Book Club Meeting Minutes

Considering the fact that I just got an e-mail reminder about this month's book club meeting--which is this coming Monday (yikes, need to do that reading)--I figured I'd better get in the minutes from last month's (i.e. September's) meeting.


Meeting: September


Book: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese


This meeting, as mentioned previously, was hosted at my mom's house.  Summer finally was starting to make its exit, so she decided to make warm spiced cider and serve donut holes and candy corn (yum).  Also some praline-topped baked brie.  No booze.  I guess she didn't want any alcohol-related brawls--in vino veritas and all that.


Had I read the book?  Well, "skimmed" is more like it.  I just have a hard time getting into stories where it reads like a series of bad things happening to characters that don't really give me a reason to root for them (or maybe even just plain feel sorry for them)--or is it that I'm supposed to feel something for them by the mere occurrence of bad things happening to them all the time?  I don't know.  But in any event, I knew enough to get by in the discussion if not the "discussion questions" (more on those later).


There definitely were more people at this meeting than last time, I think about a dozen people.  What a difference five people can make.  Everyone seemed to like the cider and the food, and even though the praline sauce hardened a bit too quickly, it all got eaten up.  I for one cannot comment on items with cheese as I am allergic, but in general I think when one goes to the extra effort of making something, odds are it will be well-received, as it was at this meeting, especially when people were in the mood for something seasonal.


The most anticipated and/or feared part of the meeting followed right after the greeting and eating: The Format Talk.


Our group organizer--let's call her "Brooke" for ease of reference--had brought a notepad with her to jot down our decisions, I guess.  She sat in a chair that was in front of the fireplace.  To her left (well, not her immediate left because the landing for the steps is there) sat Leona.


"So, I just wanted to check in with everybody to see if they had any thoughts about the format of the book club, if there was anything we wanted to change," said Brooke.


Nobody responded immediately, but eventually someone said she was O.K. with it and most people agreed.


Then Leona started in about how everybody should get a chance to talk, and how she had brought discussion question with her this time.  You know, because she had already read this book for two other book clubs.  So she started pushing for having a moderator for each meeting.  Nobody really responded right away to that, and it was borderline uncomfortable silence.  I think people might have been torn between encouraging Leona (and possibly making her the moderator) by agreeing and getting on her bad side by disagreeing.  As a result, the discussion circled back to the duties of the organizer, and while Brooke said she had no intention of leaving her post as organizer, she suggested that the hostess for each particular meeting be the moderator.  


Nobody objected, at least aloud.  I kept quiet, although--my take?  I think having a moderator, especially for a group as small as ours, interferes with the organic development of the book discussion.  This idea of "everyone must talk" and answering prepared questions (as opposed to someone's posing a question that had arisen during her reading or in response to the reading) just goes against everything I believe in as an educator and just generally a person who recognizes that everyone's different and not all people have something to say at every single meeting.  It might be a classic extrovert/introvert misunderstanding.


So, why did I not speak up?  I often think I'm in the minority, especially as someone who feels on the fringes of this club--more of an auditor, if you will--so I'm not going to introduce an idea that's going to be met with that uncomfortable silence because no one wants to hurt my feelings.  Also, honestly, as much as I wasn't looking forward to talking about the book, I wanted this part of the meeting to end as quickly as possible.


Which it did, with the declaration that this change in format would occur the next time around.


This time, Leona did the leading, question printouts in hand.  Actually, she was fairly pleasant as the moderator, probably because it suits her, and also her extreme familiarity with the book contributed.  


The discussion got unpleasant at times because it ventured into discussions of fistulas (ugh but the medical people in our group were into it), abortions, and FGM (double ugh).  My question was my curiosity regarding the audience: Did those among our group who liked this book also enjoy medical dramas/melodramas on TV, like "Grey's Anatomy"?  Interestingly, the answer was no.  That result surprised me, and ultimately I still did not understand why the majority of the group enjoyed the book so much.  


