Dinner with Anna Karenina

Two books I've read recently are Dinner with Anna Karenina by Gloria Goldreich and Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst. Dinner with Anna Karenina interested me because it's about 6 women in a book club and I wanted to find out what they read, how their book club was organized, how they interacted. I didn't really like it as much as I had hoped. The women in the book club seemed too...something. Like they were characters (which I know they are) and not like real people. The author certainly did try to explain why they are the way they are and show how they changed over the course of the year, but I didn't find them particularly likeable or believable. They didn't seem like people I'd want to be in a book club with, and it wasn't the kind of book club I'd want to be in. The author mentioned several times throughout the book that this book club was different and somehow more literary and insightful than other book clubs. This is probably true, but I'd rather have my casual fun book club than one that was more like homework. It just didn't appeal to me.

Speaking of book club, in my last post I mentioned that I must have missed where the book came back to the point that the main character was going to die if she didn't make changes in her life. Well, as it turns out I did because I'm a moron. It was where the main character's roommate says something like "if we hadn't taken that trip, you would've been in your room when the fire started and you would've died." How I missed that when it was so obvious, I have no idea. We had a really good discussion about the book and I really enjoyed our last meeting. This month we're reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. This is the second book we've read by Picoult. The first was Vanishing Acts.

I wanted to read Lost & Found because it was based on The Amazing Race, which is one of my favorite shows. If I ever went on a reality show (which I won't) it would be that one. The book was pretty good. It gave a behind the scenes look at how a reality show like that works, how the production staff interacts, or could interact, with the cast. I'm sure the interaction between the camera crew and a contestant in the book hasn't happened in a real show. The cast of the show was also similar to the usual cast on The Amazing Race - a mother/daughter team, a gay couple (although this one had a twist), best friends, brothers, the couple who wants to see if their relationship will work out (it didn't). All in all, an entertaining book and more serious than you might expect.