January 2013 Book Club

I went to my first 'book club' meeting tonight. It was nice - met a bunch of new people, most of whom have been friends since highschool. They're all very relaxed and welcoming and it was a lot of fun. Gives people an excuse to get together at least once a month, which is wonderful - something I'd been trying to do with game night last year. My groups of friends aren't closely knit enough I guess to show up for that though so it was kind of a bust.


The book we read was Casino Royale by Ian Fleming - the original James Bond 007 book. It took me about a week to get through (only 4-5 hrs actual reading time). It was ok, but didn't inspire me to read anything else by the author. It was written in the 1950's and you could definitely tell. Bond actually spends some time moping about how they sent him a woman to work with and wonders why women want to do a man's job when they should be at home cooking and cleaning. And then towards the end of the book he suddenly falls in love with her and wants to get married (after a whole week of time together). Some of the stuff around the casino and intrigue about the job was interesting and an easier read, but the often-inserted lengthy descriptions about what the characters were eating, smoking, and drinking were a little tedious. All in all, I'd probably give it a 2/5 stars. I'm hoping it was the later bond books that inspired the movies, because I doubt this one book did it on it's own.
 

I'm still in the middle of 'The Silvered' by Tanya Huff, and the new book club book (we all make suggestions and then draw the book randomly) is 'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell. They've made it into a movie, so we'll see what the book is like, and probably go see the movie afterwards.