Anna Karenina Joins a Book Club

by Joan Pedzich

It didn't used to matter what we picked to read. Most weeks we drank box wine and gossiped and hardly talked about the book. Then this woman Ellen joined, and when it was her turn, she chose hard stuff, most recently Anna Karenina. We'd all blown that one off in high school and didn't feel like reading it now either, because book club isn't supposed to feel like one more thing we have to do. We overruled her, and voted to read the new Maeve Binchy instead. On the way home, Ellen pulled her car across the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train, and we still can't figure out why.

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Joan Pedzich is a law librarian who lives in Webster, New York. Her work has been published in Lake Affect and on 971 Menu, The Shine Journal and 3711 Atlantic. She was recently a featured reader at Writers and Books Genesee Reading Series in Rochester, New York. For "fun" she allows herself to be tortured by the game of golf which, like writing, is harder than it looks, but feels great when it all comes together.