2013.09.23 Meeting Notes

I’m going to start with a few announcements because I figure most of you will at least read the beginning of this email before you tune out or fall asleep.
This past meeting was Kryss’ last, as she is moving west to start a California chapter of Crime & Beyond. Ok, so she is actually moving to be with her long lost and newfound love, and we all wish her the best. And yes, long lost and newfound love are the same person. We’ll miss you Kryss, but I promise to keep you on the email list so you can follow the club’s activities.
A few exciting things will be happening in October. The first of which is the annual Halloween costume contest. Anyone dressed in costume will be entered to win “Best Costume,” and everyone in attendance will vote. Yes, there will be a prize, did ya just meet me? If you want to see some of the past costumes, go to our wiki site and view the October Meeting notes for last year. The costumes were very creative, and the winner was Jose dressed as Archie Sheridan during the flooding of Portland in the Chelsea Cain book we read that year.
Also at the October meeting, we will be choosing the next 6 books the club will read. We will be choosing for January 2014-June 2014. Please send me author and/or book titles for the list. As always, I don’t put any books on the list where the library has less than 8 copies available. Single digits just don’t work well with a club of our size, and it would end up being a lot of sharing, so 8 is really my cut off. If you go to the Douglas County Library site and put the name of a book in, you can see how many copies they have in total. It would help me a lot if you would do that before you send any suggestions, that way it saves me a search. I will be accepting suggestions up through midnight on October 25. Late entries will not be considered.
So, with all of that said – we had a RECORD meeting this past Monday. 18 members showed up to discuss Harlan Coben’s Six Years. Janice gave us some Harlan news we haven’t discussed before, and I found it very interesting that he is going to write a Young Adult book featuring Myron Bolitar’s nephew, Mickey. You can see a trailer for the book here.
The ratings for Six Years were mostly in the 6-9 range, with a lot of 7s and 8s. A lot of people really liked the book, were very entertained, and found it to be believable. Others found it a bit contrived and Jake extremely sappy.
Let’s talk about the plot first. A few points were taken away by some for the mob involvement. Ok, this was me. I’m not a fan of mob plots, so I would have liked it to have been something else that started the whole thing. Then there was the issue of Jake’s pursuit of Natalie. I wasn’t the only one who went with the fact that Jake never got over Natalie and had good reason to pursue her after he saw Todd’s obit. As Sharon said,”nothing was as it appeared.” The fans of the book liked this. We found Harlan’s writing to have a lot of humor and liked the twist at the end where you found out that Natalie murdered the mob guy’s son.
Now to the characters. A lot of people didn’t care for Jake’s sappiness, wimpiness, and downright stalker qualities. He got called a girl (by a girl I might add, thank you Amy) and a few didn’t buy his obsession with Natalie. The word melodramatic was even thrown out, along with a request to “man up Jake.”
It won’t come as a shock that Jake won the slap vote. Maybe a few slaps will knock him back into his manhood. I mean the guy is 6’5” and used to be a bouncer, so he has potential.
This was the first Harlan Coben novel for some members, and hopefully won’t be the last. A few of us agreed that this just wasn’t one of his best. For me, the description was just so riveting that I think I had an extremely high (and perhaps unattainable) expectation of where the story would go. I would definitely suggest reading The Woods for a stand-alone.
 Sharon made an apple cake, which was an excellent fall snack. She also brought her candied nuts. I don’t know if that’s what they’re called, but you get the idea. Thanks to both Sharon and Janice.
Next month will be different for us. Since we weren’t able to get any copies of SJ Bolton, we will all be reading a book written by Lisa Jackson. Here’s the kicker: you can read any Lisa Jackson book that you want. What we will do at the meeting is have each person, or group of people, give us a little synopsis of the book they read and tell us what they thought of it. No spoilers, though, as some of us might want to read it. I passed out all of the books the library had at the meeting, so anyone who couldn’t make it can check a branch and grab any Lisa Jackson book you feel like reading. I think this is going to be a fun change for us.
Janice, I have you down for snacks, so please let me know if that still works for you. If not, I’m going to just bring a bucket of water and we’re going to bob for apples.
See you next month,
Kerry
From Sharon L:
I failed to mention the other night that Six Years is going to be made into a movie!! (I know heavy sigh from some and delight from others.) I won’t spoil who is going to be cast as Jake - here’s the link.