I finished The Sympathizer yesterday and Chocolat today. The Sympathizer is exquisitely written, but highly disturbing. It’s going to be difficult to talk about it on Thursday with my book group colleagues. I usually feel inferior to them, intellectually, anyway — so if everyone gushes over the book, I might lose it. I know one friend liked it and seemed surprised that I didn’t. I didn’t need to read the rape scene to live a more fulfilled life though. And of course there are the descriptions of torture. And the squid.

Chocolat, on the other hand was lovely to read. It is quite different from the film — enough so that I was often able to not picture Johnny Depp as Roux. It was, of course, a much lighter read than The Sympathizer and contained no more torture than a devout priest’s self torture. No rape, but definitely physical abuse. And no squid.

I think the next book that takes the place of Chocolat (an unread eBook) will be The End of Your Life Bookclub by Will Schwalbe. It was a bookgroup read back when I was still using my Nook instead of a Kindle — a long time ago. I started reading it but could not get into it. I think I skipped book group that month. I imagine reading it will give me more ideas of books to read.