This month's book club was hosted by Ozzy and Carla Gibb. Although, Ozzy kind of pooped out on us in the end! Everyone was present and accounted for except for Janie who was visiting her daughter in Austin, Texas. We missed you Janie but I know you had a good time watching Gone with the Wind on the big screen!
This month's book, Cutting for Stone, was set in Ethiopia. This inspired Barb to bring her African Chicken and Diana complim
ented it with brown rice. Carla G di
d a beautiful salad, great bread and Red Rooster Cocktails. Liz brought Babba Ganoush and Nan bread, Lou brought a sampling of dips from Misal's; Dal, Potato Bhaji and Navrathan. Pam brought Oatmeal cake, Terry brought Key Lime Pie. Darby brought Cranberry Kiss cocktails, and Denise brought wine from Sonoma and Arnora brought the flowers. The food, as always, was delicious and warranted seconds.
For book club in November, Lou is going to arrange for the photographer to come and take our 10 Year Anniversary photo. It was decided that we'd go with a black & white theme for cohesiveness and the photographer recommended we stay away from things with too much pattern. As far as we know, everyone plans to be at Darby's for this event. If you find you have a conflict let Diana or Lou know so that we can make other arrangements. October's book is Firefly Lane and Liz is our hostess for the month. It was also decided that those who wished to would re-read the last Harry Potter and that we would convene for a dinner discussion separately from regular book club to discuss before the movie comes out. The actual book for November is "Girl in Translation."
The book rated a 4.65 among those who rated; an "I loved it with all my heart" and an "I loved it" from Carla A and Pam.
Cutting for Stone is set in Ethiopia but it is not about Ethiopians. All of the main characters are Ex-pats from other countries and mostly India. The story is about twin boys and it was noted that twins often show up in the stories we read. They are born in to drama, chaos and loss right from the beginning. Their mother is a nun working at a mission in Ethiopia and their father is the doctor she assists in surgery. No on
e knows she is pregnant until she goes into labor. The twins are co-joined. The mother dies in childbirth and the father abandons them to be raised by one of the female doctors at the mission. I only managed to get half way through the book so I'm not going to attempt to recount the full story. The book is very layered and is about relationships, love, loss, betrayal, and the medical profession. It's also about death and how we deal with that and working through all of these life challenges. The book resonated with everyone as we've all experienced our losses over the years and some very recently.
Diana said the book was very timely for her. She had tried to get into it last year and did not enjoy it at all. But when she picked it up this year it spoke to her in a different way. Carla A said the language was poetic and the story left her "rung out". Darby really liked but wasn't crazy for all the medical procedures (me too!) but Pam loved it for those reasons. Diana went on to say that as we grow and mature and work through these events that we all go through - you come to a place of acceptance with the process and you often cope with things differently. And of course, we all agreed that when someone has lived a long life and it is part of the natural trajectory, we handle it differently than when a life is cut tragically short. We talked about "grief being a window that opens on its own" and you really have little or no control for when or how long you might grieve someone. That often it will hit you out of the blue long after the event.
Reading a book is such an interactive exercise. The author writes out of his own working through of experiences and he turns it loose on the world. The reader reads this experience and brings to it the layers of their own personal catharsis. Then we come together in a group setting to share our experiences. The layers of our own lives are deepened and enriched. We share compassion for each other and, validation of our emotions. Even the most humorous of the books we've read tend to have some loss and betrayal that we come up against.
Such is the life experience and aren't we lucky that there are authors & readers willing to dig that deep and that we have each other to share these moments of with?
This month's book, Cutting for Stone, was set in Ethiopia. This inspired Barb to bring her African Chicken and Diana complim
ented it with brown rice. Carla G di
d a beautiful salad, great bread and Red Rooster Cocktails. Liz brought Babba Ganoush and Nan bread, Lou brought a sampling of dips from Misal's; Dal, Potato Bhaji and Navrathan. Pam brought Oatmeal cake, Terry brought Key Lime Pie. Darby brought Cranberry Kiss cocktails, and Denise brought wine from Sonoma and Arnora brought the flowers. The food, as always, was delicious and warranted seconds.For book club in November, Lou is going to arrange for the photographer to come and take our 10 Year Anniversary photo. It was decided that we'd go with a black & white theme for cohesiveness and the photographer recommended we stay away from things with too much pattern. As far as we know, everyone plans to be at Darby's for this event. If you find you have a conflict let Diana or Lou know so that we can make other arrangements. October's book is Firefly Lane and Liz is our hostess for the month. It was also decided that those who wished to would re-read the last Harry Potter and that we would convene for a dinner discussion separately from regular book club to discuss before the movie comes out. The actual book for November is "Girl in Translation."
The book rated a 4.65 among those who rated; an "I loved it with all my heart" and an "I loved it" from Carla A and Pam.
Cutting for Stone is set in Ethiopia but it is not about Ethiopians. All of the main characters are Ex-pats from other countries and mostly India. The story is about twin boys and it was noted that twins often show up in the stories we read. They are born in to drama, chaos and loss right from the beginning. Their mother is a nun working at a mission in Ethiopia and their father is the doctor she assists in surgery. No on
e knows she is pregnant until she goes into labor. The twins are co-joined. The mother dies in childbirth and the father abandons them to be raised by one of the female doctors at the mission. I only managed to get half way through the book so I'm not going to attempt to recount the full story. The book is very layered and is about relationships, love, loss, betrayal, and the medical profession. It's also about death and how we deal with that and working through all of these life challenges. The book resonated with everyone as we've all experienced our losses over the years and some very recently.Diana said the book was very timely for her. She had tried to get into it last year and did not enjoy it at all. But when she picked it up this year it spoke to her in a different way. Carla A said the language was poetic and the story left her "rung out". Darby really liked but wasn't crazy for all the medical procedures (me too!) but Pam loved it for those reasons. Diana went on to say that as we grow and mature and work through these events that we all go through - you come to a place of acceptance with the process and you often cope with things differently. And of course, we all agreed that when someone has lived a long life and it is part of the natural trajectory, we handle it differently than when a life is cut tragically short. We talked about "grief being a window that opens on its own" and you really have little or no control for when or how long you might grieve someone. That often it will hit you out of the blue long after the event.
Reading a book is such an interactive exercise. The author writes out of his own working through of experiences and he turns it loose on the world. The reader reads this experience and brings to it the layers of their own personal catharsis. Then we come together in a group setting to share our experiences. The layers of our own lives are deepened and enriched. We share compassion for each other and, validation of our emotions. Even the most humorous of the books we've read tend to have some loss and betrayal that we come up against.
Such is the life experience and aren't we lucky that there are authors & readers willing to dig that deep and that we have each other to share these moments of with?
