(no subject)
About three years ago some of my neighbors decided to start a book club and they invited me to join it. Although book clubs are notorious as places where suburban women get together to swill wine and thumb through the current best seller (or whatever some TV superstar is pushing this week) ours is both small and sober. We drink tea like proper ladies and read improving works. We have read fiction by Dostoievsky, Salinger, Gibson, Colette, and a whole host of others that I have (sometimes mercifully) forgotten. We've also tried to accommodate the members who like non-fiction. After going through a lot of haggling each month over what the next book selection ought to be, we decided that the person who was hosting the meeting at her house that month should pick the next book. Maud, who is a dear lady and likes books "that I can learn from," picked "The Birth of Pleasure" by Carole Gilligan. Despite having a title that sounds like it should be shelved next to "Whip Mistress of Warsaw," Maud--who had read it some years previous-- assured us that it was a feminist book about women's necessity for verbal restraint in a patriarchal society. Fine. The only problem turned out to be that Maud had not checked on the availability of this book. When I searched Amazon I discovered that it was only available through the Amazon Marketplace (third party vendors of used and out of print books) for an *OUCH* price. I bit the bullet and ordered it from what I thought was a dealer in Oregon. That was about two weeks ago. The book, a brand new out-sized paperback arrived this morning. With a customs slip. Now that exorbitant price is explained. It was shipped from England. Either I seriously misread the dealer description, or book sellers are becoming very desperate to find patrons.