fact, one of the chapters (on Doc in San Francisco) was more or less directly lifted from a couple of iconic articles written in the 1990s for the magazine. I enjoyed the book very much and read the chapters as almost stand alone pieces. It helped, that I had some common experiences, living and surfing in Southern California and Hawaii in some of the same areas as the author. I think you'll like our next book - TC Boyle's The Harder They Come. He's a good storyteller and the book has an edge.
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