Forrest Road.

It was Book Group today and we met to discuss 'The Story of the Eye' by Georges Bataille chosen by Cat.

(actually we didn't meet to discuss that all at, we met to drink coffee, talk about The Good Wife and generally chatter about mad stuff....like usual..) 

It was, well, it wasn't my cuppa tea and to be honest I didn't bother attempting to read past the sample chapter I got on my kindle. Neither did Smu, so it turned out no one was actually willing to pay money for it - MsInk, Cinn and Carol-ann had borrowed it from the library. They did read the whole thing though (it's not much longer than 100 pages) and declared it not really worth bothering to finish - apparently there was a lot of stuff about hard boiled eggs, some peeing in a cupboard and penetration of an eye socket for the grande finale... So, yeah... 
At best I found it badly written and uninteresting despite all the naked writhing and exploration of increasingly bizarre fetishes. It's not a story so much as a series of shallow disjointed fantasies and reads as very immature. It may have been controversial at time of publication (1920's) but that doesn't make it deep and intellectual, or interesting and it certainly wasn't titillating - although I could be missing something, perhaps it's an amazing work of philosophical literature and I simply didn't understand! There were apparently lots of essays at the end by the likes of Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes so I'm probably just unenlightened. (or bored, one of the two ;)

So that was a rather scathing review based on the sample chapter I read! Still, it's often much more interesting to discuss books you don't like!

It was really lovely to see my fellow book-groupers and have lots of chat, and to get out of the house for a couple of hours without having to do anything strenuous! I came home and took up my place on the sofa with the heater practically pressed up against me for the rest of the day. I'm having a lot of problems with pain just now and it's definitely exacerbated by the cold so I'm trying to keep as warm as possible. It may not have been helped by a sudden notion to move the sofa across the room only to find it didn't fit and having to move it back again. Dammit.

I need a new sofa. Or possibly to get out more.

Maybe when it's warmer ;)