The Typical Book Group Report - 8

The Typical Book Group met last night to discuss The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon.  There were 10 of us there, which was a pretty good turn out.  Amazingly, we discussed the book for at least an hour.  All but one of us had read the book, and everyone liked it.  I was surprised that we didn't really have much to say about Martha, who was the character who raised the baby.  I also didn't expect people to think that Homan's story was boring.  I was never bored by it, but I was listening on CD, and maybe the reader added more to my experience than I realized.

One thing that bothered us is that we couldn't really explain how Martha's box of letters got to the museum.  My recollection was that the Lynnie read the letters, and I thought that she must have sent them to the museum with her art work.  Others disagreed.  No matter how the letters got to the museum, it didn't make any sense to us that Julia read the letters last.  They were written to her, and were in the house where she was raised, so it seems strange that Julia didn't see them until she stumbled upon them while on a field trip.

After I finished the book, I came across this article in the New York Times about how a power outage caused by Hurricane Sandy resulted in inmates in a halfway house being freed.  Some men apparently went to the women's housing, like the men did in Beautiful Girl.  As much as I like Chris Christie for crossing the lines of politics and complimenting President Obama on his handling of the disaster, I have to think that there is more to this story than the Times has uncovered, and Christie's name seems to be all over it.

Next month we are going to read The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

Still Reading:  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Still Listening to:  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern