Book club

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 Two books.


I belong to two very different book clubs. Both meet every two months and unintentionally it ends up that they often meet in the same week- one on Wednesday night and the other on Sunday night.  I like to read the chosen book as close to the meeting date as possible in order to keep the facts and reactions fresh. 

Last week I read The Salt Path on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for a Wednesday evening meeting. Then I read Soldier of Salamis on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for a Sunday night meeting. Nothing much else got done for a while! Haha!

We had a lively discussion on Wednesday evening even though the book was not well received by most of the book club.  It was boring and not truly believable.

The Sunday evening meeting was postponed because of frigid weather. This book also was uninspiring, boring and full of extremely long complicated sentences. It is divided into three parts.  For me, part one was a slog… full of historical events and named people from that era in Spain.  I did learn some things.  Part two was the story the author had planned to tell.  While it was easier to read, it was still boring and complicated. The The author revealed his difficulties with the ‘true’ story that he was attempting to tell but the reader was left questions like ‘So what?’. Part three partially redeemed the book and the story but the author pontificates.  I was not convinced.   I am hoping the discussion will further help redeem the book!


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