And yes, I did voice my opinion that I didn't enjoy the book, but I merely said it wasn't my cup of tea.  It was just too sad and I'm still not crazy about reading medical stuff because my cat has cancer.  I don't personally find books full of tragedy and angst all that moving--not that I'm saying a book has to be full of sunshine and good news, but this idea that life is just a series of bad things that fall on hapless humanity is just so. . . I don't know, nihilistic or something.


Anyway, the good news--sort of--was that our next meeting would be around Halloween time, and the hostess for that meeting said she wanted a scary-ish read.  I had something in mind, but I couldn't remember the full title and wasn't able to describe it well enough, so off I went to my parents' computer upstairs (in what was once my bedroom for a few years after my brother moved out).


And of course while I was waiting for the slow-moving dinosaur desktop computer to get me the information I wanted, the conversation continued downstairs and a decision was made.  They were repeating the details when I was walking down the steps.


Oh, well.  They tend not to like my suggestions, anyway.  As a side note, after the meeting, the group got an e-mail from Brooke saying that someone had given the "great" idea of e-mailing around future book selection suggestions ahead of the next meeting, the point being that people could "research" them in advance.  Yeah. . . nobody did that this time around.  I do have an idea and I might send it around, just to see if anyone pans it outright.  Or if they'll wait until the meeting.


So, next meeting's reading is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which definitely sounds like something you read in the dark to scare yourself.  I have been woefully behind with everything on my to-read list--to the point of owing $3.00 in fines on overdue books! Even librarians miss due dates! We work hard!--so I haven't gotten to it yet.  I guess I'd better do that soon.


Mom and I were joking about dressing up in goth outfits to please our hostess.  Hmm, I should check with her to see if she still wants to do that.  Those costume stores might still be open with their clearance sales.  Maybe we can find some gothic wigs.


Our gung-ho participation might just win us votes for the next book selection. 


  


    

And Further Confusion

Ultimately, the club organizer sent out a message declaring the book club meeting postponed to September 19.  I did not see any further correspondence about it, and I assumed that every member had agreed.  You know, without hitting "Reply All."


Last Monday, the original date of the meeting, I had joined my parents for dinner at their house to visit a while with my oldest nephew, whom Mom had taken shopping for back-to-school clothes.  "There's someone at the door," he told me shortly after we'd cleared the table and Mom was finishing up in the kitchen.  I went to the door and saw one of the book club members who lived across the street and down from Mom and Dad.  I realized at the same time that it was seven o'clock and that the dreaded book was in her hands.


"Book club is tonight, isn't it?" she asked as I opened the door.  I could see the confusion in her eyes as she scanned the living room and found it empty.  Not to mention only half-painted a lovely blue on the side where the piano resided.


"Actually, it got moved to next month--September 19th," I said.  "Did you see the e-mail?"


Shaking her head with a bit of a sheepish laugh, she replied, "No, I never read my e-mail."  Facebook has killed e-mail, I thought to myself, but I couldn't figure out how else she would know what was going on with the group, unless she talked to other neighbor-members--something less likely to happen recently as a lot of people go on vacation at the end of August.


Honestly, I felt bad she had made arrangements to be there that night, and the thought of her turning right around and going right home to dissolve her "night out" seemed unfair.  So I grabbed Mom and we stood on the front porch chatting for a bit about the book.  She said she liked it, and cared for it far more than the book she had been reading for another group, A Visit from the Goon Squad.  (I looked at it in Target last Friday while browsing books until my sister and my cousin were ready to go; I see how the changing perspectives could annoy readers.)  After a few minutes, I excused myself to spend a little more time with my nephew.


So I guess we will see her again on the 19th. . . at which point in time I will have read the club's selection.  I can't put it off for much longer- Ooh! What's that? Another cat mystery? 


How did I get hooked on those?



 

Mass Confusion = Reprieve?

Well, well, well.  All of a sudden, talk of postponing next week's meeting has popped up.


