For this month my Madison-area book club decided to do a book and movie night centered around Tom Perrotta’s 1998 book Election, which was made into a film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon in 1999. I’d seen the movie at least once before, but honestly couldn’t remember much (anything, really) about it, so I think I went into the book without many expectations. And sadly, I wasn’t especially impressed with the book. I didn’t dislike it, but I wasn’t in love with it either.
I am happy to report that I finally got over the reading slump I wrote about last Sunday, and actually finished three books this week.
Despite finally getting over my slump, I probably won’t get a lot of reading done today. My book club is meeting to discuss The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, and then right after that boyfriend and I are heading to our wine tasting group. It should be a fun day, even without a lot of reading.
On Thursday, my in real life book club met to discuss our most recent selection, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Because we can be so pokey about setting up times to meet — we’re all busy reporters with relatively odd schedules — by the time we got around to this book we didn’t have a lot to discuss because we couldn’t remember much except that we either “really loved” or “really liked” the book.
Luckily, I wrote down a few book thoughts when I finished the novel awhile ago, so I can at least write a short little review.
In case you missed the first round, BookClubSandwich is an online book club hosted by me and Andi at Estella’s Revenge. A few times a year, we’ll be selecting a book to read that has something to do with food. For our second pick, Andi and I decided to open up the selection process a little bit with some voting on a few books we’re excited to read. The official poll for voting is over at Estella’s Revenge (on the top right side of the site).
In order to pique your interest, here’s a list of the books we’re voting on. I wanted to go with books that were more “foodie” than “farmie” this time, so we tried to pick books that look at food in a different way.
I’m so excited to get to announce the that Andi (Estella’s Revenge) and I are starting an online book club about food, BookClubSandwich.
We’re going to read all sorts of things — memoirs about food, nonfiction on seasonal food and food politics, fiction with a strong food element. There are a ton of food books out there, so I have no doubt we’ll be able to pick some interesting ones.
The “In Real Life” book club I’m a part of meet on Tuesday to talk about The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt. The book is a collection a short fairy stories that we generally enjoyed, although we didn’t have a lot to say about it. I’ll have a review of the book [...]
