May's Catch Up Month

Catch-Up Month!
Meeting was Monday May 14
at Carmyn's Place

We each picked a book club book we'd not managed to finish during the past year and we tried to complete it for this meeting. For folks like Larry, who've completed every book, he simply needed to find a book he's been dying to read and go for it!

Here's what we've read this year:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
For September we each read an adolescent lit book
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Then we did a book swap for our January meeting
For Feb, we read Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
For March, our UND Writers Conference author, Stuart Dybek's book of short stories -- Childhood and other Neighborhoods.
For April, The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Food:
Carmyn provided colorful bean dip and tortilla chips
Pam brought brats and buns in the spirit of "Catch-up"
Marci's brought veggies to dip in a lemon dill dip.
Brian brought spinach dip and crackers.
Judy brought dessert.
Larry brought beer
Kristi brought Blue Moose spicy spinach dip and chips

The Readers:
Carmyn read The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Richards but didn't finish it. Not sure I will.

Pam read Wicked by Gregory Maguire and The Other Boelyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory (a book from her OTHER book club!)

Larry read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. This wasn't originally a book club selection. It's a darker look at the future, a sci fi book with a changed approach--almost prophetic. It features a girl with a unique talent--she's a human beta-test for products, logos. She works as a consultant.

Brian read Assassination Vacation by Sara Vowell. Brian hadn't originally come to the meeting where we read this book and so this was a perfect chance to jump in and read one we KNEW he'd enjoy. We were right. And talking about it again as a group was like reminiscing a fond memory.

Marci read ?

Kristi read Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards--didn't like it very much-- and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls--loved it.

Judy read NOTHING... she was surviving the end of the school year! Almost there.

We also set the books for the next three months:
For June--
Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan

For July--
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

For August--
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards

We met on Tuesday April 24 at Marci's House and enjoyed some delicious Papa Murphy's pizza... pepperoni and, a book club favorite, gourmet vegetarian. We enjoyed warm cheesy herb bread, fresh veggies, wine, Amber Bock beer, and Pepperidge Farms coconut cake for dessert.
Larry, Judy, Christine, Kristi, Marci, Pam, and I were all there and the discussion was immediate. Though no one seemed to "love" the book, it seemed everyone had something to say. I was at a disadvantage having only read the first few chapters; however, I'll have a chance to read it since next month is "catch up" month.

Some of our discussion centered around our discontent with certain aspects of the novel. It was mentioned that Kim Edwards was a short story writer before and we questioned if THAT was why her work seemed to have issues with concluding and how it could almost be a short story within a larger work from time to time. We agreed that parts were moving, but I also think that one claim was "the ending sucked" and another commenter felt it was "wimpy and sad." We talked about the grief of miscarriage or that of the loss of a child or a father. We also discussed the roles of husbands and wives in that historical time period and what life would be life for someone with mental disabilities in that era as compared to today. We questioned if things could have been different for Nora and David, if he'd been truthful. For a book we didn't love we actually had a pretty good conversation.

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"But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."
--from Hamlet, Shakespeare

Our discussion time moved on to a more playful conversation including some Latin, a explanation of chiasmus, discussion of sonnets and what iambic meter sounds like, and some wonderfully cheesy jokes by Kristi involving a duck and his bill!