My rather conservative book group picked a book about...LESBIANS!

We had no clue from the synopsis that we voted from - we thought it was a plain old mystery. One of the club got the book and told me...horrors...that it's written "by a lesbian, about lesbians, and for lesbians" and that she would NOT read the book.

So now we are choosing another book. Of course I couldn't have cared less but I am the most liberal member of the group, so I went along with the switch. I didn't vote for it in the first place.

Have your groups ever made a "bad" choice?

:bounce:

It is called "Relationships Can Be Murder" and apparantly it is set in the town where we live (Burbank, CA)and that was why people were interested.

...Lynne's dirty little secret. ;)

:P

I read it a couple of months ago--ordered it from Amazon.com on the basis of a couple of rave reviews. But, I read a fair number of mysteries and personally found it among the most tedious I've come across for quite a while. Not because of its lesbian content but just a novel that hardly kept my attention. (Granted, it had _every_ female character having tumbled into bed with every other female at some point. This struck me as a little unrealistic..maybe I can't know, since I'm straight, but it seemed like the author used it as an easy way to get more red herrings.)

Anyway, I still have the copy and would be glad to send it to you if you'd still like to read it. Not everyone would probably share my low opinion of the book.

The best LA area-setting novel I've found recently is John Shannon's DANGEROUS GAMES.
Apparently he has a whole series, the Jack Liffey mysteries, but this is the only one I've read.

and tricked me into switching it - EVEN THOUGH the other members still wanted to keep my book (which wasn't dense at all; it's called "Savage Beauty" and it's a quite lively biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay).

We read lots of bad books, but we've never dropped one for what sounds like a political reason.

Our discussion of Walter Mosley's wonderful "Little Scarlet" got downright ugly. In fact two women dropped out of the group afterward to join a more "Christian" club. Whatever!

The thing is I really like a couple of the members of the club and we generally pick good books - that's why I stay.

and it's a rare meeting when everyone likes the choice. That's part of it. As I am sure you all can agree, reading books that someone else thought might be worthwhile sometimes turns out great and other times does not. We have had months when most people don't even read the book for whatever reason: the paragraphs are too long. The plot was dumb. I just couldn't get beyond...you all know the rest. But when we hit a winner, it's great. Personally, I love talking to the diverse group that is our book club.

It occurs in Portland Maine. Crystal refers to a rock rather than drugs.

There are some great gay mystery stories too.