Dear Book-Club-philes,

We met on this fine autumnal evening, at Deanna and Barbara in the heart of Brussels to discuss the least ream of paper we read. To follow suit, I should write in very trashy 'merican slang, vernacular to the south of Texas, but alas...we'll spare the swear words. Please forgive the lack of lyricism/inspiration/musicality to this notes (as compared to Che's last month's Book Club meeting notes...). There were 11 of us around the fantastic rectangular table at B&D's in animated discussion about culture, the effect of media in our society, American culture (of course), some swear expressions in Spanish (actually, Mexican Spanish), the story line, and the characters development believed. Chips&salsa following the Texan theme, olives, gummy bears, licorice, and winewinewinewine attended our discussion -- as well as many organic conversations.

Many of us discovered facets, or even subjects that spoke to the nature/identity/meaning of the book during our discussion. We obviously much referred back to the shooting at Columbine in the US in years recent past. We also referred to media portrayal of events, in particular to their influence in public opinion. Diversions turned into full blown discussions about guilty vs proven innocent, giving people what they want (altruism vs manipulation), the voice of the writer in a First person story vs the voice of the actual protagonist whose first voice we are hearing, Vernon's smarts and intellect, voting participation (par rapport the kind of voting that goes on in Big Brother programs), what books are nominated to the Booker Prize, the comic slant/irony of the book. The next book selected, a short read indeed, will be the subject of our next discussion on Thursday, December 4th. In the next couple o'weeks, we'll be reading an easy/short-read book by an author already known to our Book Club circle, Tracy Chevalier.

The Lady and the Unicorn; Published in September 2003 in the UK, in November 2003 in Italy, and in January 2004 in the US.