The Dante Club

The Dante Club
Beth's Version of the Meeting

Okay, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

In attendance were Anne, Beth, Donna, Paula, Rachel
and Wendy.

We meet at John Harvard’s in lovely Harvard Square.
First item of note was that Donna almost gave away an
important part of our book club history - she
accidentally handed out her business card with the
official book choosing list written on the back of it.
Luckily she was able to get it back and we are going
to give it to Rachel to put in the Archives where we
know it will be kept safe.

We all agreed that the flesh–eating maggots, burning
flesh and eviscerated torsos were all really gross,
but it was not scary like Devil in White City was
scary. (I’m still scared) Donna said she had trouble
getting into this book, but after page 60 or so, she
started to really like it. I had trouble getting into
it too, my interest went in fits and starts. I would
get interested, then lose interest over and over.
Others thought there was going to be a surprise ending -
that maybe Wendy Holmes would turn out to be the killer.
Nope, there wasn’t. Also, this book cleared up a lot about Dante,
especially Beatrice. She was only 14 years old and they never spoke?
It makes it all seem so silly. His poor wife.
Anyway, after reading this book, I am more interested in the
real lives of Longfellow, Holmes and that that other guy.

Rachel brought a copy of Dante so we could check it
out for ourselves. I liked the diagram of the circles of hell.

Anne hasn’t got any new gossip about her new neighbor
downstairs but she does think she’s back together with
Dan.

We did NOT go out for ice cream or hot chocolate after
(which was weird) Instead we went for a walk to go see
the homes of the Longfellow and Lowell. This was
also weird. First stop was Craigie house –
Longfellow’s home. It was closed but we walked around
the outside and it’s really enormous. I’d like to go
back for a tour during the day. We were about to
continue to walk, but two book club members who will
not be named had to pee really badly. But it was a
long walk back to any public restroom so they peed
behind a bush on Longfellow’s lawn. Relieved, we were
all able to continue on to Lowell’s House which is now
the home of Laurence Saunders - President of Harvard.
Nobody peed on his lawn, but there are large slugs on
his sidewalk. Then the evening ended without further incident.

Beth