Books At Twelve Ten and The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

1.

Three people met to discuss The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. First, a) to continue into the spring at the main library meeting room on the second Tuesday of every month we have to reserve the room... b) Also we discussed letting people forward absentee thoughts if unable to attend because of illness. Althought we are supposed to show up, be there and share, and also help choose the books, we might try out allowing a limited amount of contribution from absentee members. c) Next we made our choice for January - from limited library holdings, a new book by Sarah R. Shaber, Louise's War. The limited availability is the opposite of the Book Kits choices Books At Twelve Ten has experimented with in autumn.

2.

Fifteen minutes into our discussion, we began to discuss The Corrections: according to one participant - "A big, complicated and tedious book." It was a long novel with rather few scenes and a great deal of flashbacks.

We had questions from the internet and discussed three or four - Consider the atmosphere of suburban St. Jude. and What is the significance of the title, The Corrections? and and What is the significance of "one last Christmas?"

One participant pointed out that the work is to be on HBO - (Home Box Office) I had not heard of it, according to the internet this will happen in 2013. As we made our way through questions the participant who chose the book explained they understood the title to mean the book was about the criminal justice system.

But the story only mentioned the criminal justice system distantly - one definition of corrections was a name, Correct-All, for a pill that would make criminals honest citizens. The words of the title are re-worked throughout the novel.

Here at the end of the year as I read I had dimly related to the final section of the book "One Last Christmas"as timely - and the idea of a holiday at home for the people in the story was not so unlike other unstable families.