Book Club Survives and Thrives

Book Club Year-End Review

The Maple Glen Book Club, my neighborhood group, has survived another year of reading and discussion.  This may sound trivial, but I know that many book clubs do not last for very long. Our group is well into its second year and membership has grown rather than diminished!

In fact, I think having a neighborhood book club has helped us to understand our neighbors better and to feel more a part of the community.  One of the new members was new to the neighborhood, so the book club was a good way for her to meet new people and network with others about the community. Another member, moved to a different neighborhood but continued attending our book club.  It provided her with a way to stay connected to a place she had lived in for decades.  What a nice feeling it is to see the book club help people navigate life changes.

The year wasn't without its struggles!  The most difficult thing for us is to choose a book we all want to read.  After several depressing reads that provoked tons of moaning and groaning, we decided we needed to come up with a few new parameters for choosing books.

The culprits that created our turmoil:

January's Choice - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

This story of generations of Africans sweeps through 300 years of struggle from Ghana to America.  Though beginning chapters were detailed and well researched, we found latter parts very thin and at times relying on stereotypes.





February's Choice - They May Not Mean To But They Do by Cathleen Schine

The group chose this book because it was touted as funny and full of family antics.  Ha! It was so depressing to see the suffering and loneliness of aging parents. We found nothing to laugh about.

March's Choice - Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Again this book came with great reviews but our group found this tale of two families blended by divorce even more depressing than Schine's book. Replete with adultery and borderline child neglect, we just couldn't see why the reviews were so glowing.

April's Choice - Emma by Jane Austen

So, in desperation we decided to do a classic.  Bomb big time!  However, there were maybe a couple members (I mean me) who enjoyed the book. To make up to the group for forcing Emma on them, we discussed the book over an English tea compete with lavender bread, scones (with jams and clotted cream) and of course two types of perfectly brewed tea.  My hubby graciously played butler and served our tea hot from the pot.

May's Choice - any book by self-help author Andrew Mathews

As I look back on our choices this one seems kind of prophetic. Were we searching for help?  Many in the group chose the title Being Happy. Well... all I can say is we hadn't found yet how to be happy with our selections.





June's Choice - Crimes Against the Book Club by Kathy Cooperman

You just have to love our Freudian choice!!! I think we chose this in a desperate, sarcastic attempt to save the group from mass suicide.  But this was a turning point for our selection process.  It marked the one-year anniversary of the organization of our group, so we took the occasion to re-visit ways to improve book selection. This is what we came up with:

• no self-help books
• nothing political in nature
• no misery porn
• no celebrity autobiographies   

Additionally, we came up with a new way of selecting the next book.  We would decide on four titles as a group.  Then we would vote for our favorite on our group Facebook page, assigning a 4 for our favorite choice, down to a 1 for our least favorite choice.  Points would be tallied and the title with the most points would be our next read. This gave everyone a chance to look at summaries and reviews and decide which one they liked best.  Plus, there was no peer pressure applied because you didn't have to vote with the whole group sitting in front of you.  This seemed to work quite well...most of the group enjoyed the remaining reads for the year.

July's Choice - Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

An apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

August's Choice - Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

An historical novel set in WW II, that follows the story of three women ( a socialite in America drumming up support for war victims in France, a Polish concentration camp prisoner who endured medical experiments, and a German doctor who conducted those experiments).





September's Choice- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lot's of great discussion about this classic

October's Choice - The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan

This was probably the one bomb of our post-revised selection era.  The characters were deplorable people with few redeeming qualities...the plot was not what the reviews hyped it to be.  Good attempt by us to try different genres and topics ... we'll keep plugging away.

November's Choice - At Home In Mitford, Jan Karon

Determined to enter the holiday season with a feel-good read, this book, the first in a series about Mitford, NC, was a sure winner.  We had a great time reading it and lots of fun at our discussion meeting.  Here are a few pics of the Mitford "goodies" shared at our November meeting.

Esther Bollick's famous orange marmalade cake that sent Fr. Tim into a diabetic swoon.

Puny's cornbread that she made for Fr. Tim.








December/January's Choice - What Alice Forgot, Lian Moriarity

We are looking forward to reading this over the holiday!

Final thoughts...Maple Glen Book Club had quite a reading year. We read quite a diverse group of books, lots of different genres. We overcame a flagging selection process. Made new friends.  Kept the old. And celebrated the joy of reading with friends and neighbors.

Have a great reading year in 2018 everyone!

I Love My Book Club!

BOOK CLUBS: Some Thoughts

I am a member of a neighborhood book club, The Maple Glen Book Club, to be exact.  It has a total of eight members. Several of the women I had never met before, even though I have lived in this neighborhood for over twenty years and so have they.  Several I knew by sight and name, but none were close friends.  It's an amazing thing to live in a fairly closed community (there is only one entrance and egress that we all must pass through) and not come to know the people of that community.  A big failure on my part, but it appears, this situation was true for most of the women in the group. Food for thought.

Happily, as we continue to hold our monthly meetings and share and discuss our thoughts about the books we read, we are getting to know one another and appreciate our similarities and differences.  Besides the opportunity to read  and talk about books, book club, at least our book club, is a place to share some interesting thoughts about life.

Recently, we read Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

The book got very mixed reviews from our group.  I had read it before and had so loved it that I recommended it to the group.  It's quirky and weird in many ways, but had enough of a puzzling conflict that I thought it would appeal to most members. Only one other member really and truly liked the book; one couldn't get into it at all and the rest of the group toughed it out and read it any way, even though they did not like it.   In our ensuing discussion, we discussed how that is one of the reasons we wanted to be a part of a book club. It forces us to read books we normally wouldn't choose to read.  It expands our book boundaries. And...even with books most of us do not like, we manage to find some kernel of truth to plant.

With Mr. Penumbra that kernel occurred in the message one of our members felt the book was trying to convey.  The plot of the book revolves around a rather cliche problem: the search for immortality. Though set in modern day and sprinkled heavily with the techno babble of Silicon Valley, the novel's setting was also very DaVinci Code-like with a secret organization that was trying to decode the meaning of life hidden in some ancient books. I won't give away too much of the plot or the conclusion, just in case  you want to read this book, but I do want to share the message our group felt the book exposed: friendship is the key to everlasting life.  Love, of friend or family member, promotes lasting memories, memories that are transferred from one generation to the next.  We live on in the memories we make in the hearts of others.

Though some of our group were skeptical that this is the case, for me it rang very true. I immediately thought of my Aunt Marie, my mom's sister who died at the age of 13. Of course, I never met Aunt Marie, but she had a big presence in our family's life.  Her story, her personality, her impact on our family was a lasting one that traversed several generations. I will be revealing her story in a future post, but for now, I refer to her as an example of how a simple tidbit of discussion in a book club meeting can spark big ideas.  It is also goes to show the power of books. They make you think!

Agenda for organizational meeting.

The Maple Glen Book Club has only been in existence since June, but it has had quite an impact on my life, opening up my world to new friends, new books, and new ideas.  Here is a list of what we have read so far:

July:  The Nest, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

August: The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman

September:  Take Me With You, Catherine Ryan Hyde

October:  Vendetta, Elizabeth Flaherty

November:  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel, Robin Sloan

In December, in deference to the very hectic holiday season, and through the wise suggestion of one of our members,  we are reading a short YA novel:

The Poet's Dog, Patricia MacLachlan

Happy Reading Everyone!