For over two years now, the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library has run the “Reading Across the Pond” book group. Our fourteen members meet monthly to discuss fiction and nonfiction titles written by American authors. This month, we read the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. As usual, opinions were split: Some of our members found it difficult to engage with the explict language and obscure science-fiction references but others felt that it captured the minority culture of Dominican Americans quite vividly. The parent-child generational conflicts reminded us of The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan, which we had read in March.
Next month, we’ll be reading The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Stay tuned!