To The Lighthouse - Did We Get There?

Book Club recently met and reviewed Virginia Woolf's classic To The Lighthouse. I had picked it up at the library book sale thinking that it would be a good idea to read a classic. BC agreed, but I wish they hadn't.

We met at Dale and Nikolai's, partially because they have a painting hanging in their living room that was inspired by the final scene in To The Lighthouse. However, more than the painting we paid attention to the scrumptious feast. D & N had recently been on vacation to see friends and had brought home all kinds of new recipes to try on us. Spicy grilled pork chops with a cooling riata, super yummy grilled corn, and a fantastic moist chocolaty bundt cake.

In between the 'mmmm's' and the 'please pass the ...' we talked about this book for about 2 1/2 hours. Good talk, or bad talk?

Interestingly enough, a bit of both. Craig and I agreed that the conversation was way more interesting than the book.

Here's how we rated it: (I think-BC please edit me if I misrepresent you)
Catherine - 3 (for book) 5 (for conversation)
Craig - 3.5
Hans - 3.5
Maria - 4??
Dale - 8.5
Nikolai - 3-4
Tess - 4??

Not very high ratings as a group, but certainly a lot to talk about.

This book was written in the 1930's and is autobiographical of segments of Virginia Woolf's life. That wasn't the part that was hard though. The hard part was that nothing happened in the book. It was a general stream of consciousness of several different characters, which unless you liked the character (which I didn't), was very hard to care about.

Most of the BC found the droning narrative tiresome. Maria and I did not make it through the book. I don't think Tess did either. Hans said, 'It was only 200 pages. I can read 200 pages of anything.' That's what I thought. But I couldn't.

Dale, contrary to the rest of us, resonated strongly with the main character of the book. She had read To The Lighthouse in her 20s with artist friends and had lively discussions and so had history with the book that was meaningful to her.

Should you read this book? I don't know. I certainly think it is worth a try. But don't pick it up for summer beach reading or your next plane ride. This may be the book that you read a bit at a time in between the other books that you read.

Or do what Craig did. He read it on his phone. That meant that only a small portion of the page showed up a time and so the lengthy paragraphless narratives didn't seem so daunting.

Bite size. Do it that way.