Finalizing future dates and other such business

Hi Girls!

I forgot to write down our January meeting date that will be held at Colleen's. Can someone either remind me by replying to this post or by adding it to the calendar of events in the sidebar?

Also, remember we changed the date for November from Thursday to Saturday the 20th, at 10am @ Marit's. Did I get that right? We will be discussing The Help (which is amazing so far!)

Colleen, do you feel comfortable setting up a poll along the sidebar? I've never added a poll but I know some other bookettes have -- namely Marit. So maybe contact her if you want the "cliffnotes" : )

If you head over to the recipe blog (via the button link down on the sidebar) you'll notice a new theme! Anyone can feel free to change that. Blogger just updated their designs so I was having fun playing around. In order to accommodate some of the larger photos I adjusted the width of the blog body to as wide as it gets and the sidebar to a bit smaller (there's a simple control to do this when you change the theme). As I'm sure you noticed, our home blog also has a new theme. I thought of changing it to a stack of books (another border option) but wasn't sure I liked the colors ... but we might go back to that because it just screams Bookclub!

If anyone has any recipes to share on our blog you can either type up your own post, ask me (via a reply to this post) how that is done (maybe we can cook up a tutorial), OR .... you can email carolyn.pierson@gmail.com and I'll post them for you! If they are secret family recipes you aren't required to post them, but we had such a great time when everyone hosted, it would be fun to share as many recipes as we can.

Ok, enough nerdy news for now! I'm off to read The Help (or wish I was while I trudge forward on my homework...)

Carolyn

Volunteers?

I have a group photo of some pretty cute bookettes last month at Sarah's... if anyone wants to do a quick write up of that meeting, I'll add the photo. Any takers? Just a little summary of the wonderful apps and drinks we enjoyed (can't wait for that crab cake recipe Sarah! My mom wants it too, by the way, haha), the amazing view overlooking the river with that golden sunset, and our longest conversation to date (perhaps?). Just thought it would be nice to get this pic up on the blog before we delve too far into our next book. If you decide you want to write up the summary just include the appropriate tag at the bottom (Meeting Journal I think it is). Or if you don't know how to post something on the blog and want to send me a few sentence I can add it to the blog for you!
- Carolyn

Remember to VOTE!

Only half of us have voted so far for the November book selection, and there are only about 48 hours left to do it! So if you'd like to voice your opinion on what we read after The Accidental Tourist, go ahead and VOTE soon! (Thanks again, Marit, for the awesome suggestions and providing the summaries!)

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.