sametimenextmonth: October Book Club 2016

Sunday, September 11, 2016

October Book Club 2016

We had a gorgeous fall evening for book club at a Arnora's home. Pam, Denise, Lou, Tammy, Terry, and Carla Gibbs could not be with us for our discussion of The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. Darby, sorry we didn't FaceTime call you, we were going to and then, well you know...we get distracted too easily, promise to next month.

Arnora provided sausage rolls and the perfect gin and tonic. Laura brought delicious cheeses and olives, Barb brought a mixed kale salad, Janie brought homemade baked bread and almond butter, Diana brought garlic roasted potatoes, Leslie brought pumpkin squares, Lis brought pumpkin ice cream and Carla a brought the flowers and lemon yogurt almonds.

As always, Arnora brought out our 10 year "calendar girl "photo. I always look forward to seeing it. It brings up great memories of a fun night! And we want to arrange sometime in 2017, when we have one of those perfect meetings where we are all together, a 15 year anniversary photo of us! I do believe Janie's reserved a place on the back row of the photo, step stool required. :-)

We had a lively discussion of our book. We picked it because it seemed like a spooky mystery for the Halloween month. Everyone generally like the book most giving it a 3.

Let me help to me redefine 1-5 rating system.

#1. equals I hate the book and I want throw the book out the window and run over it with my car.
#2 is hating the book but I wouldn't hurt it and I wouldn't recommended it.

#3 Is I liked it. It was interesting but not necessarily an emotional or great read.
#4 is nearly great, an interesting story with great writing.
And #5 is so good you need a cigarette after. A story that takes me on an emotional journey and one that I can't put down.

Leslie said for her a #3 is one she liked and didn't feel compelled to roll her eyes at. A number two involves lots of I rolling.

The premise of our book is that our protagonist Laura "Lo" Blacklock's, London flat is burgled on the eve of her departure for the maiden voyage of a new Nordic cruise ship. Lo is already a troubled girl. A travel writer for 10 years she's on antidepressants and drinks way too much. She has a boyfriend she's pushing away and leaves for her trip disheveled, sleep deprived, mad at her boyfriend and suffering from PTSD from the burglary. Our mystery begins when Lo borrows a cheap Maybelline mascara from her neighbor in cabin 10. The same night the mysterious woman, in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, ends up missing and Lo spends the rest of the time trying to discover her whereabouts and subsequently trying to escape the killers.

We agreed the story was interesting enough and kept us just curious about the outcome. We also agreed there was a recent trend in fiction to make the female lead dysfunctional, disheveled and an alcoholic. These characteristics put our heroine at an immediate disadvantage of being not only an unreliable narrator, but also an unreliable character. She questions herself and so has trouble convincing others of what she has seen.

Some of the writing got a little tedious and repetitive. A lot of the internal dialogue slowed the story down. However she did paint a vivid picture of the ship which was a small boutique cruise line and opulent in every way. I didn't have much trouble picturing it. Although a couple who had been on a cruise didn't think the cabin numbers were described accurately. The book reminded me of Agatha Christie's death on the Nile which is also a murder taking place on ship. This is a tool Christie used in most of her novels. She confines the set specs to a small setting where there was no means of escape such as trains and cruise ships. Christie's stories were not stories of emotional journey but one of connecting the dots and figuring out the puzzle. Diana ended up caring a lot about Carrie, our antagonist, and hoped for her redemption and escape. Lo seems a bit of a static character right up until the end of the story but, the events on the ship caused her to reevaluate her life and make some major decisions.

It just dawned on me as I write this and think about the ending, what if Carrie was behind it all from the start, she could have convinced Bomar to kill his wife. She did end up with the money after all and perhaps the "gift" was hush money.

Our November 4th meeting is at Carla Gibbs home and our book is "Anna and the Swallow Man" by Gravel Savit.

No comments:

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.

To Leave a Comment

At the end of each post you will see an option to "comment" click on that link. You'll be asked to identify yourself with either a Google email address & password or a couple of other options. If you don't have a Google account you can set one up with your current email and it only takes a minute to set up user name and password. Once you have that you can leave your comment you might be prompted to retype the security code. Your comment will automatically be posted. Process is the same if you use one of the identification options.

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

Sunday, September 11, 2016

October Book Club 2016

No comments:

Welcome

Internet Resources