Maybe people were enjoying their summer too much to haul around the ol' required reading.  Me, I was just avoiding it.


The tiny but lovely readership of this blog may recall that my mom offered to host.  The poor dear actually rushed to paint the downstairs ahead of some family obligations that commenced mid-month, and while unfortunately the walls were not cooperative, it gives that nice added conversation piece of a work in progress.  Now that there is talk of postponement into September, the club will have to face the fact that Mom already made plans with certain days--like days the painters are coming--some of which happen to be Mondays.  


Our club organizer sent an e-mail asking for members to reply with availability.  Enter the flurry of responses via the dreaded "Reply All" button.  (Yeah, I know some members want to know what everyone says; me, I'd rather you just collect the responses and tell me what the new date is.)


One of the non "Reply All" users hit reply to the response my mom sent as future hostess explaining her limited availability in September.  Mom forwarded it to me because it was a bit puzzling.


Guess the mysterious author of the reply.  I'll give you a hint.  Her response included the phrases: "Great to talk to you," "you'll be ok [sic]," and "love you!"


I was a little puzzled, too, if that helps you any.


  

I Joined a Book Club and All I Got Was Drama, Part II

(Be sure to read Part I before continuing to read here.)

Already on the phone, she had hemmed and hawed about my "price" for computer tutoring, to the point where I said, "I don't care, bake me a pie, bartering works for me." Lady, don't say you don't know where to set a price, then make me give you an idea (what I earned as a tutor at school), and then start babbling as if I'd asked for a million bucks.

It was all for naught, anyway, because I realized two things: One, I'd skipped over this version of Office as I went from job to job; two, Jolene's idea of "helping her with her computer" and my idea did not quite match.

Me: So if you want to clean up your mailbox, just go to "Tools" in the menu bar and-
Jolene: [shaking her head and throwing up her hands] Wait, wait, wait!
Me: ?
Jolene: You have to give me more time. I'm not getting it. [sighs, keeps shaking her head and cringing]
Me: ? [to myself: Um, should I not have assumed she has a basic understanding of the program she uses to get her e-mail every single day?]

And that was red flag #2, after she had taken issue with my use of the word "purge" with respect to cleaning up old e-mail. I'll let you guess what got overshared there. (Sometimes, I really wish my embarrassment would make me run rather than stay.)

I think she really had no intention of learning any more about the program, and wanted me to "fix" whatever was bothering her and set things up the way she wanted them. I wish she had spelled that out from the beginning, but then again, I never would have said yes, would I?

Then there was a whole e-mail archiving fiasco because, as I tried to tell her, I was not really familiar with this version of Office. We ran a search for e-mail more than about six months old, her choosing, not mine. I could see from the location labels that the majority were actually in her Deleted Items file, but apparently the file had never been emptied. EVER. Due to some bug in the system, our attempt to move all the old e-mail into a newly created folder wound up placing them all as attachments in a new e-mail. I still have no idea why, but stupid me canceled the e-mail with what I thought were copy attachments. . .

They weren't, according to every forum I searched. Oooops. And while I struggled to get them back, Jolene was making smoothies in a blender and of course offering some to me. When I asked if there was dairy in it, she snorted a laugh. That pissed me off, frankly. Then came the question that always annoys me: "Oh, are you lactose intolerant, too?" "No, I'm actually allergic," I responded. She assures me it's "just strawberries." Still, I politely declined, saying I just had lunch at Mom and Dad's and water is fine. She sets a glass down next to me, anyway. It's pink with flecks of green in it. Again, being polite and going against my better judgment, I took a sip. Between my mixed feelings about strawberries and both the texture and the taste of the green bits, one sip was more than enough.

At that point, I was ready to go home, or at least back to my parents'.  I decided to try the honest route, secretly hoping it would enrage her that I'd lost all those e-mails and she'd show me the door.

