Vote for October Book

If I can figure out how the poll thingy works, vote for your October book of choice soon! We have plenty time, but let's say the poll will close by July 10 in case people want to order books or be ambitious and read ahead. Without further ado, the choices are ...


South of Broad – Pat Conroy

Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for.



South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.


The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler
Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon’s insular world–and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.



“BITTERSWEET . . . EVOCATIVE . . . It’s easy to forget this is the warm lull of fiction; you half-expect to run into her characters at the dry cleaners . . . Tyler [is] a writer of great compassion.”–The Boston Globe



“Tyler has given us an endlessly diverting book whose strength gathers gradually to become a genuinely thrilling one.”–Los Angeles Times


Run – Ann Patchett
Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children—all his children—safe.


Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As in her bestselling novel Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.


The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons in the Book of Genesis.
Told in Dinah’s voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoil of ancient womanhood – the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers – Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah – the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that are to sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah’s story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate, immediate connection.


Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich story-telling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women’s society.

Hannah

Candlelight Discussion

Anyone remember what story Solveig was telling in that photo? I think it had something to do with adventures in a chinese market?!

I love the pins -- thanks to Marit! Such a cute idea. I think we should all wear them to every meeting... you forget yours, you can't come in! Kidding.... ; )

Jenna was at the meeting as well, we just forgot to snap the photo until the very end. I thought of photoshopping her in, but not sure if my skills are advanced

enough for that!

Thanks for a great evening ladies. Looking forward to August 30th!

Carolyn

Meeting #6: Let the Great World Spin

With the tornado sirens ringing we traveled through horizontal rain and rivers of water on I-35 to Solveig's house to discuss Let the Great World Spin, just as our world outside also threatened to spin. With the power knocked out, candle light gave the atmosphere of a small bistro in China Town with authentic cream cheese wantons, a shrimp stir fry, delicate spring rolls, and even delicious New York style cheesecake -- all masterfully prepared by Solveig and Marit.

The interwoven characters of Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin provided the basis for our discussion -- the tightrope walker we felt was selfish; the monk we felt bordered on the deranged side of extreme; the penthouse wife we felt symphathy for. We marveled at how McCann wrote about New York as if it were a character in his book, and how the themes of the book transcend to the events that transpired in the city after 9-11: grief and love, cynicism and hope, despair and resiliency.

Thank you to you all - especially our hosts - I had a wonderful time meeting all of you and look forward to many, many more good times ahead!

Cheers!
Hannah

Let the Great World Spin Dinner Party

Grab your heels, polish your nails (fetch a revealing frock?) and crack those books! You're invited to big-apple-style-event: The Bookettes are going to New York! Well, not really. Come, join me at my place for stiff drinks, Asian take-out, decadent desserts and beautiful women making intelligent conversation.

I sent out an e-vite, with all of the details.

See you soon!

Solveig

Next up: Anthropology of an American Girl

It was a close call, but the poll is closed and it looks like we will be reading Anthropology of an American Girl next!

A review that Solveig recently found says, "If publishers could figure out how to turn crack into a book, it'd read a lot like this"... can't wait!

Sarah, do you have any input on what day would work best for our next meeting? Anyone else?

-Marit

August meeting time (and VOTE!)

Hey folks! Remember to vote for your book choice on the blog if you haven't yet (it looks like there's only one day left to do it...perhaps we can post it again though).

I'm not sure if we've set a concrete date yet for the early-August meeting at Sarah's, but for me it looks like I have to leave on Thursday with my family for a wedding in Chicago that weekend (my cousin's). If Wednesday the 4th was still a possibility then that would be my first choice...but if Thursday the 5th works better for everyone else, I understand and I'll be sure to make the next meeting. :) Post comments as you wish.

Remember to VOTE, and see you all on Friday the 25th @ 7:00pm!

~Christine

Meeting #5: The Places in Between

I've been a bit tardy in getting these photos up on the blog, but here's a snapshot of our group after discussing The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart.

Oops, guess we weren't ready for that one. Let's try that again... ; )

We had an awesome time at Anna's house. Big couscous salad (which I learned is called Israeli Couscous), along with some garlic naan and fresh pineapple and strawberries were perfect after a discussion about Rory Stewart walking across Afghanistan (he ate mostly flatbread... didn't quite have the luxury of strawberries, pineapple, and chicken!). I believe the highlight of the day was the frozen tiramisu dessert (a great Trader Joe's find!). We were a rather small group this meeting, but we're excited to have the whole group back next meeting -- with the addition of a newbie: Hannah!

See you all in a few weeks!

~Carolyn

It's time to vote!!

Hey Bookettes! Two business things:

1. We discussed Thursday, August 5 as a potential date for the meeting at Sarah's. Can we put that on the calendar?

2. At our last meeting we decided to wait to vote for our August book so that Jenna and Hannah could get in on the decision. The three choices and descriptions are below. When you are ready, place your vote! I created a poll to the right. Voting closes next Friday at 4 pm.

Is the teacher in me coming out?

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned homeafter graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

"Anthropology of an American Girl" by Hilary Thayer Hamann

A semi-autobiographical novel. It is the story of a young woman and her culture that strives for a measure of narrative depth, detail, and objectivity. It follows its protagonist, Eveline Auerbach, as she moves through a pre-digital American landscape during the 1970s and 1980s. In the most basic respect, it is a coming of age story that prescribes a return to simplicity as the most rational and ethical response to the chaos and confusion of upward mobility.

From the publisher:
"This ambitious work explores the sexual and intellectual awakening of a young American woman struggling to remain true to herelf as she encounters love, passion, and death amid the challenges and heartbreaks of growing up. Newly edited and revised, 'Anthropology of an American Girl' is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution."

From the author:
"The working title for the book was "Eveline," as I initially considered it to be the story of a girl. It became "Anthropology of an American Girl" when it began to describe more than one girl and when I could no longer separate what happened to my character from what happened around her. I chose the smallest thing I could imagine to explore the vastness of America—a single voice. The voice provided a thread to trace through the thickly woven tapestry of American ideology, with its legendary ethos of liberty, justice, equality, autonomy, self-discipline, and hard work and its conflicting legacy of prejudice, greed, abuse of privilege, excessive consumption, and lack of accountability."

"The Robber Bride" by Margaret Atwood

Set in present-day Toronto, the novel begins with three women (Roz, Charis, and Tony) who meet once a month in a restaurant to share a meal.The Robber Bride is inspired by "The Robber Bridegroom," a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz. All three "have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them.

To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is 'a lurking enemy commando.' To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'" (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review). In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts.

Our new FOOD Blog!

Hey Girls! Notice anything new on this page? Scroll on down and look on the right side just after our list of books we'd like to read someday.... I made a new blog for all of our recipes! I figured that way it will be really easy to keep adding recipes as we keep making food for our meetings. Click on the pizza icon to take you to the site where I explain it in better detail and took the liberty of starting out with a recipe post. Feel free to add your recipes when you have time. Looking forward to recreating some of the goodies we've enjoyed so far!

Also, I added Hannah, our newest member, to our email notification list... so welcome, Hannah! Can't wait for you to meet everyone at our next meeting! (I'll email you with the details on how to sign in to the blog).

~Carolyn