Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher (Longfellow Grill)

A lot of talk about politics--local, national, Brexit--and upcoming travel to London, Galapagos, Myanmar, etc.  Longfellow is a pretty reliable place, but few of us had been there for dinner.  Everything was above average.

(Almost) everybody liked the book, an academic satire which had much resonance for those of us who worked in academe.  Nobody liked the main character much and for some reason that seemed to lower the rating of the book somewhat.  And we agreed that despite the enjoyment most of us had with the book, it was not of the same quality as books by Richard Russo (Straight Man) or David Lodge (Changing Places).

Our next title is Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time, but we also considered David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting.  We plan to meet on August 22, and Phil will suggest the following book.

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople by Patrick Leigh Fermor (Upton 43)

We met at a new Scandinavian restaurant, Upton 43, where the menu was interesting, the food fairly good, the service slow, and the prices high.  Our discussion started and ended with politics, mostly on the national scene, and we had fun squabbling about--er, debating--the merits and demerits of the various personalities.  The book, the first of three volumes, is an account of a walking trip across pre-WWII Europe.  It's a 19 year old Brit's engaging and erudite memoir, actually written (from careful notes) 40 years after the event.  Including many literary and cultural references (some pretty obscure), it was a little hard to get into, but the author's personal stories and the superb quality of his writing made it well worth the effort.

The next book is Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher.  Other titles considered were The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Some Luck by Jane Smiley.  We'll meet on June 28. Paul will suggest the following book.