MY NAME IS RED

Okay, so this is a follow-up to my last post "Summer Book Club". We finally, FINALLY finished the nearly 1,000-page book by Ken Follett "The Pillars of the Earth" & had our final discussion about it last night. All of us in the book club unanimously agreed that the ending left us very disappointed. The whole focus of our book club is to share about the parts we enjoyed & discuss the events that occur throughout the books we read & also to make predictions for what we think will happen further into our reading. Well sadly, most of our predictions were concerning characters we assumed were going to become more of something further along & 9 times out of 10, this did not happen. It seemed that there were SO many characters & hardly any of them actually fully developed throughout the book. By the end, we were so frustrated with the drawn-out storyline that we all admitted had we not been participating in this book club, we would've put the book down many pages ago!

BUT...moving on, we drew out of a hat the title of the next book we are going to read: "My Name Is Red". It's a Nobel Prize Winning tale of a miniaturist (clay artist) in 16th century Istanbul who disappears shortly after being commissioned by the Sultan to produce figurative art illuminating the European style, which is a dangerous proposition that defies the laws of Islam. It is "part fantasy & part philosophical puzzle that journeys into the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, & power". And it is written from the perspectives of various people, animals & inanimate objects such as: Esther, a coin, a dog, & the color red.

We are all very excited to see how this book goes & hoping that it makes for much better discussion & has a much better ending than the last one!