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o o o o o What surprises me most about these book club gatherings is how the smart book talk – itself often very interesting, as we dissect character and plot and writing style – leads so often to tangents that are even more intellectually, and emotionally, fascinating. A gathering centered upon Andre Dubus III’s The House of Sand and Fog gets us talking about racism in America, apartheid in South Africa. This leads to talk of religious intolerance, which transitions to Creationism, and its frightening influence on the science education of far too many of this nation’s children. Evolution expands into biology transitions over to the weirdnesses of human physiology. And soon it’s past midnight, and I’m talking to a group of women, most of whom I barely know outside of book club, about troubled ovaries and strange cysts and the difficulty of finding a good doctor when you move to a new town. In a way, I suppose, the book club isn’t so much about books as it is an excuse to get together for an evening of real talk. The best thing about book club, to me, is that it’s one get-together where I know the conversation’s sure to go far, far beyond the usual mindless, superficial chitchat. o
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