"Well, can you call Microsoft?" she demanded, somewhat naively. I did not think so, but I had to make a show of actually doing it while she sat outside eating her lunch. I was starting to get a headache, and I thought it was from stress and frustration. When she came back in, she asked me if I'd tried the smoothie, and I told her I'd taken a sip but it really wasn't for me. That's when she told me she put parsley and protein powder in it. The minute she said "protein powder" my heart sank, because there are a lot of protein powders out there sans lactose but still containing milk. Ugh. My headache sharpened, and I still had no answer Jolene would accept that would make her release me.

Next, I had to call the nice computer guy at the place where I had taken my defunct laptop the day before--he looked up the same answers I did. Then, Jolene put me on the phone with her son, who lives in another part of the state and probably picked up his work phone only because his grandma was in the hospital. Other than a shared laugh at his crack that "those e-mails probably needed to 'go to God' ages ago," we still came up with nothing.

So at last, she accepted that the e-mails were gone, but she still wouldn't let me go. I was feeling awful--in retrospect, I realize it was an allergic reaction--but in the moment all I knew was that I couldn't stop feeling bad and I wanted to cry. And that's when Jolene got under my skin and made some comment about my summer, and I was like, "Everything's wrong, my cat's sick, I've put on grief weight, and I have a million things to do before school starts."

While I might have been mad at myself for letting that slip out, I was even madder when she responded, "You sound depressed." I hate sidewalk psychiatry. It always seems as if people who have been through whatever feel they have ability to see the same things wrong with other people, when in truth a lot of times it's just imposition in the attempt to have something in common and be friends. It's the companion to oversharing.

Somehow, I was able to start the discussion about my departure. I started to tell her that I was willing to waive my fee for the day because I'd made the mistake. . . and then she interrupts me, saying that I really didn't tutor her anyway and that she expected to have some real tutoring next time. At which point I underscored my ineligibility to tutor her, because I did not know enough about the applications, but she just brushed that aside oddly by saying that the only other tutor she had found who could do it was charging $60. (She didn't even want to pay me half that!) With even more frustration making my head boil, I managed to wrap up the conversation by telling her just to call me if she wanted to set anything else up. (I figured that gave her time to get distracted and forget.)

I left the house, but not before helping her push the leaves in her dining room table back in place. As soon as I got back to my parents', I grabbed two aspirin and some iced tea. I spared my mom most of the details, but I said, "Never again." I wound up going home for some antihistamines and sleeping for an hour to shake off the headache and whatever else had hit me.

Friday, an e-mail shows up from her. She wants to drop off a check but doesn't know my address.

First reaction: What!?
Second reaction: No!!!

The remainder of the e-mail is thanking me for being so "open" and she wants to help with my "big D." The only "D" I mentioned was "Diverticulitis" but I'm afraid she means "Depression." There's a doc attached to the e-mail and it's labeled her "story," which I'm guessing she uh, shares in order to sell her supplements.

You hear that sucking noise?


I'm running the other way.


I responded by saying that no payment was necessary. I did not say anything else. I haven't gotten a response yet. I'm almost hoping to keep her at bay via e-mail. But if she shows up at the next book club meeting, I'm trapped.

Or maybe Leona will create a diversion.

I Joined a Book Club and All I Got Was Drama, Part I

Lately I have been questioning the point of book clubs. Do people join them to read more books, to talk about books and reading, to learn about new titles that might be interesting to read, to meet people? All of the above? None of the above?

Since joining this book club, I have read a total of three books (in their entirety, I think) and part of a couple books--not to mention the one title I did not read at all. And no, I have not started the one for this month yet. . . although I was startled to open the local Catholic newspaper this week and find an article featuring a discussion with the author. (Presupposing "an audience that doesn't believe in anything" doesn't do much to up the interest factor for me.)

Aside from getting acquainted with some of the new neighbors in my parents' neighborhood and some of their friends, and re-meeting some people I haven't seen since I delivered their newspaper, the only extended communications I've had with members have been with the strange ones. Honestly, I must be magnet for the drama people.

Like Leona.

And now, "Jolene."

