Before the May Book Club Meeting

I know, I didn't talk about the last meeting. Mom bailed to go to some Lenten activity at church. We met at the house of the neighbor across and a few houses over from my parents'. I hadn't been in it probably since high school, when I was babysitting the previous owners' kids.

Man, that family was really strange. I could never put my finger on it exactly, but there was something off about the mother. The first time she asked me to babysit, she wound up calling me close to an hour before the time she'd told me and demanded I get over there now. How else was she going to make her appointment? I think she flaked out and told me to come at the exact time of her appointment. Had she never arranged for babysitting before? Her kids were something like four and two years old at the time. Oh, the two-year-old. To this day I have not seen an uglier child. I know it's unkind to say that, but I really hope she outgrew that smushed Cabbage Patch Kid look. The other bizarre thing is that they got a puppy at the same time they were trying to sell their house. When we heard that during one of the showings, the poor puppy--tied out on the porch to be out of the way, I guess--hanged itself, we were all strangely unsurprised.

And secretly relieved for the puppy.

I'm sorry; where was I? Oh, right--the present neighbors' house. I moved out about ten years ago, but I'm at my parents' pretty often. . . you'd think the hostess's husband would've recognized me. Nope! That felt completely non-awkward and great for my self-esteem. He's not the most outgoing person, however.

We sat in the sitting area at the back of the house, an addition they'd put on along with an expansion of the kitchen. I think my parents and the house down the street that's being sold now that the original owner passed are the only two houses left in the neighborhood that have the original size (i.e. tiny) kitchen. It's a nice sitting area--I think it had ambient speakers or something--with a high ceiling and (IIRC) a skylight or two.

I think most people liked the book--maybe didn't like the Hallmark feel of it at times, but overall liked its readability and variety. We also had to clear up some confusion about the end of the book about who ended up with whom. I'm not sure why there was confusion about that, personally, because it was fairly simple and straightforward writing.

Of course, the talk about the book led to food talk. The person who became the May host and is now sort of stalking me, enhancing the hostage feel--more on that in another post) decided it would be nice to go around the room and talk about our own "essential ingredients." I wish I had the guile to just say something inane, but no, I never do. I had to talk about my food allergies. I'm such a weirdo. I hate talking about it, really.

We also wound up talking about co-ops and deliveries from local farms. The new-age sphynx-cat-breeder was trying to coordinate being a drop-off addition (the others in the area are not close by) but she had to recruit enough people to join in. Never heard much more about that afterwards. All that talk made me wistful; I remember getting those good local veggies and stuff from the high school where I worked last year as part of occupational training for special education students.

The only other two things I remember from that meeting: (1) There was an apple-scented candle burning that everyone liked. (2) the family cat, a sweet, fluffy little orange thing with a wee meow, came out--through the cat cut-out in the basement door!--after pretty much everyone left. She meowed back when I talked to her, as she sashayed on her tiny feet around the dining room.

I walked back to my car, which was parked in front of my parents' still-dark house, and drove home.

Next book: The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

(Edited to correct formatting)

Time Has Flown. . .

. . . and another Book Club meeting is practically upon me, even though I haven't gotten to talk about the last one yet!

I'm around page 100 or so of The School of Essential Ingredients (for some reason I keep thinking it is the Kitchen of Essential Ingredients) and it's, well, readable. A little heavy on the imagery and metaphors again for me, but it's an interesting narrative in that it uses third person POV centered on a different character each chapter. It's true at least for me that when a bunch of people get together for something like a class, there can arise some curiosity about how they got there.

Oh, and the stuff the chef-teacher Lillian makes sounds delicious. Like lick-the-page delicious.

An In-Between Post

I'm still sorting out all the events from the February meeting--including (gasp!) Midwestern stereotypes and commentary from the "bitter divorcee' gallery"--and I haven't started on our next book, which is The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. My copy is a loan from Mom, who picked it up at a bookstore.

Maybe by the time the next meeting comes, I'll have the Kindle up and running (I know, sad that I got it for Christmas and it's still in the box), but I don't have money to spend on books right now, anyway.

In fact, as she pressed this month's selection into my hand, she said, "Save your money for books you really want." I don't think she was implying this book is bad in any way; it's just that it's different when you buy books because you chose them and want them, and not because you have to read them for a meeting with bitter divorcees and New Age sphynx cat breeders.

O.K., O.K.--there's only one New Age sphynx cat breeder in the group.

And I am dying to get invited over to pet the kitties! I want to know if they feel like peaches. Or nectarines.

