Some Housekeeping!

I've added the books for 2021 to the sidebar as well as adding the dates for our meetings. As a general rule, our meetings will always be the 3rd Tuesday of the month. Since we probably will have to do Zoom meetings through winter this year, weather should not impact us for sometime. But if there appears to be any weather related reason we might not be able to meet, please check your email before leaving for a meeting, in case we have to reschedule the meeting. Please note that our meeting in December is on the second Tuesday of the month to keep us from bumping up too close to the holidays.

For those of you who were new to the Bookworms in 2020, I'm certain that we never brought you up to speed on the competition we started a couple of years ago. With a new year around the corner, I wanted to make sure you knew about how we earn points why; this is also a reminder to the rest of you about how to earn points. Hopefully 2021 will allow us more ways to earn points again, other than just reading the book and attending meetings. I'll be trying to work in some bonus ways to earn points, starting with watching movie adaptations of books we're reading. Here's how it works:

Starting in January, you'll have a chance to earn points in several different ways. At our December meeting, prizes will be awarded. The top two point totals will win bookish prizes (and by "bookish," I might mean a bottle of wine to drink while you read a book!) and the person with the least points will win a lovely white elephant gift (I might have more fun with this prize than the other two!).

Here's how you can earn points:

Finish the book - 15 points 

Reading enough to discuss the book - 5 points
Host a meeting - 10 points

Bringing food or wine to a meeting - 2 points
Attending a meeting - 5 points
Organize a book-related, non-meeting event - 3 points
Attend a non-meeting event (seeing an author, seeing a book-related movie, go to a play, do an activity you were inspired to do because of a book) - 3 points (an extra point if you've gone with book club friends)
Introduce a new member - 3 points
Recommend a book 1 point (2 points if your book is added to our reading list)
Submit a question ahead of the meeting regarding the book - 1 point

Winning a book club game - 3 points

If you can't come to the meeting, but have finished the book or if you've gone to a non-meeting event that qualifies, please let me know by email so I can add your points. Hopefully there will be bookish events to attend in 2021 again - author visits, movies released based on books, plays based on books, etc. Let me know if you think of any other ways we could earn points!

November - Where The Crawdads Sing

A year ago we put in for a library book club bag for this book. We were all the way up to 4th in line and then Covid hit. And we sat 4th in line for 7 months. Finally, we gave up and read it this month. As of the day we met, we were finally up to 2nd in line. When do you think we might finally have gotten that bag?! 

This was the perfect book to end our serious reading for the year; we all enjoyed it (in fact, most of us loved it) and it gave us a lot to talk about. I had a list of questions but everyone just launched into talking about the book and we talked about it for a half hour before we needed any prompting. As we talk, we hit on a lot of things we agreed required a suspension of disbelief if you wanted to really enjoy the book. I always worry that when we start getting into the weeds talking about the book that it will lessen our enjoyment of the book. Fortunately, that didn't seem to be the case here. 

A heads up to any other book clubs who want to read this book (if there are any left who haven't!) - there's a big reveal way at the end of this book which is impossible not to talk about. We talked a lot about that -  whether or not we had figured it out ahead of time, if it was believable, and a specific piece of evidence. Actually, there were two reveals at the end but one of them was only marginally of interest to most of us except that we wished we had had time to go back through the book to see if it was more relevant than we thought it was. 

We kept going back to the fact that Kya's mother walked away from her two youngest children and left them with an abusive father: how that affected Kya and whether or not it was ever forgivable, why none of Kya's siblings ever came back for her, why not one single white person in the town seemed to have a heart when it came to this poor little girl. 

Whether you end of loving this book or not, we do recommend it for a book club selection. Owens' writes beautifully about the plants, the animals, the birds and the land. 

2021 Book Selections!

Remember that list of categories I gave you a few weeks ago? This seemed like a good idea to me until I started trying to pick books to fit that categories! The votes are in the categories with the most votes were: Books About Famous Women, Banned Books, Book Adapted Into Movies, Famous Nebraskans, Books With A Twist, Immigrant Stories, Books With Teachers, Books About Native Americans, Books Set In South America, Books by Canadian Authors, and Books About Books or Libraries. Several other categories also received votes so that when I was able to choose a book that fit more than one category, I selected from those categories. 

