sametimenextmonth: June 2014

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

June 2014 Book Club

This day finds us at the halfway mark of 2014. This is the Chinese Year of the Horse and it is certainly galloping past us. It has been a beautiful spring with no storms to speak of and temps that have not veered over into summer just yet. June's book club found us congregating on Pam's patio. It was so nice outside that we spent most of our evening there enjoying the lighter summer salads, and chicken and veggies off the grill. Lou made blueberry cheesecake pops and Laura brought peanut butter mouse.

Arnora made it back from her trip to the UK in one piece and we were glad to have her back. We missed Janie because her surprise birthday party earlier in the day went longer than expected and Terry could not be with us.

July's book club book is "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin at Barb's. Carla G pointed out that in August we will be reading our 150th. In August, we'll be at Denise's house for a sleepover to celebrate. Bring your suggestions for August's book. We may want to revisit a favorite book in honor of this momentous event.

Our book this month was The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro. The synopsis of the story is that our protagonist is a struggling artist who copies the master art works for a reproduction company. A previous relationship went south when she let her married-artist boyfriend take credit for a painting she did. She is black-balled in the Boston art community when she tries to set the record straight and he denies it. Sometime later she is approached by a gallery owner and art dealer to make a copy of a Degas painting called "After the Bath". This painting was one of 13 stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in 1990. The painting has now surfaced and the idea is that Claire will copy the painting for an interest buy and the original will be returned to the museum.

The story is told from three vantage points; Claire's present day circumstances, Claire's past relationships with Issac and the letters of Isabella Stewart Gardner's letters to her niece chronicling her relationship with Degas.

The mystery begins when immediately Claire recognizes that the Degas is a very good forgery and she begins a relationship with the gallery owner Aidan Markel.

For this month, we had set out to find a fun book that was lighter in subject matter than our past couple of selections. I believe we succeeded. The consensus that it was entertaining but not great literature. It was a light mystery with a lot of interesting information about art, forgeries and copies. Before I read the book I didn't realize the difference. It is not against the law to copy an original painting or event to sell it, as long as you are clear it is a copy. The forger tries to pass his work off as an original and that is where the problem lies. According to the book about 40% of paintings sold into private collections are forgeries.

We all agreed that Claire was naive in her relationships with men and that got her into trouble both times. Some of the dialogue was a little "cheesy" and in the end she solved the mystery and was on her way to becoming a famous artist - "All's well that ends well," comes to mind. The book rated 3.72.

I will not be with you in July - so I will be looking for a guest blogger ....

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2015 Hosts and Books

Jan 9 - Pam Boeck - All the Light We Cannot See
Feb 6 - Lou Christian - Alif the Unseen
March 6 - Terry Cummings - Kind of Kin
April 3 - Janie Tisdale - The Girl on the Train
May 1 - Arnora Parish - The Stolen Child
Jun 5 - Barb Barrow - The Elephant Whisperer
July 10 - Diana Beal - Lone Wolf
Aug 7 - Denise McGough - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Sept 11 - Sherrie Phillips - H is for Hawk
Oct 2 - Arnora Parish - The Boy Who Drew Monsters
Nov 6 - Sherrie Phillips
Dec - Laura Madden - A Child's Christmas in Wales & Christmas Day in the Morning

The Honey Tree - Mary Oliver

And so at last I climbed

the honey tree, ate

chunks of pure light, ate

the bodies of bees that could not

get out of my way, ate

the dark hair of the leaves,

the rippling bark,

the heartwood. Such

frenzy! But joy does that,

I'm told, in the beginning.

Later, maybe,

I'll come here only

sometimes and with a

middling hunger. But now

I climb like a snake

I clamber like a bear to

the nuzzling place, to the light

salvaged by the thighs

of bees and racked up

in the body of the tree.

Oh, anyone can see

how I love myself at last!

how I love the world! climbing

by day or night

in the wind, in the leaves, kneeling

at the secret rip, the cords

of my body stretching

and singing in the

heaven of appetite.

