I seem to have gotten my “young folk” book club off the ground. First we read Infidel, because I had read it and was dying to talk about it, but couldn’t attend the discussion at what I lovingly call my “Mature Women’s Book Club.” Our second book was Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches. I didn’t care for it because a) it’s not narrative and b) it was an old white guy’s anthropological opinion of other cultures.
Our next two books are Water for Elephants and The Road. I finished Water for Elephants last night, even though we won’t be discussing it until mid June. The Mature Women’s Book Club will be discussing it at the end of June.
I was accused of “cheating” by getting the young folk to read the same book as the mature women, but I was encouraged that the men in the young folk club would like it for two reasons.
- The first time I heard of the book was when I saw the audio version in the fish stock assessment lab at one of my tribes. The lab technician (a dude) had listened to it during his long days alone in the lab.
- When I got my copy at the used bookstore downtown, the sales guy raved about it and said he read it in its entirety on a flight between Denver, Detroit or Dallas (I can’t remember) and Seattle.
Kari Neumeyer 