Without further adieu, let's get back into the swing of things with talking about the 21st meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary. Way back in November, Sarah hosted and picked the book Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman who Bound Them Together, by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent. She picked the book because it was on some New York Times "best of" list, and because she is a fan of memoir/ non fiction. The rest of us were skeptical to say the least when we found out what book was picked. The book not only fits into the genre of memoir, but also into the genre of Christian writing, and somehow this was a red flag for everyone. While some of the book club members, myself included, are Christians, the religious works we typically read are more academic or philosophical (think C.S. Lewis) or more veiled in symbolism (think The Giving Tree.) An overtly "Jesus saves" book just didn't sound too appealing.
When the book club meeting began, we were all very surprised to admit that we almost kind of liked the book, or at the very least, we didn't hate it. The book follows the lives of two men-- one poor black man named Denver, who lived as a modern day slave and ended up homeless in Dallas, and one very wealthy white man named Ron who with his wife, began volunteering at the shelter and soup kitchen where Denver spent time. The two men became close friends, and helped each other to grow in a really beautiful way.
Typically, both the first and last question we ask at book club is "did you like it?" Usually, everyone's approval rating increases from the beginning of the meeting to the end, but this time it was different. Instead, the more we talked about the book, the less we liked it. I think we all just felt that the truly special part of the story was Denver's life, and we felt that the book maybe spent too much time focusing on Ron's life instead. Obviously Ron was writing his portion of the book as a way to reflect on how much growth he'd had since Denver came into his life, and as a way to heal from the loss of his wife (oh yeah, spoiler alert, his really wonderful wife dies of cancer and I might have cried a little), but after awhile, it started to come across as self-indulgent. It's hard for me to say, because I know that everyone has a story worth telling-- especially when that story is about making themselves better, but we just didn't find Ron's story as compelling as Denver's.
