In October, our book club read Leonard Wibberley’s The Mouse that Roared. I chose this book to help us ease into the non-book meetings in November and December, and because I had a vague memory from having read it over thirty years ago (yes, it scares me to write that) that it contained some concepts pertinent to our interests. My ancient memory did not let me down this time. We had a great discussion of the book, covering many of the subjects we’ve been talking about since we started up in the summer of 2008 : minority rights v. majority rule, the economic connections amongst nation states, the balance between diplomatic and military actions, human behavior towards the out-group, cultural representations of diplomats and the efficacy of nuclear weapons verification programs, to name a few.
We also discussed the power of the meme of The Mouse That Roared, by sharing articles each of us had found that were related to some interest other than diplomacy, and that used the meme of The Mouse That Roared. From golfing to intelligence to genetics to marketing to you-name-it, the meme of a small entity having a large effect is still very popular (and broadly applied with varying precision).
I’m not sure many of us will rush out to read the sequels or watch the Peter Sellers movie version, but the book was fun to read and fun to discuss. It was also the last book that I will discuss with the book club here. By the time the January meeting takes place, we will have departed sunny Mexico. I’ve really enjoyed every meeting of the Juareaderz, and I thank everyone who made the meetings so pleasant and stimulating.
Coincidentally… The Mouse That Roared was our school play my senior year. I played the Queen. I assume that the book you read and discussed was weightier.
Oh no, we read and discussed exactly the same story of your school play. Exactly the same. It was the lightest book we’d read (although not the worst-written, by far), but we had a lot of fun pretending like it was a heavy tome on international relations. It worked. All Hail Gloriania!