Saturday, October 13, 2007

19 July: Book Club at Ulla's

I was a little late getting to the book club this morning because I got a bit lost trying to figure out where to park in Ulla’s apartment complex and had to ask someone for directions.

I had selected this month’s book, North to the Night: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic by Alvah Simon, but one of our regular members, Ulla, volunteered to host the meeting at her house in Gerlingen and she also went to the trouble of putting together a list of discussion questions for us. Ulla is a very sweet older lady and the only native German speaker in our book club. She puts up with the rest of us fast-talking native English speakers amazingly well, and today was no different – she put together a stellar set of questions; my meager list was pathetic by comparison. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the book (I was a little worried because I had read some rather harsh reviews online that criticized Simon for being too self-centered – but what do you expect? The guy spent an entire winter alone on a sailboat stuck in the ice in the dark!). Ulla asked us if any of us had experienced a similar “spiritual odyssey” and Debbie (originally from England) asked if marrying a German and moving to Germany counted. We all answered with a resounding “Yes!”

Debbie picked our next book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, which is a sort of murder mystery told from the perspective of a 15-year-old autistic boy. Sounds fascinating!

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