The ‘baby of the group’ is 83: How a Pacific Palisades book club remains unbreakable

By Maddie Connors

The members of Becky’s Book Club in Pacific Palisades couldn’t stand “Play It as It Lays.” Snakes, freeways, difficult men and Didion’s quiet brutality hang in the air like the oppressive heat of this unusually warm spring day. At their feet, a regal Airedale terrier named Phoebe lounges, looking as though she belongs in an oil painting.

“If I had read this book before coming to Los Angeles, I would have never come,” says Raymee Olin Weiman, one of the members of the book club. She’s a spirited talker who eventually concedes a compliment to Didion. “I did not like it, but I was compelled to read it, because the writing is so brilliant.”

Becky Nedelman, an 85-year-old who organizes the book club, agrees. “To me, Maria is when you drive by an accident, and you don’t want to look, but you do,” she says of Didion’s aimless and troubled protagonist. Read the full piece at the Los Angeles Times.