New Book Club

So a few weeks ago, we kind of agreed to join a new book club.  Everyone got to weigh in a bit on our first selection, and it's a little different from most book clubs in that we meet more than once a month (current plan is about every 2-3 weeks), but we only read a chapter or so for each meeting.

This is the description we got of what we chose, Gomorra, which is also a movie -- very violent I think. 

4) Roberto Saviano, Gomorra

The book describes the clandestine particulars of the business of the Camorra, a powerful Neapolitan mafia-like organization. In this book Saviano employs prose and news-reporting style to narrate the story of the Camorra, exposing its territory and business connections. Since 2006, following the publication of the book, Saviano has been threatened by several Neapolitan “godfathers”. The Italian Minister of the Interior has granted him a permanent police escort, but he's often attacked by politicians of Berlusconi's government. Also, his escort has been questioned. As of December 2008, the book has sold almost 4 million copies worldwide.


But somehow, with all the puzzle craziness, time got away from me and I didn't have time to read for our first meeting.  Ooh, that's right, here's the finished puzzle.  I think we're going to break it apart soon, but I'm just enjoying looking at it for a few days. 

And hubby has been working like crazy lately, so he didn't get to read the first 30 pages either.  So we went, ordered and ate dinner, and listened.  But the good news is that it was a lot of language practice for us to just be at the discussion (it's an Italian book club), and better yet, the book apparently is something you can read piecemeal -- each chapter stands alone, so we'll be able to pick up with chapter 2 (entitled Angelina Jolie) and go from there.  I read so slowly in Italian.  I go back and forth between trying to just plow through it without using a dictionary, but then sometimes I worry I'm missing something key or just not getting it, so I go to the dictionary.  And then next thing I know, I'm looking up at least one word per sentence and it takes 5 minutes to read a line of text... 

But I'm going to be prepared for the next meeting.  Without a puzzle to keep me busy, I'll try to do some Italian reading at night.  One of my resolutions this year was to speak Italian at home, and we've completely sucked at that one, so at least this will help toward that.  I need to do a resolution check-in soon.  It's way past halfway through the year, and I haven't been very focused on them, so this might be a good time to try to recommit.