Welcome to our 2012/2013 Book Club Season!

We had a great first meeting of the season last week as we discussed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, other books we read this summer, and potential choices for the rest of the year. Thanks, Dorie, for hosting us! It was nice to see some faces we haven’t seen for a while and some “regulars.”

We chose books for the next few months and agreed to change our meeting schedule, beginning in November, when we'll shift to a fourth Monday of the month. We'll choose a longer book for December/January and discuss it after the holidays. Vote for your choice in the poll to the right!

Our next meeting is October 22 at Ellen H’s house to discuss “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn. This seems to be a hot book these days, and both Donna H and Cindy W have read it and agreed it would be good fodder for discussion.

Beginning in November, we’ll switch to a fourth Monday schedule when we meet at Cindy W’s, 17 Broken Tree, to talk about “Zeitoun,” by Dave Eggers (another Donna H recommendation!).

Orange is the New Black

Every so often we read something for book club on which we all agree we would recommend. "Orange is the New Black" was NOT one of those books! We all agreed that there was a lot of potential for the topic, but that the author fell short.

This did not preclude us from having a lively discussion about the content and what would have improved the book, including better or stronger editing to actually weave together the threads of a story and recurring themes, a more detailed account of how her time in prison informed her choices following the experience, fewer - yet more impactful - examples and stories of the women she met during her stay. Another suggestion for improvement was to leverage this vehicle to inspire change in the system.

Early on in the book, Kerman references that as she prepared for her time away, she read all that she could about life in prison and that the only books she could find had been authored by men. This attempt at a story appeared to be her way of filling that niche and making some money for herself.

Moving on...we also spent some time reviewing our options for the May book. As we talked through the choices that had been presented in the poll, three members who originally voted for Rules of Civility actually changed their votes given that we just read The Paris Wife set during the same timeframe and we wanted to change it up. Our May book is now The Violets of March by Sarah Jio, recommended originally by Donna H.

Our meetings have been smaller the past few months, so hopefully we'll see some more - and even some new - faces in May!

The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife generated much discussion amid our small group of four during the March meeting. Dorie, who said this was among one of her favorites of the books we've read, led the discussion with several compelling questions.

The intermingling of historic figures with the fictional account of Hadley and Ernest's life together made for an interesting story and a view at life in the 20s in Europe.

Given that the gathering was so small, we did not select the remaining books for our book club season as we had originally planned, but rather determined our book for April (non-fiction selection Orange is the New Black) and we're asking for the rest of the group to weigh in on the May book (see the poll to the right).

Thank you to everyone who shared some new items for our "What We'd Like to Read" list. Keep those suggestions coming!

Vote for March!

We had a small group of five for our January meeting, but no shortage of conversation! Our multi-talented hostess, Donna, wowed us with her culinary skills by preparing an Ethopian dish, doro wat (chicken) in recognition of our Ethiopian-based January book, Cutting for Stone.

The book led to much discussion on a range of topics, including the character development, use of symbolism, strong female character (Hema), and the diversity of heritages represented in today's top hospitals.

Our next book, selected based on votes in last month's poll, is Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. Vote for your choice for our March book. The poll will close on February 15 and I'll let everyone know which book "won" in the invite for the February meeting.

The Cookbook Collector

Thank you to our hostess, Angela! She was well prepared with a list of questions to discuss "The Cookbook Collector."

While we didn't love the book, we still had a robust discussion with many points of agreement among the six attendees. The plot was unnecessarily complicated with too many substories that diluted the primary themes and storyline. We had read several reviews that compared this work with Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," and we were at a loss as to where there were similarities, with the exception of the fact that both novels' central characters were a pair of sisters.

Cindy suggested that Goodman's first novel, "Intuition," was well received by both critics and readers and perhaps she was rushed into publishing something to fulfill a contractual obligation.

We spent some time on our upcoming book selections and added a few new items to our "Books We'd Like to Read" list and proposed a December field trip to see the U.S. version of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." More to come on those plans!

For those in the group with eReaders, iPads, and iPods, did you know you can borrow ebooks and audio books from the library? Check out the selections at http://digital.minlib.net/72BAB638-4DCC-413F-A536-6F76837C60EB/10/531/en/Default.htm. You can create your digital media account as part of your library membership and then use the free software downloads from the site (Overdrive for audio and Adobe Digital Editions for ebooks) to save the books to your device.

Our next meeting is planned for January 24 at 7:30 at Donna M's to discuss "Cutting for Stone."

Happy Holidays to all!

September Meeting Recap

Thank you, Rosie, for graciously hosting us for the kickoff of our book club series for 2011-2012! Everything was delightful, from the Japanese-themed food and drink, to the twinkle lights, to the well-prepared questions to help guide our discussion.

We had a big showing of 13 members, including some new faces. Welcome Carol, Ellen, and Nancy to your first (or possibly second) meeting!

The robust discussion led, as always, to related books that could complement our newfound knowledge of WWII or interesting war/combat accounts, including No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, and Beyond Band of Brothers by Dick Winters. And for those interested in going back to Louie's story, there's always his autobiography, Devil at My Heels.

Our next three meetings are:

• October 25 hosted by Dorie to discuss The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
• November 29 hosted by Angela to discuss The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
• January TBD hosted by Donna M. to discuss Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

We also discussed selecting a love story (in honor of Valentine's Day) for our February book. Two suggestions thusfar are Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonsen or The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. Any other thoughts for February or spring reads?

I've updated our book list with some of the new suggestions we shared for consideration in the future. Looking forward to seeing everyone next month!

Kicking Off Our 2011-2012 Book Club Season!

Welcome, book club friends!

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful summer. I'm looking forward to hearing all about vacations, books and other summer adventures when we meet on September 20 at Rosie's house (7:30 p.m.) to discuss Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

I've developed this site as an online resource for book club members near and far (Anne!) so we can have our info in one place. Note that this is a public site, so I haven't included any last names, e-mail addresses, addresses, or other personal information. We could make this site private, which would require a password for members to sign in. Vote in the poll to the right if you feel strongly one way or another about public vs. private!

You'll also see a list of books that we've read as a group. I know I don't have an exhaustive list for what we've read - please keep me honest and send along the names of books I've missed and I'll add them to the list.

The What We'd Like to Read list includes titles that members have suggested in recent months. I'll update this section, and the What We're Reading Now section, after each meeting.

Along the bottom of this page you'll see links to other resources for book lovers! If you've discovered any book/reading related sites that you'd like to share with the group, send them to me and I'll post them.

Can't wait to kick off our season next week!