Those of you who didn't join our club in the past year are well acquainted with the fact that I may, at random, change things up. I have not read most of these books but will read them ahead of the month we are reading them. If I decide that aren't good choices for discussion, I'll change things up. But, after something like 20 hours of looking at choices and changing and changing my selections, this is what we have for 2021 at this time: 

January: I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon (Famous Women)

February: The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Banned Books, Book Adapted To Movie)*  **

March: The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce (Books With Music In The Title, Love Story)

April: Sunburn by Laura Lippman (Books With A Twist)

May: Behold The Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue (Immigrant Stories)

June: The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (Books About Books, Translated Books)

July: Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald (Books by Canadian Author)

August: The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy (Books With Teachers, Book Adapted to Movie)*

September: I Am A Man by Joe Starita (Famous Nebraskans, Books About Native Americans) ***

October: A Long Petal Of The Sea by Isabel Allende (Books Set In South America, Books With A Body of                A Water In The Title)

November: Weather by Jenny Offill (Books With Weather In The Title)

December: Open

* Bonus points if you also watch the movie adaptation

** This is our classic selection for 2021

*** This is our nonfiction selection for 2021

October - After The Flood

What a disappointment October was - we were so hoping for one more month of nice enough weather to be able to meet in person. Alas, we have begun Zoom meeting season. 

This month we read the Omaha Reads' selection for 2020, After The Flood. I would say it's well outside our usual read but we do a pretty good job of mixing things up and it's not the first dystopian book we've read. We had a good discussion about the various characters, their motivations, and the believability of their actions. Although the violence in this one was less than many dystopian novels (and less than some Omaha Reads choices), there were still some tough to read parts that had some of us putting the book down. 

What  was the best part of reading this book, as with so many book club selections, was the discussion it lead to about our own lives. We talked about how we would react to the various trials that were faced but the most fun was having each person talk about what skills they would bring to a group trying to survive. We have a lot of gardeners so if we could find seeds, we'd be good. Some sewers, some who would be helpful in negotiating, some who are good problem solvers. Sadly, we don't have anyone who can hunt or fish so how well we would survive without any protein is debatable! 

September - Furious Hours

This month we discussed Casey Cep’s Furious Hours, which was our nonfiction read for the year and also tied in with our classic book for the year, To Kill A Mockingbird. To change things up this month, we split into teams to answer questions about the book. The final question for each team was open-ended to allow for broader discussion about the book but a lot of the questions allowed us to get into more detail about the book. For example, we talked about narrative nonfiction which is a term everyone said they will not forget. Should that be on a year-end quiz?! 

We spent a lot of time talking about Harper Lee – why she never wrote another book and why she couldn’t write this book in particular. One idea was that she might not have been, despite the wild success of To Kill A Mockingbird, a great writer. That book drew heavily from her own experiences and she had not had to come up with an original idea; also, she was helped tremendously by a number of people, including her publisher. Another thought was that she might have been a perfectionist, writing and rewriting and never being happy with the finished product. Without someone to push her along, she was never able to finish another book and the pressure of trying to follow up her debut may have just been too great. 

Thanks to Lisa W for hosting again and to everyone who brought snacks and wine. It was great to be able to meet in person again. Hopefully we can get another month of good weather to do it again; it’s so much easier to socialize which is, of course, a big part of the reason we enjoy our group! Team Austen was the big winner of the game and will receive extra points for the win.

August - A Spool of Blue Thread

 

Couldn't keep them from talking about this book before our "official" discussion even began because those who hadn't finished had questions and those who had told those who hadn't that they hadn't missed much. Those who had finished this book admitted to being disappointed, having been waiting for some reveals at the end and a more fulfilling explanation as to the title of the book. 

We were excited to get to meet in person again and Lisa W spoiled us with a great spread of heavy appetizers, lots of wine and drink holders beside every chair. It was beautiful evening and we were happy to welcome two new ladies. 

To make things more interesting and to keep things on track, we played a scaled-for-the-outdoors version of Jeopardy. Categories included What A Character and Well, That's Novel among others. We talked about the motives of the characters, how our impression of some of the characters changed throughout the book, symbolism, and the structure of the book. The game also gave us a chance to talk about memorable books about families and it was fun to see how many of us interpreted that. 

