Thanks to all who came out for our Womens Book Club Discussion last Monday!  We had a strong showing of six participants, not all of whom had completed or even read the book, but brought along their talking points nonetheless.  Interestingly enough, out of our attendees, only one person read a physical copy of the book!  Two people read it on ipads, one on the iphone, on on the kindle, and the last read only the wikipedia article.  

Nobody really loved any of the characters.  There was a collective WTF regarding Walter's jagged character change, and we disagreed on our levels of liking/hatred for Patty, but we could all agree that Joey's path shadowed Patty's in that he made a mistake yet amended it much faster than his own mother.  In the ongoing themes of familial relationships and the notion of freedom itself, this pattern resonated pretty deeply with us.  We talked a great deal about a few other themes in the book (is Franzen an eco-liberal zealot? is he some strange combination of Patty, Richard, and Walter? Why didn't they name the entire book "Walnut Surprise"?).  Although there wasn't overwhelming support as one of the best pieces of literature we'd read in a while, there was no shortage of things to talk about, so that in and of itself made this NYWBC meeting a success.  Angrywayne blogged his review, too -- a must-read!

 

The next reading and meeting for the NYWBC will be led by Matt Jacobs!  Stay tuned, and do invite your women and non-women friends to join along in the fun.

Due to several pleas for leniency after reading so many thousands of pages of Franzen's drivel and being out of town, we are moving back our next meeting of the New York Women's Book Club. It will NOT be this Thursday, March 10th, at Flatbush Farm. Instead, it will be Monday, March 21st, at 7PM at Flatbush Farm in Brooklyn. Bring your best Franzen love-hate-speech because I've been waiting for this throwdown for weeks.