March 13 - Our Kind of Traitor

Karen hosted 8 of us for our discussion of Out Kind of Traitor by John LeCarre. There were many dishes inspired by the English/Russian characters of the book: Stilton cheeses, pea soup and borscht, "Russian" black bread, trifle. The salad, carrot cake, and coconut pie were also well-appreciated! The champagne was not, only because we never got to it; Newcastle brown ale and copious wine did the trick.

So the food was, as usual, fabulous; the book, alas, was not. It was uniformly disliked! A thriller with no thrills and characters that left us without sympathy for or interest in them. Oh well! It seems most all of us slogged through it to the end.

We discussed at some length our choice for our next meeting: The Count of Monte Cristo. While most of us are interested in pursuing the classics, a book that is over 800 pages abridged gave us pause. Let's face it, it's just not realistic. So we started tossing out other books (as well as discussing the reading of the classics themselves). At some point we diverged and started talking about the Hunger Games movie that is coming out, how we should see it as a group but not everyone had read it, and voila! A solution that most sounded interested in: let's read The Hunger Games for April!  It may not be a classic, but sure is a cultural phenomenon. And afterward we can go see the movie.

Next Meeting
Where: Leann's
When: April 10
What: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins