Our Childhood Favorites! What a fun night!

 Thanks to everyone who came to discuss their favorite books from childhood, what a fun night we had and there were so many interesting titles to discuss including why they were so meaningful. Some of us also had interesting reflections on our feelings about the books now - mostly good!

Many thanks to Wendy, who hosted and as usual had a wonderful set up for us all, we are a lucky group! 

Interestingly, some themes came up across these very diverse titles. Little girls were given intelligence, power and agency over their lives, little boys could do things otherwise frowned upon (like be friends with little girls) and adults were either expendable or non-existent. Dreams of our youth, I guess. 

Here is the list of our choices and who picked it, chime in if you want to make some comments on why and what you think now. 

Sally Graham - Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. Oh to be a 9 year old girl, living alone with a chest of gold pieces. The epitome of girl power. Also one of my favorites. 

Kathy  - A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Young people learning who they are, an eternal theme.

Mary  - All the Nancy Drew mysteries, who didn't love them? The girl is the smart hero again and again. Caroline Keene seems to be the primary author but there were 56 of them, so maybe she had help. 

Karin Walker - The World Book Encyclopedia, which I also loved. Who needs a plot when you have A to Z?

Celia - The Wonderful Trip to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron. I just loved this book, maybe because it was one of the first I got from my book subscription in the 2nd grade. 

Lacey - A Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Enough of us hadn't read this that it is our August book. Thanks Lacey! 

Maggie - Winnie the Pooh. Enough said. Maggie brought the copy her father gave her! 

Julie Joyce - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The story was wonderful, overwhelming the rather flat ending. Luckily no one remembers the ending, just how lovely the story was. 

Jean - Heidi by Joanna Spyrie. I will never forget the scene with her grandfather toasting bread and cheese over the fireplace. What a fabulous book. I wanted to move to Switzerland for years. 

Wendy - The Secret Garden but Julie had dibs. It was Julie talking about The Secret Garden that brought us this fun idea, and revisit of the perceptions of our youth. So fun. 

Fiona - Charlotte's Web by E.B White. Could there be a more iconic children's book than this one? A best friendship between a spider and a pig, both destined for a different kind of end, and so lovingly portrayed. Somehow E.B. White's pig was far more appealing that the ones I have met. 

Ashley - Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame. A toad, a mole, a badger and a rat. Somehow they are cute, despite being rodents. And isn't that, along with Charlotte's Web, a message in and of itself, that we find love and belonging where we give it. 

And so on we go! Our next meeting is August 25 at 6:30 at Ashley's. You should have gotten a calendar invitation so if you didn't, let me know and I will add you to the list. As mentioned, the book is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. 

See you all there! What a great group we have!

Dictionary of Lost Words - interesting!

 Thank you to Sally Ashburn for hosting at her absolutely lovely home, it was just great! And we had a short but interesting talk about The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. It starts with the early years of creating the Oxford English Dictionary, an effort of gargantuan proportions at the time, run by a collection of professorial men, focused on the words used in written language - by men. 

Among them all, Esme, the daughter of one of the men selecting and defining words, grows up literally at the feet of the activity and is smitten with words, so much so that she takes them for her own collection. That finally catches up with her when the word "bondmaid" is found to be missing from the OED, pointed out by a reader, and all suspicion goes to Esme. 

As it turns out, she does have the missing word in her private box of words. That word, and her relationship with the housemaid Lizzie, lead her to find her own words, this ignored by men, used by women, that define their lives. 

Interesting, fun to read, historical, good! It had an interesting perspective, a new take on who gets to read the history, or in this case, the language. Not our best option, not our worst, it was very readable. 

And so on to our next book which is The Widow Clicquot by Tilar Mazzeo. This is an amazing, inspirational story about an indomitable woman who accomplished the all but impossible for her time, being a successful entrepreneur. 

We are scheduled for March 10, at 6:30 pm. My notes say we will be at Wendy's but I will confirm. 

The April book is Lessons by Ian McEwan for those who want to read ahead. See you all in March!

James was a really good book

It turns out that all the book reviewers and book prize judges were right, Percival Everett's James was really really good.  We had a great discussion about it, and it seemed to capture most if not all of us. One interesting thing (to me at least) was that the people who listened to the book liked it just as much as the people who read it. The dialogue would seem hard to follow to me but I was assured that the recording was amazing. 

The use of language as a tool of survival was brilliant. The overt use of "slave dialect" (my term) to avoid provoking those in power and the way James gradually abandoned its use added a lot to the understanding of his own character growth as the book went on. 

Many of us did not remember much of the original story line of Huck Finn. Lacey said this book tracked pretty closely, and in this content the plot line seemed pretty ridiculous, or at least improbable. That wasn't the point here of course, it was all about someone finding and using their own agency after being denied that agency for a long time. 

The violence that James wrought on his former captors was much less troublesome that perhaps it should have been, but after so much injustice with no recourse, perhaps it was only to be expected. Frankly, it was hard to root against him.

So all in all, this was really a great choice and well worthy of having had three people bring it to the Christmas swap! Thanks to Margo for hosting us, we certainly ate well and had a lovely time. 

On we go, our next book is Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. We are lucky enough to go to Sally Ashburn's lovely house with a beautiful view of a lake! In order to fully enjoy, Sally has agreed for us to come Sunday, February 9 at 1 pm instead of the 10th in the evening. It seemed to work for the group at Margo's, weigh in if this doesn't (or does) work for you. 

See you all then! 

Our Annual Holiday Swap! What fun!

 Hi all, we had a wonderful time at Fiona's beautiful house unwrapping and swapping books. What a great event! The books were all well-chosen and generated a lot of interest, so we have lots of potential reads on our list for 2025. Is it even possible that 2025 is a week away? 

Our next meeting is January 13 at Margo's house - this is a change, so take note. The book will be James by Percival Everett. This book set a record as three people brought copies, something that has never happened to us before. It got swapped a lot but there were plenty of copies to swap. Our second-most swapped book was a three-way tie. Lessons by Ian McEwan, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams and The Widow Clicquot by Tilar Mazzeo were all swapped twice, so maybe February, March and April are already planned. 

Here is the list:  

Book	Author	Brought by
The Ferryman	Justin Cronin	Carole
Lessons	Ian McEwan	Val
Norse Mythology	Neil Gaiman	Celia
The Widow Clicquot	Tilar Mazzeo	Jean
James	Percival Everett	Wendy, Ashley, Karin
America’s First Daughter	Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoi	Sally
Dictionary of Lost Words	Pip Williams	Julie W.
All the Beauty in the World	Patrick Bringley	Lacey
Don’t Be a Stranger	Susan Minot	Gabby
The Backyard Bird Chronicles	Amy Tan	Fiona
The Elephant Keeper	Christopher Nicholson	Kathy

Val also had an honorable mention book, Doorman Wanted by her neighbor in Minneapolis, Glen Miller. Not the musician. It sounded really good!

So thanks to everyone who came, see you on the 13th at Margo's, if you need a copy of James, I have one!

Dates for 2025 so far

 Hi all, I forgot to include the dates we decided on for 2025 at least so far. Sally Ashburn has volunteered to host January, and Margo for February. 

Dates so far are:

January 16 - book TBD as it is usually our most swapped from the December event

February 10 - Wendy and I are going to NZ on the 13th so squeezing it in before we leave

March 10 

April 14

See you all on December 16!

Absolution - a great conversation, still questions about the story

 Hi all, happy holidays! First off, we are scheduled for our annual book swap holiday party at Fiona's on December 16 at 6:30. I will cover the way it works again at the end, but get the date on your calendar and thank you Fiona for hosting!

And thank you to Karin who hosted our last gathering which was a blast and a great conversation. We generally were not a big fan of the book although some really liked it, and that did not stop us from having a lot of questions. 

For example, who was seeking or receiving absolution? Was it Patricia (or Tricia)? Was it Charlene? Was it the greater American contingent plopped into Saigon during the Vietnam war, trying to recreate their American lives while their mission crumbled? Or all of the above? 

It was so painful to read again a story that detailed the constrained lives of women in this era, Their lives were secondary, tertiary or worse to their husbands and children, with the casual expectation that these talented, capable women would subjugate their own existence to be a "helpmeet" to their husbands. No wonder they developed their own hierarchy and their own ways of coping. 

And so, we wonder, who wanted absolution? And maybe that ambiguity is the point - didn't they all?

And so on we go to our Holiday book swap. As a reminder, everyone should bring a book that you want us to read next year, wrapped, with a note as to why you want us to read it but don't sign your name! We will each get an assigned number and select our book in order. What happens next is all the fun, a spirited exchange of who wants what - so much fun! 

Let Fiona know what you will bring along to celebrate, and I hope you can all come as it is very fun. 

So, Dec. 16, 6:30 pm, at Fiona's, she will share her address later. (I don't want to put an address on this blog as it is public.) 

See you then!

The Wager - a long story of historic importance

 David Grann's The Wager tells an historically important story that is little known, equal parts historic retelling and adventure tale. And did it ever have details! Truly well researched, the story was of a shipwreck in the early 1700's, where unbelievably two groups of survivors managed to make their ways home to Britain and tell very different stories of what happened. 

Historic controversy, monomaniacal characters and tangled facts make for a complicated story, and David Grann specializes in them. As a group, we felt that perhaps there were too many details, too difficult to follow who was involved in what and why. 

Despite that, there were still things that captured our interest - was Byron Shelly's grandfather really on the ship? And survived a shipwreck on an island, a mutiny, and a perilous trip bak to Britain in what really was a slapped-together raft with some makeshift sails. Over thousands of miles, with people who were malnourished and exhausted! And how did the they survive, much less the journals they kept oh so long ago in such difficult conditions. 

And the historic importance of the mutiny trial when back home - what an ending to a journey. And all this because the Brits felt it their right to intercept the Spanish ships sailing home with their own plunder. What a world it was back then. 

The consensus was well written, full of fascinating facts, an amazing story in so many ways and just a bit too much of it all for most of us. 