Definitely not our favorite book ever but it did give us a lot to discuss even if it was almost too dark to read the clues by the end of the evening! 

June and July - Olive, Again and Daisy Jones and The Six

 Playing catch up today before I've got three months to write up! 

In June, we read Elizabeth Strout's follow up to her bestseller, Olive Kitteridge, Olive, Again. Because Zoom was starting to wear on all of us, it was time to switch things up a bit so we turned the book into a board game. The board was modeled after the game Candyland and let's just say that even reducing the number of spots on the board in half, there were still a lot of spots to land on between the beginning and the end. We were only using one die and finally had to go to doubling that number or we would have had to carry the game over to the next meeting! It certainly made us think about what we'd read and kept us on track talking about the book but may not have allowed for as in-depth a discussion as we might otherwise have had. It's something to try again, with some tweaking.

In July, we finally got together in person again and we're hoping the weather will cooperate enough for us to continue to do that for a few more months. Lisa S couldn't be there but sent alone questions so there could still be some kind of discussion about Daisy Jones and The Six which had a lot to talk about even though it didn't have the feel of a heavy topic book. Linda was kind enough to host in her beautiful backyard. 

Both books make good book club choices with a lot a characters and themes to talk about and we found that it wasn't necessary to have read Strout's first book about Olive to be able to enjoy the second. 

A couple of points of housekeeping: 

You'll see that our Race for the Prizes is very tight this year (not having meetings in house has reduced the number of points available!). If you are not able to come to the meeting, but have read the book, please let me know so I can award you points for that. Also, I forgot to record who won the board game in June so can whoever won please remind me so I can add your points to your total?

Also, at the rate things are going, I'm starting to think that a movie in December may not be an option. I think we all enjoyed not having to read a book last December, in addition to everything else we have going on in that month, so I'd like to keep that month clear. But we may also not be able to do a book exchange in the same way we did last year. I'm pondering some ideas as to how we might yet be able to make that work but let me know your thoughts about what else we could do to make our December meeting more fun if we have to do Zoom, as I suspect we might.

Eleanor Elephant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Month two of Zoom meetings and we all managed to get into the meeting without any problems. Yea, us! This month we welcomed Becky and we managed not to scare her off and even showed her that we can talk about the book when we really try.

The past couple of months we've chosen numbers that correspond to questions as our way to keep on track. This time we'd already answered four of the questions before we even got to the questions with a discussion of the book before we started that part. That's how great this book is as a book club choice.  Some of us figured out the big reveal before we got to the end but most of us hadn't gotten to that. We talked about whether or not we thought Eleanor might have Asperger's or if her behavior was just a result of her upbringing. We all loved Eleanor and the way that Honeyman gradually brought her to the point she could come to grips with what had happened to her and the way friendship made all the difference in her life. We agreed that Honeyman showed how one person who shows kindness can make all the difference.

Conviction by Denise Mina

In March, Omaha had just had their first diagnosed case of Covid-19 and we were not much worried about it yet at that point. We met at Ann's and while we may not have hugged each other, we then thought that washing our hands was going to keep us pretty safe. A month later, it was a whole new ball game. Book club in the time of a pandemic means meetings are held via Zoom. This was our first meeting trying this technology and, for the most part, it went pretty well. We actually spent a lot of time talking about the book and might well have done a better job of not talking over each other as we do in person!

Conviction was recommended by Linda, based on an NPR review. Ann was the first person to read it and she finished it in two days. She was not alone in finding this to be a book to race through. We all liked this one, even though we had a few problems with it, including the fact that we thought the whole conflict of the book ended too easily. I believe only one of us figured out who-done-it before the end of the book which is always the mark of a good mystery. Would we recommend it? Yes. Would we recommend it for a book club? Again, yes. Mysteries don't always make for good discussion but this one had a lot going on with themes including sexual assault, eating disorders, the impact of social media, and remaking yourself.

March - To Kill A Mockingbird

I must admit, we were a chatty bunch this month. Lots to talk about besides the book. CoVid19, upcoming theatrical performances both related to and not at all related to books we've read, new jobs, and kid updates. So we may not have given this book it's fair due as far as discussion was concerned.

