{"id":74911,"date":"2026-06-11T00:46:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=74911"},"modified":"2026-06-11T12:26:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T16:26:02","slug":"reading-group-selection-war-more-war-by-merce-rodoreada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2026\/06\/11\/reading-group-selection-war-more-war-by-merce-rodoreada\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading group selection: War, So Much War by Merce Rodoreda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Book Beat reading group will meet <strong>Wednesday June 24, at 7:00 PM <\/strong>to discuss <strong>War, So Much War<\/strong> by Catalan author Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda.The meeting is both in store and will also be available by a Zoom link sent the day of the meeting. Our reading groups are free and open to the public. Reading group titles are discounted 15% in store. We apologize for last months failure with our Zoom connection and sound issues. We hope to do better next time. <\/p>\n<p><em>War, So Much War <\/em>(Catalan: Quanta, quanta guerra&#8230;) is the final novel published during the lifetime of celebrated Catalan author Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda, first released in 1980. It is a surreal coming-of-age story that follows a young boy, Adri\u00e0 Guinart, who escapes conscription by wandering into the war-torn, mythical Catalan countryside.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rodoreda&#8217;s language is effortlessly precise, lavishing detail on everything\u2014nature, dwellings, people, corpses. The tone, both fantastic and melancholy, glides between scenes. The effect is a sense of place simultaneously tangible and timeless.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2015\/11\/10\/review-war-so-muchwar\/\">The Harvard Crimson<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cRodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.\u201d<br \/>\n\u2014Gabriel Garc\u00eda Marquez<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/merce.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"417\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-74912\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda <\/strong>(1908\u20131983) is widely celebrated as the most influential Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Best known for her international masterpiece <em>The Time of the Doves <\/em>(1962), she captured the psychological and emotional toll of the Spanish Civil War and the harsh realities of exile<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Book Beat reading group will meet Wednesday June 24, at 7:00 PM to discuss War, So Much War by Catalan author Merc&egrave; Rodoreda.The meeting is both in store and will also be available by a Zoom link sent the day of the meeting. Our reading groups are free and open to the public. Reading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4,25,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookbeat-shop-history","category-reading","category-reading-group","category-world-lit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}