June 25, 2017 Meeting at Joy's House

Submitted by Ann S.

We met at Joy’s home in Concord for one last time as Joy has sold her
house.  Congratulations Joy!
We also wished Mary Jo happiness in her new home and Happy Birthday to
Joy and Stephanie.
Good food, good wine, good friends.

Well Stephanie while you don’t hold the record for record for
suggesting the longest book, this may have been the book with the
longest discussion.  We were missing only Kathy and Judy for this
meeting so it does not need a lengthy review here.

The title is taken from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quote “If I cannot
do great things, I can do small things in a great way”.  Picoult
acknowledges she is a white woman trying to make us see the discomfort
of being black--how it feels to be the “odd” one in the room, and the
meaning of equality. Whether we liked or disliked Jody Picoult’s
writing, agreed or disagreed with her depiction of the characters, or
found the ending a bit fake, we acknowledged her achievement in
bringing race issues to the attention of her white majority audience.
As noted above, our discussion was lengthy, sometimes intense, and
informative.  Some did not enjoy the book but all agree that we are
glad to have read it.

NOTES:

The book chosen for the August Meeting is:  Mornings on Horseback by
David McCullough

Celia has volunteered her home for the August meeting.
Carol will submit the list for the Sept. reading

Next Meeting:

Date:               July 30, 2017

Book:              “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D.Vance

Time:              1 p.m.

Where:            The Meadow at Marilyn’s
                       In the event of rain we will meet at Marilyn’s home



Sent from my iPad

Ann S. Recommendations for our August Book

These are the book suggestions for reading in August.

To be voted on at the June 25 meeting at Joy's  It is also attached as a word document.

WE NEVER ASKED FOR WINGS – Vanessa Diffenbaugh ,320 pages (The Language of Flowers) 

For 14 years, Letty has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children—Alex 15, and Luna just 6—in their tiny apartment on a spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty’s parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. Letty comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything she’s worked for and her family’s fragile hopes for the future. Diffenbaugh blends gorgeous prose with compelling themes of motherhood, undocumented immigration, and the American Dream in a powerful and prescient story about family.

THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES - Nathaniel Hawthorne, 344 Pages

 

In a sleepy New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last 4 members of the Pyncheon family of Salem. The greed and haughty pride of the family through the generations is mirrored in the gloomy decay of their seven-gabled mansion, where the family's enfeebled and impoverished relations now live. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation--or its downfall. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, this Gothic Romance is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt.

THE HOUSE AT SUGAR BEACH – Helene Cooper (nonfiction), 354 Pages

Helene is “Congo” a descendant of 2 Liberian dynasties traced back to the first ship of freemen from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia.  She grew up at Sugar Beach, a 22-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, and a villa in Spain.  It was also African, with knock foot games and hot pepper soup. When she was 8, the Coopers took in a foster child--Eunice, a Bassa girl.  For years Helene, her sister and Eunice enjoyed wealth and advantage. In April 1980 a group of soldiers staged a coup assassinating the President and his cabinet. The entire Congo class were now the hunted.  After a brutal attack Helene, sister and mother fled to America. They left Eunice behind.

Helene tried to assimilate as an American teenager, become a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and reported from every part of the globe except Africa.  Liberia descended into a third-world hell.  A near-death experience in Iraq convinced her that Liberia—and Eunice—could wait no longer.  At its heart, it is a story of tragedy, forgiveness and a long voyage home told with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor.

MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK - David McCullough, 350 Pages

An Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt.  This is a chronicle of manners and morals, love and duty.  This is the story of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by recurrent and almost fatal asthma attacks, and his struggle to manhood seen in the context of the very uncommon household in which he was raised.

The father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. The mother, Mittie Roosevelt, is a Southerner and celebrated beauty, and considerably more, which the book makes clear. There are sisters Anna and Corinne,  brother Elliott (the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, TR’s first love.  All are brought to life to make a beautiful story and an enthralling and brilliant social history.  It is a book about life intensely lived, family love and loyalty, grief and courage, and “blessed” mornings on horseback beneath the wide blue skies of the Badlands.

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU - Celeste Ng, 298 Pages

Lydia is dead. From the first sentence we know that the oldest daughter of the Lee family has died.  The novel explores alienation, achievement, race, gender, family, and identity. As the police must unravel what has happened to Lydia, the family must uncover the sister and daughter that they hardly knew. The daughter of a college professor and his stay-at-home wife in a small town in the 1970s, Lydia is part of the social changes all around her and suffers from pressure having nothing to do with tuning out and turning on. Her father is American born first-generation Chinese. Her mother is white, and their interracial marriage raises eyebrows. More troubling is her mother’s frustration at having given up medical school for motherhood.  Tantalizingly, thrilling, and emotionally complex.