 We started by going around the room and talking about whether or not each person had previously read the book or not. If so, we wanted to know how this reading compared to their first reading. If not, how did they think they experience differed from what it might have been if they'd read it when they were younger. Only one person had never read the book before; Lisa W was reading it for the first time. Everyone else had different perspectives about the differences on reread. Grace had thought she might not need to actually reread it but in flipping through it, realized how much she'd forgotten about it.

 We talked about Scout and her precociousness. We wondered about a girl who was raised to be, and acted in public, so polite, who didn't hesitate to question the authority of her teachers. We talked about how Lee didn't seem to care much for teachers as a whole; she portrays them as rigid and unaware. As we talked about the racism in the book, Ann brought up that kids are products of their upbringing and to an extent can't be blamed for their actions and words. We wondered how, then, so many of them grow and change and when in their lives does that happen. Grace had some really interesting stories to tell about her experience as a very young girl dealing with racists and being acutely aware that it was wrong.

 We talked about the movie adaptation of the book and Cheryl and Mary Beth were of two minds about how good of an adaptation it was. Mary Beth felt that they had left out much of what makes us understand the actions of the characters. Lisa and Ann had differing opinions about how Jem was affected by what happened in the book. We don't always have really different opinions about the book and it was kind of interesting to have points we weren't necessarily ready to concede.

We all felt that Gregory Peck was the perfect Atticus and made that character even more of a man to be idolized. Lisa S pointed out that Harper Lee had based Atticus on her own father (the trial piece of the book is based on a trial where he defended two black men wrongly accused). That led us to wonder if the Atticus in this book was more accurate to her father or the Atticus in Go Set A Watchman which Lee actually wrote before this book and in which Atticus is definitely not the saint he is here.

We're eager to see the Broadway adaptation when it comes to Omaha next April and see what changes Aaron Sorkin made to the story. Hey, it turns out we did get a lot of discussion in about the book, after all!

February - The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

We did something new with this months book - instead of just the usual discussion questions or a game, the dysfunction family in this book needed something more.

Each person was assigned a character and we held a family therapy session; each character needed to tell us about themselves, how they felt about other family members, and answer some questions about why they did the things they did. It was a fun way to get everyone's impressions about the different characters and, with six people representing characters, we were really able to get into each character's heads. As always, getting other people's impressions of the characters made each of us rethink the impressions we had formed. For example, Lisa S. didn't feel that Joe was at all remorseful about what he had done to Lillian growing up; yet, when ask to describe her character, Joe, in three words, Ann started with "remorseful." She was really able to see how hurt he had been by his childhood. In character, it was easier for each person to see what Gray meant by choosing this title, how each character was hungry to something specific and how each of them tried to satisfy that hunger.

We were happy to welcome a new member, Kathy. At least, we hope we didn't scare her off and that she'll join us again in March!

We are still searching for a new home base. This month we spent the meeting trying to talk over an unexpected trivia night. When the topic turned to music, we knew we couldn't compete against that round and had to call it a night. Thanks to Ann for hosting in March so we can have peace and quiet!

January - The Camel Bookmobile

Thanks to the weather, we had to reschedule our January meeting which was disappointing because there would have been nine of us, including a new member, at the originally scheduled meeting. Still, we had six of us and all but one of us had read the book.

For Ann, this one was a slow build but she ended up really liking it. Cheryl found it predictable. While it was tough to keep us on topic (what else is new?!), we had a good discussion about the motivations behind both Fiona and the group that set up the book mobile - was everyone really trying to make life better for the nomadic people of Kenya or were they doing it more for personal (corporate) good? What might they have done better to help the people of the village - books that were more helpful, other donations? Would those changes have been better accepted by the village elders? All of that brought up the discussion of whether or not you can truly retain the old ways while bringing in the new.

We had fun talking about how we would have liked the book to end or what we would have written if we had written an epilogue for the book. The book brought up some personal examples of ways family members and friends have served in other countries.

Perhaps the best part of the discussion was our ability to acknowledge other people's opinions and thoughts. It's one of the best things about this group of ladies - we may not always agree about a book or a character or a topic but we're always respectful and open to new thoughts.