February

 

Has it really been an entire year since I've updated this blog?! Bad book club leader, very bad! I've posted this year's reading list and moved our 2023 list to the Books Read tab. 

We're off to a slow start in 2024 - sorry to say that I'm not picking books that have been popular with the group. 

In January we read Melanie Benjamin's latest, California Golden. While we found a lot to discuss about the book, about the time period, parenting, women's place in history, we also had a lot to issues with it. Those of us who've recall reading others of Benjamin's books in book club, found this one to be not up to her usual standards. We just didn't feel like the writing was as good as other books and there were too many times when she chose overused phrases and similes. 

This month we read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I've read it before and even I had to admit, on reread, that it's a bit of a slog to read. There is a lot of dialogue. A. Lot. Much of it is worked into paragraphs, rather than standing on its own, which slowed down the reading. Most people found that none of the characters were likable; some even found that the heroine of the book, Fanny, might well have been the hardest to like. We finished the evening playing a Jane Austen matching card game (think Memory). Things didn't start off well because someone (me!) hadn't read the instructions. Even when we were on the right track, things got a little silly. There are a lot of cards and the makers had to dig deep to come up with so many couples; that meant that even those who had read a lot of Austen had a hard time remembering which character went with which other character. Oh well, we got in some laughs and it was fun to do something different. 

Ann forewarns us that next month's book, The Buddha In The Attic, is going to be depressing. It is, at least, much, much shorter than Mansfield Park!

February - While The Patient Slept

Our theme this year is "You Learn Something New Every Month." What, pray tell, could you possibly learn from reading a 90-year-old murder mystery? Well, you could learn about an author who haled from and began her writing career in, Nebraska. You could learn that Mignon Eberhart introduced a female "detective" into novels before Agatha Christie. And you could learn about an author you didn't know about whose writing you quite enjoyed. 

This book was something of a surprise hit with most of us. It would fall into what we now call the "cozy mystery" genre, which seemed like just the kind of cleanse-your-palate read so many of us needed just now. Ann (I believe it was Ann) said she figured out who done it within the first 30 pages but enjoyed the book, nevertheless. Fortunately, she had marked the passage that gave it away for her so she could point out to the rest of us what we had missed. 

We talked at some length about what kind of person we imagined Sarah Keate to look like and who we could picture playing her in a movie adaptation. As it turns out, a movie adaptation was made shortly after the book was released but it received such poor reviews it hardly seems worth paying the $3 it would cost to watch it. 

Was it the best book we're likely to read this year. Nope. Was it worth reading? Sure; at just over 300 pages, it's not much of a time commitment, it doesn't present any disturbing themes or situations, and it's an easy, escapist read. And it even gave us plenty to talk about!

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

This year's theme is You Learn Something New Every Month and we kicked off the year with a good one, Kelly Corrigan's Glitter and Glue, which is a memoir about how Corrigan reconciled with her mother after growing up more or less feeling like her mom didn't care very much about her. 

While we spent some time talking about the book, we spent more time (intentionally this time!) talking about our own experiences relative to the book. In the book, Corrigan's mother tells Corrigan that her father is the glitter and her mom is the glue. We took turns talking about which of our own parents were which and which we were in our own childrearing adventures. Then we moved on to talking about when we finally appreciated or understood our own moms. We really did learn so much about each other with each of these questions. Many of us grew up in really big families and it was certainly a different experience than those of us who did not; both mom and dad tended to need to both be glue with that many children or they had to take turns more often. 

Everyone loved this book. Those who listened to it really loved that the pieces where Corrigan is voicing how her mother's voice sounded in her head as the reader did a terrific job. Those of us who read the most recent edition of the book shared how, in 2014, Corrigan wrote a second follow up to the book that gives readers closure with the family that Corrigan lived with during her time in Australia and a Q&A with her mom. We all would recommend this book as book a book to read purely for enjoyment and for book club discussions. We could probably have talked about the book for another hour but the restaurant kicked us out!