Discussion of Hard Boiled Wonderland

We met 17 March to discuss Hard Boiled Wonderland. In attendance were: Dave & Mary Darryl & Barbara Jack Katherine Tina Barbara brought a delightful show-and-tell for us, some animal skulls from her collection. Katherine did our poetry reading, she selected a short-form poem from among those she has written. About half the members in attendance completed this novel. Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels don't seem to fit well into the interests of our readership. This Magical Realism style novel reads more like Sci-Fi. Those who finished it enjoyed it, and those who didnt finish found the shifting of scenes between the two environments to be grating. The novel was generally acknowledged to be well written, the translator and editors did a wonderful job as well. We discussed the symbolism of some elements in the book including the skulls, and the shadow. We selected Katherine Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale" as our next read, and will follow that one with "Midnight's Lair" by Richard Laymon. We talked about tackling Plato's Republic in small, digestable pieces over the course of a year, rather than having to tackle it in one month. We will discuss whether we want to do that next meeting.