The Stepford Wives
We had a good crowd along to discuss Headlong (and pre-emptively celebrate Rachel’s birthday).
The reception (to the book not the birthday) was a bit mixed, driven mainly by how much different people were able to tolerate the terrible lead character and long chunks of art history. Overall it was excellent fun to discuss even if we didn’t entirely agree on how successful it was.
The next book is The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin and we’ll be meeting on June 9th at Effra Social. Anyone is welcome to join us, just turn up and look for the people with books – we are usually in the Churchill Room at the front of the pub if it’s available.
Other books pitched were:
Breasts and Eggs – Mieko Kawakami
Leonard and Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession
The Pursued – CS Forester
The Hummingbird – Sandro Veronesi
The Lying Life of Adults – Elena Ferrante
Remember re-pitching is encouraged if your suggestion doesn’t win the first time you try!
A few other notes:
- We have a current long read of Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. I’ll set up an event soon, but we’ll likely discuss it towards the end of the summer so you’ve got plenty of time for now.
- Check out the Curiously Specific Podcast: https://curiouslyspecific.com/ – they check out dates and locations in books and are super entertaining.
- Check out https://twitter.com/BackstoryLdn / https://backstory.london/ – currently online but hoping to have a physical store soon. Notes from Kristen on a special offer for book groupers: ‘We have a 20% off offer at Backstory (https://backstory.London) for the Stepford Wives and Bonfire with code br1xton20 (where the i in Brixton is a 1) and that code will work for our future picks as well. Just give me 24 hours post-meeting to sort it. And then for everything else he sells it’s a 10% off offer with br1xton10.’
- I’ve just been reliably informed that the You’re Wrong About podcast about The Stepford Wives is good supplementary material, but maybe read it first.(This is also the podcast Maddy mentioned at the meeting)
See you on the 9th!
