July's Reading - The First Stone - August 3rd Meeting

Firstly, I love that everyone sinks their teeth into the discussion, no holds barred. I really appreciate everyones ability to do so, because that is what makes this book club what it is, not just an excuse to eat chocolate, but to have some great discussions even if we don't manage to solve the world's problems in one night.
One might think that a book about the sexual harassment of two woman would unify us, but not surprisingly, this wasn't the case and much spirited conversation was had. By the way, who ever bought the 'Crunchie Rocks' that I'm now eating....good!

Some discussion points of note included;

• what one woman considers harassment another might not.
• initial opinion re cases like this - tend to side with the man then as more information becomes available support for the woman grows.
• lots of discussion on who's responsibility it is to change behaviour i.e predominantly the onus is on woman to say "no, don't do that" as opposed to men asking "is this behaviour acceptable to you?"
• we all tended to sit on the fence regarding the question as to whether we felt the incidents actually occurred, however, if we changed the scenario slightly and talked about the girls kneeing the man in the balls and telling him to back off, we all found that scenario much more believable, what that means, I don't know.
• No-one present would've gone to the police had they been put in that situation and as to who we felt some level of empathy for, it twisted and turned as much as the story did.

So how did we rate it? Average rating = 6/10

Tahnee - 8 - discussion provoking
Debbie - 5 - laborious, disjointed
Colleen - 4- laborious, didn't like writing style, liked the issues
Kerry   - 7- what is empowerment?
Sandra - 7- liked it
Meg     - 4- blah, bland, grey
Trilby -8- there is no answer, it is ambiguous

Augusts Reading - The Monkey's Mask - Dorothy Porter - Meeting at Trilby's

September's Reading - Breath - Tim Winton - Meeting at Sandra's

Happy Reading : ) Tahnee