Our second installment of Book Club was a few weeks back now. Another fabulous night. We listened to Serial, a podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig. It reviews the case of Adnan Syed vs the state in the murder of Hae Min Lee and has broken records it is just that captivating.
We were all so passionate about this podcast from the start and our Facebook page was alive with news, thoughts, and quite a few claims of having solved the mystery (a few by me actually). We agreed, mostly, that while it kept us captivated with its amazing narrative, we felt frustrated and unfulfilled with the lack of outcomes. Ultimately this was a ‘story’, and undeniably a beautifully crafted story around a tragic situation that is still playing out today. Thankfully the success of Serial has resulted in a number of follow on podcasts and most of us had been also listening to Undisclosed by Rabia Chaudry and Truth and Justice by Bob Ruff. These too provide riveting listening and we were super excited that I had Tweeted Rabia about Book Club and I got a like, and one of our other members tweeted Bob and got a like. So as all mature women in a Book Club based around drinking wine would do, we took a group selfie and sent it to Bob to say hi. Yes, he liked it. We all agreed that at the end of all of this, there is still a tragedy that will likely never be solved. On a positive note though, the impact that technology and social media have on changing perceptions and bringing about change is evident here. Through the pressure put on by these podcasts, Adnan is getting his chance at justice at last.
So it was another exciting and satisfying evening. Sitting in the living room of one of our members, eating cheese, drinking wine, we had conversation filled with passion, debate, and lots of talking over each other. We even had one member FaceTime in which was great!
With so much passion about Serial we were not sure where we could go to from there. So we agreed we could not compete with how captivating and riveting Serial was, so we would not try. Rather we are going for a popular easy-read novel – Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. I plan on taking it on the plane for our super long plane ride home to Perth for Christmas.
Have you listened to Serial? What do you think?