Once and Future King, concluded

Congratulations to everyone, for attempting Once and Future King.

We held our discussion on 13 Feb 2014, as planned.  At that time, four members had finished the book, all within a day of the discussion.

Most of our group found the novel very challenging, for a variety of reasons.  The vocabulary was a big challenge, with quite a few members commenting they either kept a dictionary handy or simply glossed over words they didn't know.

Quite a few members felt the pacing of the story was too slow, with excessive descriptions of the environment that didn't seem to advance the story or serve any other purpose.

Pretty much everyone felt the romance between Lancelot and Guenever was very under-represented in the novel.

We went through the LitLover's questions (they can be seen on the Past Selections page) and discussed about half of them.

The fantasy genre overall is not a primary reading interest for the majority of our group, and we will probably steer clear of this genre going forward.

The media choice seemed pretty evenly split for this novel, with about half of us reading a paperback, and about half reading on an e-reader.  I noted with some interest, that of the 4 that finished the book, two were reading a mass market paperback (the "normal" sized paperback) with fairly small print.  The print size was an issue for some of the folks reading the mass market paperback editions.  One of our finishers (myself) was reading a trade paperback edition (thank you Suzanne!) with larger print that was easier on the eyes.  The other finisher read an e-book edition.

At the time of the meeting, there were 7 titles suggested for the next read. We selected "Love in the Time of Cholera", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I have updated the Current Selection and What's Next pages to reflect that selection.

Some members had suggestions for authors they particularly like, and I have asked those members to be sure and send me titles and authors that I can add to the What's Next list.

I really enjoyed the discussion, and having everyone over!  I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well.

If anyone has suggestions or comments that would improve your enjoyment of the club, or of the discussion meetings, please shoot me an email or post a comment.