Jolene hosted a couple meetings ago--The Other Wes Moore, a meeting I didn't get the chance to recap here. (I am pretty sure someone tried to call my mom racist during that meeting, too.) And then Jolene was the one pushing people to move the June meeting and attend her event in its originally scheduled place. If you read to the bottom of that post, you'll see that she also was pushing to introduce me to her son but didn't quite know now.

All that stuff going at once makes your head swim, doesn't it? That's what happens when you get involved with Jolene. She sells nutritional supplements. She talks about meditation and going on retreat. Don't get her started about her ex-husband. Oh, and she feels perfectly free to ask you about things she wants you to do for her that sound mutually beneficial but really aren't.

At the beginning of the summer, I was able to fend off the offer of a summer job organizing her business files and papers. It's not really my thing, and I really did not want an intimate view of her business--they say don't mix business with friends, and I was trying to keep her firmly in the "book club friend" category.

But when she called sounding desperate for help with a computer problem, well, those pleas are just too hard to resist. Adding to the allure was the offer to pay me at a time when my little summer job had ended just the week before. (And the air conditioning in the car broke, twice. . . and the cat's special medicine cost twice as much as the other medicine. . . ) I was going away for the weekend, but she pinned me down to the Monday morning after.

Monday morning came, and it took several series of knocks to get her to answer the door. She hid behind it, and I could tell she was half-dressed. Should I have called first? I wondered.

It turned out, she said as she apologized for her forgetfulness, that her elderly mother needed to go to the ER. I understood, I told her, and added that she could just get in touch me with whenever, to set up a new date and time. She already started talking about Wednesday, and I just kind of nodded, figuring it was subject to change.

Well, Tuesday morning, she called. First, we talked about Wednesday. Afternoon, I pleaded, because I had errands to run. (The errands wound up scrapped for a favor to my parents, as the plumber was scheduled to come at a time when both would be out.) However, once we settled that, she started talking about how difficult her mother was but she needed to visit her in the hospital this afternoon. Her brother was tied up but she could really use someone to go with her. I was silent.

Um, me?

Yeah, she asked me to go with her--you know, experience her difficult mother firsthand and act as a support/hand-holder/shield/diversion. Again, BOUNDARIES. "I'm sorry, I already have plans for today," I said. Which I did, but even if I didn't, the plans to save my sanity were in play at the least.

The following day--where of course the plumber showed up three minutes after my dad walked in the door--I ate lunch at my parents' and walked to Jolene's house. I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my mind that things would be canceled again without my knowledge. But she answered the door, and while I can forgive the disorganization that comes with having a family member in the hospital, she had absolutely nothing arranged for me to sit with her or look at her computer or whatever it was that she wanted me to do.

Which I still wasn't clear about.

To be continued. . .

Attack of the Overreaching Book Club Member

Not Leona. Somebody else. Someone who is, well, a little too eager to jump over boundaries, and now the only option is to reestablish them, I guess. I'll say more later, but let me start with this: If I weren't making so little money, I never would have entertained her initial offer of what I thought was giving her a simple computer tutorial.

I wound up coming home with a migraine that day, and now I have an e-mail in my in-box containing an attachment sharing her "story."

YIKES.

Stay tuned. . .

The Book Has Not Moved from the Passenger Seat of My Car

Mom blew through Cutting for Stone in a weekend (650 pages!) because she "wanted to get it over with." Whereupon Monday she handed it back to me.

I have absolutely no desire to crack it open.

Maybe I'm dreading the next meeting; definitely the premise of the book is not speaking to me.

Our previous meeting's hostess just sent around a photo of the new baby, prompting a lot of addressees to hit "Reply All" (ugh) and (1) coo over the baby (all right, but really do we all need to hear 20 people say "Congratulations!" to someone else?) and (2) offer some comment about the book. Most recent was a gushing "loved it, can't put it down, may reread before we meet" reply-all.

I gagged.

Mom said it was the perfect comment because then that person could do all the (more than four or five sentences) talking.


Heh.