Crossing to Safety

In March 2016 we met at Rebecca's house in Santa Cruz to discuss the 1987 novel, Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner.

The book is not really about that much--it's two couples who meet in the 1930s in Madison, Wisconsin, and their lives become intertwined.  But the writing and characters are excellent and I became sucked in very quickly.

Everyone seemed to like the book a lot.  It brought up some very interesting discussions about rights of people who are suffering--what are they allowed to demand from their friends and family?

Rebecca provided us with a delicious lunch of risotto, soup, salad, and heart-shaped strawberry shortcake.

Terms of Use

(Feb 2016) Karen’s book pick this time around was the techno thriller Terms of Use by Scott Allan Morrison.  The novel was action-packed and spoke to many of us since we live in the heart of Silicon Valley and are quite familiar with start-up and technology company cultures.  It turns out that Karen’s husband, Nino, provided a significant amount of consulting on the technological details of the book, which we all agreed were very sound.

This was a fabulously planned bookclub with an author visit, so we were able to share our comments about the book directly with Scott. One question we had for Scott was whether or not he planned the publication of the book to coincide with the presidential election campaigning (since the book was set before an election as well).  We learned that this was not explicitly planned – which was surprising because the concepts raised in the book are so timely. For example, Cathy sent out an article, “Does Social Media Affect Our Political Decisions?”  It does make one wonder what social bots are lurking around on the web for real.