2019.10.28 Meeting Notes

We had a great Halloween Party this week at Crime & Beyond! Thank you to everyone who took the time to dress up. The winner of best costume (and it was even related to one of our books) was Tammy dressed as Dr. Anna Fox from The Woman in the Window. She sported a bath robe, a bottle of pills, and a bottle of vodka—empty, of course. She won a DVD set of the first 3 Cormoran Strike movies. 4 other costumed people won copies of the Christmas book, The Santa Klaus Murder. If you saw who won them, you know who to hit up to borrow a book from if you don’t have a copy. Otherwise, there are lots on sale at Amazon (new and used).
Thank you to Mehrnaz and the Douglas County Library for providing the pizza, cookies, and drinks. And thanks to Kelly for some GF chocolates.
We discussed JK Rowling’s (writing as Robert Galbraith) latest epic tome, Lethal White. Yes, this was a looooooong one. In movie version I believe it would be a 6-part series. We had some people who started with this book as their first in the series and really liked it. Others who had read the others in the series felt it wasn’t the best one. The one thing we did agree on was that it was the longest one so far. We’re kind of worried that the 5th hasn’t come out yet, because it probably means that Rowling is trying to get it into quadruple digits. But I digress.
Quite a few people agreed that the first 2/3 of the book dragged and then in the last 1/3 it picked up speed and went really fast (a bit too fast in fact). A few gave it a lower rating until that last 1/3 and then the increased speed (and action) raised the score for them.
The book received: seven 7s, one 6.5, four 6s, two 5s, and two 3s. As you can see, the vast majority gave it a 6-7 rating. Not the best book we’ve read but definitely not the worst either. A few people didn’t get a chance to finish it. Jose only got to 64% - yes that number clearly stuck out for him. Raj would have given us a page number, but Jose was using an e-reader.
Many of the comments were the same, though. It was ok, it was too long, it was entertaining, liked the characters and character development. One of the biggest complaints other than length was that it was solved “for the reader not by the reader” – well put Kelly. We felt a bit cheated because we weren’t given enough clues to figure out the why. Strike just kind of announced it. 
 For November we are meeting A WEEK EARLY: November 18 starting at 6:30pm at Kim’s House. Her address is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. She will provide the snack, and I will bring some wine. If there’s something specific you like to drink (like beer) bring it along. 
We will be discussing Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear. It’s the first in a series featuring Cat Kinsella. I met the author yesterday and told her we were reading the book in club (see inserted/attached photo). She seemed super nervous and at first said she hoped everyone liked it. Then she thought about it and said no, she hoped there was an even amount of people who liked it and didn’t like it, so that we could get a really good discussion. I hope so too, because we really do get better discussions when we don’t all agree.
See you on the 18th!
Kerry
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