Happy Trails - from Texas to Spain to Greece and Oregon!

6 of the 10 of us met to review our book selections on Saturday at Kathy Day’s lovely home. I think our spirits were still warmed from the afterglow of the total eclipse our continent had just experienced. In fact, two of our members were awed directly in the path of totality. And then, there is always so much to catch up on after 6 weeks and our conversations ranged from lizards and iguanas to rats and opossums, from sugar gliders to hording.

That warm spirit permeated the meeting…until we opened discussion of our first book, “Hot Milk”…wherein a cloud of distaste seemed to rise from the table. Two people could not finish it and a couple who did, found it to be a waste of literary effort on the parts of the author and the readers. Someone else felt that the complete narcissism of the main character was a particularly foul aspect of the story that made it trite. Though there was a nice turn of phrase here and there, one person said there was no thread in the book to hold onto and none of the characters were even likable (or interesting). Lu (write in vote) and I were the only ones who had any positive feelings about Hot Milk and our votes barely bumped the rating to a 2.

And then there was News of the World. Loved it! We loved the writing. We loved the story. We loved the characters. We thought it was novel, it was set in a great historical period and through the story, we learned or remembered so many meaningful facts about Texas and the U.S. Though it was short, the book was notably well written, with characters that were sufficiently developed, but just enough to advance the story. Sometimes you felt you were sitting (standing, crawling or hiding) right there as a scene unfolded. We can even relate to the descriptions of the Texas terrain and towns, their quirky people and their complex relationships. Turns out it was somewhat timely, too, or so I thought, given the events of this past weekend. With Lu’s vote there were 3 who rated it 4.5 and 2 who said 4.0. Overall rating was a 4.

By my count, we rated the food a 10. The Greek food theme seems to be the only aspect of our first book that met with our group’s approval. Moussaka, so glad that fell to Kathy who must have some Greek cooking genes under all that Norwegian heritage. Baklava – if you are what you cook, then Carol is Greek, too! That and the homemade vanilla ice cream. Opa! We had Greek appetizers, salads, green beans, all delish, and Ouizitos (Opa! Opa!). I included some of Carol’s pictures.

Kathy was scheduled to host next on October 7, 2017 but since she just did, someone else should step in. Takers?

Our next books were offered by Hilarie and they are based upon our votes: “Lilac Girls” and “When Breath Becomes Air”. So Hilarie also gets to do the next write up.

Looks like Maggie is the next book picker.