Should book groups read sure bets or challenging books they may not love?
The seven members of my fiction-reading group are open to challenging novels, but I still hope that everyone likes the books I suggest. Fortunately, we have a process that makes the whole group ultimately responsible for the choice. The person whose turn it is proposes a few, usually three, titles from which the rest of us pick.
The word “like” doesn’t fit our last choice suggested by me, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. We all thought the 1969 Pulitzer Prizer winner, about a Native American who feels alienated on both the reservation and in urban society, was an arduous read, with its dense, poetic language, nonlinear plot, and inscrutable main character.