Third meeting this morning. Well attended: Brendan, David, Don, Michael, Richard and Tony.
The theme for the meeting was listed as Strange Lands but somehow we managed to talk while hardly mentioning books or authors although Jim Crace, John Le Carré, Patricia Highsmith and John Steinbeck got honourable mentions. The relative merits of story versus characterisation were debated. Cormac McCarthy got short shrift while poor old Jean-Paul Sartre was put firmly in his existentialist box and his homeland cast adrift in the Bay of Biscay, sauve qui peut. Thomas Schelling’s Micromotives and Macrobehaviour was briefly described in relation to the formation of racial, economic or religious ghettos despite the absence of prejudice.
Serious discussion concerned the Welfare State but it is beyond my meagre skills to recap on the many useful ideas which would surely resolve the problems in double-quick time.
The theme for the May meeting is: You-Don’t-Have-To-But-You-Really-Should-Read ______. Needless to say, nobody will!