Artful Readings

I am off to book club again tonight, which I am looking forward to. Unfortunately, the book for tonight was less than stellar in my opinion. The book we read for tonight’s selection was Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard. I think the interesting parts of the book could have been slimmed down to a mere 30 or so pages, out of the 150 that it actually was. But, I love my book club. I have been a member since its inception back in 2002. It’s a program through my local art museum and it is called “Artful Readings”. We meet every other month, and while I haven’t enjoyed all of the selections I have probably enjoyed 90% of them…which is saying a lot! And, one thing I love about this book club is that for the most part none of these are books that I would have picked up and read on my own. So, I appreciate that it gets me out of the box a bit with my reading. The other thing I love about my book club, is that as the name suggests the books all have something to do with art. Often, our fearless leader will choose books that go along with the current exhibition at the museum, which is wonderful.

Book club begins with a bit of mingling, there are light hors d’oeuvres and wine. We begin our discussion of the book and then for the last half of the time we go out into the galleries or the exhibit to look at some pieces and tie them into our book, either through genre or time period or even artist. It is something I look forward to every other month. And if you knew how far I have to drive on a Friday at rush hour to get there, you would know how much I love it.

I’d love to spend a little more time discussing book club and the past books we’ve read…but I’ll leave that for another time, since I have to gather my things and head out. But, our next selection is The Man Who Loved China, which I am looking forward to. Eric and I are planning a trip to China, so reading this book will be interesting.

You can see on my sidebar what I’m currently reading and what I’ve read so far in 2009. I’m challenging myself this year to see how many books I can read (hopefully more than 25!). As a side note, not all of the books in these photos are for book club. In the top photo, the bottom three books were for book club and in the bottom photo, the Sookie book was not book club. Giovanni and Lusanna was the selection before Old Masters.

Until next time, happy reading!