the café with no name
Tag: book group
many questions
The People of the Books were polarised on this one, as we often are. Still, as always, our group provides lots of insights, knowledge, and humour. It’s a pleasure spending two hours with these folks every month. Next up: Margaret Atwood.
The Finkler Question
This is a book I know I’ll appreciate more after we discuss it in book group. While I found it laugh-out-loud funny in places, I felt that the characters and issues would be more relatable if I were Jewish, or even Jewish-adjacent. As a good proportion of our book group members are, I’m sure they’ll give me insights I am currently lacking. Maybe then I can tease out the nuances between Jewishness and Judaism and Zionism.
wuthering
How long since you read this classic?
According to Italo Calvino*, “Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.” Also “A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.”
If it’s been a while, maybe it’s time for a re-read!
*Why Read the Classics, 2001
sketchnotes
I only sketchnoted four book group meetings in 2024; my goal for this year is to do at least six. Here’s number 1!
the age of innocence
It was so nice to meet with People of the Books again (we finally gave our book group a name after reading Geraldine Brooks’ fine novel last year). It was good to forget about loss and vulnerability for a few hours and just talk about literature with smart, kind, generous friends. I am lucky to know so many wonderful people.
a spell of good things
Here are the sketchnotes from our last book group meeting—they’re pretty irrelevant if you weren’t there, or haven’t read the book. As always, I am not sketchnoting the book itself, but our two-hour discussion of it, which is always more free-ranging and interesting than I manage to sum up in one page.
A Spell of Good Things
I finished this one yesterday and started again at the beginning, because I‘m sure I missed stuff the first time through.
time shelter
Book group meetings are one of my monthly highlights, and I enjoy spending a few hours afterwards trying to distill our conversation into a page of sketch notes.
January book group
I plan to read a lot more non-fiction in 2024, so book group picks might be pretty much my only fictional forays. This one was the 2023 International Booker Prize winner; let’s see if I agree with the judges!
hashiworks 