Love you all!

Hello fellow readers, it's Christine! I felt it was time for a blog contribution, and wanted to say thank you for all coming over on Monday night. It truly made me feel incredible to have good friends, old and new, over to the apartment to share some wonderful times and intelligent discussion. I only wish Jenna could have been there of course!

An interesting point to share: I worked today at the American Choral Directors Association convention in Minneapolis (at the booth for St. Olaf) and chatted quite a bit with some other Oles (Jocelyn Hagen and Tim Takach, who run Graphite Publishing and had a booth right next to ours). Somehow our book club came up (...okay, so I brag about it to people, sue me...) and I mentioned the books we've read so far. Tim got really animated when I said we read House of Leaves, and apparently he's read it twice! He said he heard somewhere that there's actually some kind of code to those long, seemingly-random lists in the book. He didn't know what it was for sure, but for example, on the pages with smaller boxes of words - some forwards, some backwards - there's actually some meaning to it! But what? I have no idea...

Well, until next time then, into the world of James Joyce. I, too, had a little trouble getting started with it, largely because of the grammar (or lack thereof). I just get bothered by the absence of quotation marks/periods/etc. Also, the character detail is very limited. Anyone else have thoughts so far?

~Christine

Forward recommended

I picked up my old high school copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the other night and decided to start off at the very very beginning -- with the forward (which I definitely never read in high school). If your copy has an introduction like this (mine is by High Kenner) I highly recommend reading it, or at least skimming it, because I forgot that the beginning of the book is quite confusing. It isn't complicated in that you have to keep track of herds of characters, but rather it takes a while to figure out who the narrator actually is... or rather, his age... Let's just say that this book is written from the perspective of the protagonist, and the protagonist's journey starts at a very early age... ; ) I believe it makes more sense as you get into it (and the protagonist grows up) but being as I haven't gotten very far yet, I couldn't tell you for sure.

The introduction in my book went into quite lengthy detail, almost a critical analysis, so no need to read it thoroughly. But Hugh Kenner will set you straight on a few things. Have fun!

Carolyn

Meeting #3: Peace Like a River

Christine hosted the bookettes in her adorable downtown apartment the other night, and what an intimate meeting we had! Filled with much comfort food, deep discussion, and even some heated debate! The bacon-wrapped pineapple was a perfect appetizer for the chili -- can't wait to get the recipe for that one, yum! And to top it off, Christine spoiled us with some coffee ice cream and oreo dessert. I'd recap our discussion on the book but I honestly don't really feel like it tonight. I'm too excited to upload some photos! So I'll just say we had a great time discussing the characters of Peace Like a River, religious elements and symbols, landscape, and our thoughts on the ending to the novel. If anyone cares to fill in the gaps, go ahead! Here are some photos from our evening:

We really enjoyed the wine and fruit!

We missed you Jenna! We will be discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce at our next meeting, Saturday April 10th, 6pm, at Carolyn's house. Let's start the blogging!

PS - I didn't get photos of everyone... maybe you got some more Solveig?

~Carolyn