A feast of books

On Wednesday, my book group met to discuss “The Feast of Love,” by Charles Baxter. Everyone liked the book and said they would recommend it, although some (including me) found the first half a little depressing. It definitely picks up by the end though, if you stick with it. Each chapter of the novel is narrated by a different character in the book (some characters get more than one chapter), and Baxter did a good job of capturing each one’s voice, especially the teenage girl who was a central character.

Sadly, this was the last meeting of the group—our leader is moving away :( I’m kind of addicted to book group now though, so I’m thinking about starting a new one.

Since the group is ending, I thought it would be nice to list the books that we’ve read. (This is an incomplete list, because I’ve only been a member for a little less than two years, and it started a year and a half before that.) One of the nice things about the group is that I ended up reading a lot of really good books that I never would have chosen on my own (“The Lovely Bones” is a good example of this).

“The Known World,” by Edward Jones
“Straight Man,” by Richard Russo
“The Lovely Bones,” by Alice Sebold
“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” by Haruki Murakami
“The Plot Against America,” by Philip Roth
“March,” by Geraldine Brooks
“Saturday,” by Ian McEwan
“Running With Scissors,” by Augusten Burroughs
“On Beauty,” by Zadie Smith
“The Inheritance of Loss,” by Kiran Desai
“The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss
“The Voyage of the Narwhal,” by Andrea Barrett
“The Feast of Love,” by Charles Baxter

and a few I didn’t read when I was a delinquent book group member:

“Mating,” by Norman Rush
“Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,” by Robert Olen Butler
“Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” by Tom Robbins

Anyone want to join a new book group? :)