April - Sunburn by Laura Lippman

We have so many members fully vaccinated (and more part way there) that we were finally comfortable to meet INSIDE for the first time in more 13 months! In fact, it was the first time we've physically been together in six months and it was so much fun! 

It would have been really easy for us to spend those two hours we were together just chatting, but we do like to call ourselves a book club so we really should spend some time every meeting talking about the book. To that end, we played a board game (albeit, one that had entirely too many spaces on it - gotta work on that) and divided into teams to answer questions. Some had multiple answers with the chance to move multiple spaces and many had the chance for one team to make some moves on the other team's turn. 

We learned that some of us can really retain details, especially when it comes to food being discussed in a book. We found that we can justify a character's behavior even as we also find the character to be reprehensible on so many levels and that we can be very creative when comparing a character to an animal. And we found that even when we like a book, if you ask about the ways a book failed, we can pick that book apart like nobody's business. 

Because of the way we chose books this year, it's been a year of unusual choices and this one definitely isn't the kind of book we would normally read or recommend for book clubs. But we did find a lot to talk about with this one and worked our way through all of the questions, even if we never reached the end of the game board.

January, February, And March!

Oh, my! How the year has gotten away from me! Let's try to catch up, shall we?

In January we read Ariel Lawhon's I Was Anastasia. We had mixed feelings about this book. As with so many books where there are two story lines, we all felt like Anastasia's story was stronger than Anna's. The bigger issue, even though we understood why Lawhon did it, was the way that Lawhon wrote Anna's story in reverse. It made it difficult to keep track of that part of the story. But it did mean that Lawhon could have the two stories converge and reveal the truth behind Anna. We all knew, or looked up, the story of the Romanovs, so we also weren't entirely surprised by how the book ended; still, we held out hope for Anna. While this wasn't a perfect book, it was interesting, found us doing some research, and made for a good discussion. 

In February, we missed our meeting so we tried to discuss both our February and March books at our March "meeting." Our February book was Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which served as both our classic book for the year and fit the month's theme, which was banned books. The Color Purple has been banned in many places because of the amount of violence, particularly to women, in it. That was also the reason that many of our club couldn't keep reading the book. That made it hard to discuss the book so we spent very little time with it, other than to talk about how much of behavior, particularly violent behavior, is inherent versus learned. 

For March, we read Rachel Joyce's The Music Shop which we all enjoyed. Except...some of us really didn't like the ending and felt it was too staged and too cutesy. We liked Joyce's characters and we had many different favorites. We really enjoyed the music aspects of this book. With all of the music pieces Joyce referenced, Lisa S decided to make a Spotify playlist from the book, only to discover that there were already several options on Spotify. Because we hadn't talked in two months and were trying to talk about two books in one meeting, we didn't talk about this one as much as we might have otherwise. 

We were really hoping that with as many of us planning to be fully vaccinated by the April meeting we might be able to get together outside. Sadly, it's going to be too chilly yet. But by May, we may be able to really get together again. So looking forward to it!

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!