And so on we go to another historic era, the Vietnam War, told from the vantage of the wives, Absolution by Alice McDermott. We will meet at Karin's on Nov. 18 at 6:30 pm.  See you all then!

Fates and Furies sured stirred up reactions

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff has a very interesting structure, with two sides of the same marriage, and they could not have been more of a contrast. We find Lotto (could that possibly not mean something?), a sad boy banished by his rich and eccentric mother to boarding school which is inevitably followed by being the college big man on campus. 

He meets and quickly marries the mystery woman on campus, now called Matilde, who is of course tall, thin, beautiful and aloof. She also becomes the perfect wife to Lotto, and it does seem they have a strong, loving marriage. Except that, after reading Matilde's side of the story, he never knew her at all and she wanted it that way. 

It was a bit too much (for me and others) of a stereotype that Lotto had a blessed life, with lots of lucky breaks, a wife who rewrote his plays at night so they would work, just the right looks, charisma, etc. The "perfect" wife, by contrast had a tragedy at an early age that caused her to be cast out of her family, growing up in poverty with the "bad" grandmother, sent to America with a cold relative and then resorted to some kind of prostitution to make ends meet until she snagged Lotto and cut him off from his mother. Not that she ever told him any of that. And then there is the horrible best friend that gets off the hook in the end. 

Yikes. 

It was (mostly) well-written, with an imaginative structure and most of us didn't like it at all. It add to the list of modern novels with no hero, no clear protagonist to support. The reviews were all pretty positive for this book, maybe because of the interesting structure, and maybe I am missing something. Still, on to the next one. 

That you Gabrielle for hosting, we had a wonderful time at your gorgeous home! And the food was fab, thanks to everyone for contributing. 

We are reading The Wager by David Grann, the author of Killers of the Flower Moon for our next meeting, which will be at my house on Oct. 14. 

See you all then!

The Expendable Man was Very Well Received

Hi all, and thank you to Ashley for hosting, it was a fun night filled with fun conversation. We had a new member join, Lacey Huszcza, who came armed with an Arnold Palmer cake that was just fab. Please come back! 

Usually, when I pick the book no one likes it so I was quite relieved that The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes was well received. Mary even tracked down the two movies made from her books, one of them starring Humphrey Bogart! This author was largely lost to obscurity until she was republished  fairly recently, so this feels a bit like a find. 

This story was really well paced, and the tension really built up. The characters were really interesting, and really well written. Although not everyone loved it, and at least one person thought it was fairly predictable, it was still a really good read and a reminder of how much in some ways our society has changed. 

And on to the next read, the book is The Confidante by Christopher C. Gotham, the story of yet another woman lost to obscurity but this one is non-fiction. We will meet at Carole's - I will be traveling, so maybe someone can volunteer to keep everyone informed? The date is Tuesday, August 13, at 6:30. I have Carole's copy if anyone else would like to borrow it from her. (Carole, I assume you won't mind!)

We had a burst of organization and got all our dates and books down for September, October and November. September will be at Gabby's, the book is Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. Note, the date shifted for this meeting to September 17. The city dwellers will want to car pool, it is a beautiful, but a bit long drive. (Very close to Anna Powers though, hint hint.) This book has gotten great reviews and Groff is a wonderful writer. 

October will be on the 14th, at my house. The book is The Wager by David Grann, a story of a shipwreck, a mutiny and its aftermath. David Grann is such a great storyteller, of just amazing history. I hope my house will be a bit more finished and that Val is back in town as this was the book she took from me at the Christmas swap!

November will be on the 18th at Karin's, we can all anticipate Craft and Design which will be that coming weekend. The book is Absolution by Alice McDermott, another highly praised book. We are going to have a great reading fall! 

Our Holiday Swap will be on December 18 at Fiona's, and I can't wait. The NY Times has published its list of the 100 best books of the century (so far) and lots of our past picks are on it. There might be some ideas for next year too! 

See you all in September, I will be in Scotland for August. Have a great time!

Local girl makes good! The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

 What a fun and interesting discussion we had about Rachel Beanland's new book, The House is on Fire. And very far-reaching, from the reputation for cowardice that Virginia men had as a direct result of climbing over the women to escape this very fire, to the way the names are inscribed on the monument and much in-between. We are so lucky to have among us smart, engaged and interesting people who can share such good conversation! 

Of course the book was great, it went right along with a good story, told well with characters that kept one's interest. Because the event that inspired the book happened right here in Richmond, it has a particular cache, but it is a good read for anyone. Rachel's first book Florence Adler Swims Forever also got some kudos, 

I tried to get Rachel to come talk with us but no luck. Here is an interesting story about her talking about the book - what a strange situation! 

https://forward.com/fast-forward/559619/rachel-beanland-florida-jcc-book/

We are skipping our June meeting because there are a lot of people out of town. Ashley has volunteered to host our July meeting which will be on July 15. The book is The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, one of our Christmas swap books. It is not long, but it can be hard to find. The Richmond Library has it, the Henrico Library did not the last time I checked. 

See you all then!