Mic Breaks Only discussion

I am exuberant about finishing Reading Lolita in Tehran!! I really wanted to like this book and I just didn't. It felt like a manic combination of peering through a too small peep-hole into a book club of complete strangers, taking a college course that I didn't want to take, and mixing in the teacher's diary.

I had an extremely difficult time tracking characters in this story. While some generic physical descriptions were provided, there weren't enough personal details or perspectives shared to keep the book club attendees as separate, solid entities in my mind. This was compounded by the fact that the book advertised following a women's book club and in actuality the book club meetings were a very small part of the book. I yearned for more book club in this story.

Although I appreciate the reading recommendations made by the author, there were several novels I had not read prior to reading this book. This made it feel like a college course that I didn't have the appropriate class materials for. My biggest complaint is that there were spoilers for some books that I really want to read and I feel biased now because of the author's opinions and dissertations on some of the novels.

We started The Power of the Dog and it is very different from what I have been reading as of late. I'm almost halfway through and it has been an action packed version of the war on drugs. The book reads almost like a screenplay - I can definitely see this story on the big screen. The characters hold my attention and I'm already looking forward to reading the sequel The Cartel.

We started the audio version of The Handmaid's Tale narrated by the incomparable Claire Danes. While the narrator is a delight, I'm not sold on the story yet. I can't figure out how we got to where we are now in this weird society. Maybe I'll be enlightened with a bit more listening. My hope is that the primary character can escape from this odd body-as-a-child-bearing-vessel scenario. My concern is I don't know what she might be escaping to because the context of the world hasn't been explained very well.