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Lis and Diana's Review of Isaac's Storm

Lis said: This book centers around the devastating hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, in 1901 and is blamed for the death of over 4500 people. Although the story wasn't a page-turner for most, it was full of interesting historical and scientific data while building up to describing accounts of the devastation and aftermath that the storm created. In my opinion, it is debatable whether the book should be considered a true fiction or a non-fiction. Hand in hand with the storm description, the book tells about the creation of the National Weather Service and the struggle that the organization went through to earn the people's trust. When looking back over the disaster, the author identifies areas of misuse and false pride - in the bureaucratic sector as well as the people's personal lives - that, if it had been overcome, might have averted some of the lost lives. Building up to the storm, the author touches on many historical facts surrounding the era, such as the state of Arkansas passing legislation a few decades earlier to legalize the proper pronunciation of its name to be "Arkansaw." Into this background, the author creates the characters that he was able to find in his research that made up the early Weather Service and some of the residence of Galveston, their spouses and children, making us shiver with dread over successful and unsuccessful rescue efforts. After bringing to life the unimaginable aftermath, with whole neighborhoods destroyed and bodies at every step, the book concludes with Galveston's recovery and a large chapter of Acknowledgements for the extensive support and research that the author relied on. I for one enjoyed the book immensely and, after the first third, found it difficult to put down till the end. Elisabeth Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine. I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.

Diana said: The old saying, "hind sight is 20/20" comes to mind while reading the hurricane account of Galveston, Texas in 1901. Author Eric Larson's story reminded me of his first book we read, Devil in the White City, as he combined historical facts and real people while piecing together a plausible tale of personalities and lives. I have huge respect for writing historical fiction, as the writer not only has to devise an interesting story but also works as an investigator and researcher in the process. The first third of the story was slow and at times I found myself skimming the pages waiting for action. I think this may have been purposeful by Larson. As a reader I was going about my daily business and uninvolved like the townspeople of Galveston noting the changing winds and heading off to work. I took occasional notice of Isaac's trip to the American west by stage and his appearance as a "dandy", the use of telegraph as the primary form of communication from on location to another and it was surprising to find out the American and Cuban weather men held so little regard for each other. Americans found the Cuban forecasters primitive, romantic and unreliable. But once the hurricane was upon Galveston, I was spellbound for the remainder of the book. With the exception of once when I had to put the story down due to the brutal descriptions of decaying bodies which I found overwhelming. For me the story telling mimicked the event itself. Galveston and the rest of the U.S. were going along with business as usual, and then wham! A hurricane the magnitude no one expected or had experienced before bursts forth with action and drama and left no one untouched including me.

Lis' review of A Thousand Splendid Suns

The story playing in Afghanistan made it another compelling read and a walk through a different culture, very foreign to most of us. I had the fortune to have also read the book The Kite Runner by the same author and found that the two stories make great companion books, almost a must-read duo. Our month's selection takes us into the Arabic culture through the life of two women, one of them a servant girl's bastard child - and yes, I used the old fashioned term for illegitimate child on purpose to stay with the tone of the novel. The other woman is depicted as a well-educated, emancipated young woman from a progressive, westernized family. Through the turmoils surrounding Afghanistan's recent 30-year history, their lives intertwine with the same abusive husband and their attempt to deal with the changes brought on by the Russian occupation, the takeover of the Mujahedin and, eventually, the Taliban. The companion book, The Kite Runner, deals with the same political and social upheavals in Afghanistan but is told through the life of a man and his very devoted male servant. A Thousand Splendid Suns evoked a lot of emotion for most of us, feeling comfortable as well educated American women that have rights and can expect a certain social standing that greatly exceeds the animal-like treatment of our female Afghan counterparts under Taliban rule. Needless to say, we had a lively discussion about Afghanistan's troubles, the interactions of both women's parents' influences, their different upbringing, and how it made them relate to each other. We found similarities to the book Shanturam in this author's use of the cinema, especially Bollywood movies. One thing we did not discuss though that I found enticing, was the advantages of being able to skip hair and make-up treatments through the use of a Burka! Blue was, after all, the favored color of my youth, although I always preferred much darker shades. What do you think, ladies, Burkas in our future?

sametimenextmonth

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

June 2014 Book Club

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