Dec Book Club 2023

 

Blog 197 - Books 258

And that's a "wrap" on our 2023 reading year! We had our traditional Book Club and sleepover (for those who could) at Laura's.  We missed Denise but we know she was having a good time in Bentonville and were glad that Leslie could join us.  We were also greeted by Doug, Meagan, Nolan, and Hardy. That was a nice surprise! Lis brought along Jackie for a special appearance. 

We had a beautiful spread of food for our tea; Chicken Salad sandwiches, cheese and crackers, a pineapple cheese ball, deviled eggs, Spanakptia, and several desserts including a Gingerbread Cake.  Arnora brought a beautiful Christmas-themed bouquet and we had an assortment of beer and wine. We never go away hungry from book club!

After dinner, we played a new-to-us version of Dirty Santa introduced by Arnora. It was fun and we

enjoyed our gift and card exchange. A really nice touch was that Laura found the stamp with Mary McLeod Bethune's photo and gifted us each one.  And, Diana's gift was a picture of our 10th anniversary photo as a puzzle. Intended for each of us to get a chance to work the puzzle and pass it on through 2024.

I just realized that we are ending our year the way we started.  Our January book was The Personal Librarian written by Heather Benedict Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray. And, we are finishing the year with The First Ladies by the same authors. I am not sure that has ever happened before.  We all loved the Personal Librarian. It was definitely none of us had heard and it was one worth knowing.  

The First Ladies is the story of an unlikely, for the times, friendship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune who was known as The First Lady of Negro America. The summary and our review are below. 

The First Ladies
co-authored by 
Heather Benedict Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray

Born in 1875, Mary McLeod Bethune was the daughter of formerly enslaved parents. As an adult, she was an educator and activist who refused to back down when white supremacists attempted to thwart her work. As she became more widely known, even Eleanor Roosevelt was awestruck and eager to make her acquaintance. Drawn together by their shared interest in women's issues, education, and civil rights they became close friends sharing triumphs and tragedies. When Franklin Roosevelt became president the women worked together to impact his policies. This is a story of two different, yet equally formidable women and how their friendship formed the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.

Among Mary's many accomplishments, she founded the National Council of Negro Women, established the Afro-American Women's Journal, and was President of the National Association for Colored Women. She was appointed as a National Advisor to FDR whom she worked with to create The Black Cabinet. She started a private school for African-American students in Daytona Beach that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University. She was the sole African-American woman on the delegation that created The United Nations Charter. First Lady Eleanore Roosevelt is more widely known for her accomplishments and humanitarian efforts that continued long after died and she left the White House. Unfortunately, Mary McLeod Bethune's story was mostly lost to the wider audience until our co-authors brought her back into the narrative. 

Everyone loved the book and it rated a 4.5.

Lis will kick off our January 2024 meeting with our traditional Pajama Party Brunch.  Our book for January is North Woods: A Novel by Daniel Mason. 

November Book Club 2023

 

Blog 196 - Books 257

Our intimate November book club meeting was hosted by Pam on a warm fall afternoon. We missed Lis, Janie, Barb, and Arnora. Having just had our first hard frost for the fall, it was nice to enjoy a sunny day.

Our meal was lightly themed around the book whose setting was a Cherry Orchard. Pam provided a hearty pot pie and roasted vegetables. She also had some delicious cheese and herb-flavored jellies. Denise brought a delicious salad, and Carla G. brought olives, tomatoes, and cheese. Diana provided a Cherry Crisp for dessert and I brought the vanilla ice cream to top it off. Laurie brought a delicious Apple Cider cocktail. We missed the lovely bouquet that Arnora usually provides. 

Arlo and his compadres greeted everyone warmly. I didn't get a chance to get a photo of all of them but I did get a good shot of Arlo. 

Tom Lake 

Written by Ann Patchett- Audible narrated by Meryl Streep

Described as a meditation on love at various stages and the lives parents led before their children were born. It is meant to be a hopeful but serious reflection on what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. Ann Patchett is described as writing a compelling narrative with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety. Did the book club agree? 

Lara, Joe, and their three adult daughters are riding out the pandemic on their Cherry Farm. Everyone is helping with the harvest because the regular workers are prevented from working. To entertain them Lara tells, in installments, about the time she dated Peter Duke, now a successful actor. Actually, the daughters demand to know the story and then they have to struggle with the details. They are disturbed by the fact that, when she was a young woman, their mother had an affair with a married man. 

Maybe because it was narrated by Meryl Streep, I found myself making comparisons to Bridges of Madison County. Similar but different. Both women choose farm lives and their children discovering and coming to terms with their mother's "secrets." Also, though I don't think she meant it to be, the "Cherry Trees" was just a little too en pointe... like the story of George Washington who couldn't tell a lie about cutting down one. 

I didn't find the narrative compelling enough to keep me coming back. I had to force myself to pick it up each time. It's not a story that is going to haunt me and I didn't feel emotionally moved by it. I didn't hate it but it fell flat for me. 

That seemed to be the general consensus. We have read three other Ann Patchett novels and liked them a lot. Several of us had researched her information on the book and I watched several interviews with her talking about it. We could understand what she was trying to accomplish and the fact that it was written during and about a pandemic accounted for the slowness of the story. It mimics the way we all felt when the world stopped for a time. Overall the book rated 3.5 for those attending. Leslie and Arnora called in that they loved the book. That might bring the rating up but they didn't give me a number. 

Next month at Laura's we will be discussing The First Ladies. This book is co-authored by the women who wrote The Personal Librarian which we all loved so much. 

I included this photo of the author because I thought it bore an uncanny resemblance to Laura!