It's Book Club Day

I am two discs shy of finishing The Corrections. I might take the book club advice from Date Night (which had only a couple of funny moments to me) and read "the first thirty pages and the last page" of The Thirteenth Tale. My mom said I wasn't missing much and she liked The Corrections more.

The Corrections is, ultimately, an observation of a family whose members are living out the results of some really bad choices. My audio bookmark is at the point where the sister has broken up a family by sleeping with both the wife and the husband. She seems really messed up. But an excellent chef, apparently.

Oh, and the father is very ill and seems to be hallucinating that he is being taunted by an evil piece of poo.

If that's the kind of writing that gets an author acclaimed, I might as well throw away my unfinished efforts and start over.

Anyway, I will be taking my opinions and some book recommendations to the meeting tonight. Angela recommended a few that looked interesting, including a short read which might be very agreeable after this recent doubling-up.

I'll let you know what all goes down. Including whether or not it will be snowing when we finish, as predicted by the current weather forecast!

Book 1, Disc 3

O.K., I'm up to the third disc of The Corrections. I'm starting to get the idea about the theme of corrections.

Disc 2 talked about a proposed drug called "Correct-All" (at least that's how I think it's spelled, and yes, there is some talk about how it sounds like a certain other drug) whose formula originated in a long-ago patented formulation by the patriarch character.

I'd guess I'm about a third of the way through Disc 3, and there's a flashback to when the two now-adult sons were younger, and there's a comment that their desire to throw their arms around their father's legs upon his return from a business trip had been "corrected out of them." Sad.

Now I'm slogging through what I hope is the tail end of the flashback, where the younger son was left at the dinner table all night because he refused to eat his dinner. There's this long crazy equation of the unappealing food with his life, and all I could think was, "Come on! The kid's in first grade!"

This story seems to be growing in sadness the more I wade into it.

Also, I can't wait to bring up the "spouses resent each other" topic with all the married/divorced members in the group.

That oughta be good for at least ten minutes of discussion.

February's Book 1

Due to a miscommunication about January's reading, for our next meeting we are required to have read not one but two books.

The first book--the one some people accidentally read for January--is The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I remembered reading a review of his latest novel and feeling a bit apprehensive, but book club requirements are book club requirements. (I'm not one of those people who can fake having read a book unless I'm booktalking to a bunch of kids.)

Sometimes I find that if I'm wary of a book, or not willing to devote my full literary attention to it, I borrow it on audio from the library. That's what I did with all three books in the Hunger Games trilogy. I run a Walkman CD player through my car's tape deck and listen as I drive. It's about a half hour to school in the morning, and usually longer to get home, between rush hour and any errands diverting my route home.

That's right: I'm a grown-up who stills likes someone to read to me every once in a while.

It took a long time to get through Disc 1 (of nine) of The Corrections, partly because I had to put the radio on to listen to the news as I traveled in bad weather frequently this past week. Now I'm at the top of Disc 2. The actor (award-winning Dylan Baker) who reads it is very expressive, and while he doesn't make his voice really weird to be the voices of the female characters, he has a way of distinguishing them and their mannerisms that is kind of charming and very entertaining.

So far I don't hate it. It's not really my cup of tea in terms of the frequent talk of disordered things like affairs between professors and students, drug experimentation, and the like as if they are normal, everyday things. (I'll have more to say about that later.) But it's got colorful characters, some of whom I'm starting to like or at least take an interest in, and some neat turns of phrases. The story's getting going.

At least, I think it is.

I Say I Joined, but Really I Had No Choice

If you lament to your mother that you can't seem to find any places to make friends often enough, eventually she will talk you into coming to her neighbor's book club.

A half hour into the meeting, you're accepting the offer of a refill on your wine glass to take the edge off the bombardment of "girl talk"--or rather the talk of married/divorced women my age and older. Including Mom.

After we talk about the book for about five to ten minutes, of course.

* * * *

I'll get into the more specific details of how I came to join the Neighborhood Book Club in the next post, but for now here's the gist of why I started this blog:

1. I like to read and I like talking about books I've read.

2. Book clubs make people read books they probably would never read in a million years--at least, in my case it is true. (So get ready for some rants and hopefully a few "pleasantly surprised" admissions.)

3. The Twist: I am the only single, never-married woman in the group. (And possibly the youngest but I can't confirm without point-blank asking everyone).

4. The Sub-Twist: Most of the members live in my parents' neighborhood--i.e., my childhood home. And a few members are longtime residents. (Prepare for some awkward moments.)


So, pour yourself a nice beverage, pull out your library card, your Amazon account, or your Kindle, and stay tuned for reading notes, meeting minutes, and all the surrounding drama/hilarity/insanity.

Because there will be some of each at every month's meeting.