Who Are You Sophie?

What a fascinating book club discussion today. Place: My house. Food: tasty chips, dip, snacks, mushroom soup, and cookies. Book: Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. Many of us had not finished the book, but the discussion was lively, and we uncovered multiple connections between the philosophical ideas being described and the twists and turns of the story. In fact, the discussion may have inspired several of the readers to finish the book, and it definitely inspired me to reread the book some time, maybe.

I enjoy reading about philosophy, and I found the first half of the book an enjoyable read. Not only did Gaarder, in my view, provide an easy to read primer on philosophy, he also interwined the lesson with an intriguing mystery story. However, by the middle of the book, a great twist occurs that completely deflated any interest I had in following the mystery story to the end. I also felt that Gaarder was too ambitious tackling the entirety of Western philosophy and trying to cobble together a novel at the same time. The second half of the book felt entirely too rushed to me, and it became a bewildering rush of philosophers and philosphies and the dramatic engine of the novel portion of the book stalled for me.

Our next book club meeting is Wednesday, January 28. We'll be reading A.J. Jacobs' The Year Of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Also, don't forget to bring along three suggestions for books to read as we'll be picking our next three books.

Happy reading!

Belated Clan Of The Cave Bear

Forgive me for the lack of posting; the delay was definitely not for lack of good conversation, observations, and food. For this meeting, we trekked over to Hungry Mother for some new southern cuisine and some good discussion about Jean M. Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear.

My impressions of the book were pretty meh. I thought that Auel's descriptions of a the fateful meeting between the more developed Cro-Magnons (Ayla) and the doomed Neanderthals (the Clan) and the world that both species inhabited were inventive. But, I wasn't able to willingly suspend my disbelief for most of the book. Ayla was too perfect. Tall, blonde, unaware of her own beauty, she's a feminist 30,000 years too soon. Somehow she magically makes all of the jumps in logic that it would take an entire species to do all by herself. I also felt that the villain of the book, Broud, was fairly one-dimensional. I felt the author pulling her strings and manipulating me into hating him, waiting for him to get what was coming to him.

At today's book club meeting, I heard that a fellow intrepid book clubber watched the movie over the holiday's. We want details about how bad it was!