2011.10.24 Meeting Notes

Great meeting on Monday. We had a large turnout and a lively discussion (not that that’s unusual). We picked our club logo (attached). Thanks to Jeff’s efforts we had 7 logos to choose from and the magnifying glass won by a hair. Why do we need a club logo you ask? First of all, because it’s cool, and second, we can now create some cool stuff with it. More to come on that.
We chose the books for the first half of next year and Terri and I are still working on which months we will read each, but here is the list:
I'd know you Anywhere by Laura Lippman
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
Heat Lightning by John Sandford
The Snowman by Jo Nesbø
Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay
No one really wanted Dexter, but Roxane wanted to read it so badly, and she was so persuasive, that we let it get voted in.
We had some great titles to choose from and I think these titles are really interesting. We’ve got a mix that includes a new to us author (Nesbo), a classic (Conan Doyle), and several author’s we’ve read before and obviously liked enough to read again.
Then there was Broken by Karin Slaughter. This book seemed very middle of the road for most people in the club and was mostly given scores between 4 & 6 (with a high of 8 and a low of 1.45, or maybe that was 1.415). There was a lot of discussion about the characters and I think Karin lost a lot of our readers because no one cared about any of the characters. Many of us did like Will Trent, however, but he was one of the only faves.
We had some people who were team Lena and some who were team Sara. Many agreed that Sara had an irritating one track mind and couldn’t see past what she felt Lena had done to her by getting her husband killed. But then Lena was a dirty cop, so she had her issues as well.
I think the best thing about the book was Will Trent and the worst was the author’s choice of killer. Most of us felt that Darla was thrown into the story ¾ of the way through in order to pin the murder on her. She wasn’t a character that we’d known throughout the book or gotten to know at all really. So when we found out that she was the killer, we felt a little Daisy’d. Her reasons for the killings also seemed a bit farfetched. I know murders happen over $5 these days, but the amount of money she was stealing from the drug trial didn’t seem to warrant her calculated, pre-meditated actions. I don’t think we even talked much about how completely brutal she was when she killed her second victim. I think it seemed a little excessive when her main goal was to just get the kid out of the way. Maybe some gratuitous violence for ratings?
We all wished that Karin had gone into more about the drug trials. The disparity between the amount of money spent on the trials versus what is spent on advertising is fascinating. Had the author woven more of this into the book, we would have enjoyed it more.
I think the bottom line was that many of us were at least entertained and that’s never a bad thing. We also learned #1 to never go down by the lake to meet your partner in crime because you’re going to end up being fish food, and #2 there is absolutely no reason to open the mail with a knife like letter opener while wearing a mask, because you never know when trigger happy small town police will show up.
Next month we’re reading Don’t Blink by James Patterson. There are plenty of books for once, so if you weren’t able to come on Monday just ask a librarian to grab you one from the book club shelf in the back.
See you on November 28th. Happy Halloween AND Happy Thanksgiving.
Kerry