Meeting on January 28, 2018 at Stephanie's House

Report prepared by Lori

We had a wonderful meeting at Stephanie's to discuss "The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander Newfoundland" by Jim DeFede. Stephanie served an extremely delicious split pea soup, and there was plenty of other good food to be had as always. We were sad that Ann S. was too sick at the last minute to come (reason why I'm proving the meeting summary), and we also missed Ann F, Judy, and all of those who have flown south for the winter. We were happy that Marlena and her care-taker could come, and we love how kind and loving Marlena's care-taker is to her.

Diane added this book to her list because she had seen the play, "Come From Away" based on these stories, and was deeply moved by it. The discussion of the book started with Diane asking us to go around the room and describe what we were doing the day of 9/11 and how we heard about the events. This brought us back into the emotions of the day and also put into context the kindness shown by the town of Gander to those stranded there. There was only one person in the group that didn't LOVE the book and this time it wasn't Marilyn, but CLAIRE!! (BTW: I got permission from Claire ahead of time to share that she didn't love the book). Most agreed that it wasn't fine literature, but still felt very engaged with the stories and characters. Some agreed they would have enjoyed the book more if they had seen the play. We all wondered if the same level of kindness and sacrifice could happen in today's political climate, and although some were skeptical, we sincerely hope the same outpouring of kindness could happen today.

After the book discussion, we had a small birthday celebration for Claire's 70th birthday for those that couldn't make it down to Boston last Sunday. Claire got many lovely gifts even though she had given instructions for no presents, only our presence!  

The next meeting will be on February 25th at Ann Fitzherbert's house. We will discuss The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman.

The March meeting will be on March 25th, place TBD (please correct me if we decided on something but I missed it). We will discuss "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine", by Gail Honeyman.

A reminder from the notes taken from the December meeting: Judy has volunteered to host the June meeting. 

I (Lori) will submit book suggestions next for the April meeting and Judy will submit book suggestions for the May meeting.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the February meeting!!

Marilyn's suggestions for our March Book

Rebecca, Daphne duMaurier,, 1938, 380 pages (paperback)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave. 

 Digging to America, Anne Tyler,  2006, 335 pages

In what is perhaps her richest and most deeply searching novel, Anne Tyler gives us a story about what it is to be an American, and about Maryam Yazdan, who after thirty-five years in this country must finally come to terms with her “outsiderness.”

Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport—the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian American wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate with an “arrival party,” an event that is repeated every year as the two families become more deeply intertwined.

Even independent-minded Maryam is drawn in. But only up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by one of the Donaldson clan, a good-hearted man of her vintage, recently widowed and still recovering from his wife’s death, suddenly all the values she cherishes—her traditions, her privacy, her otherness—are threatened. Somehow this big American takes up so much space that the orderly boundaries of her life feel invaded.

A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that cast a penetrating light on the American way as seen from two perspectives, those who are born here and those who are still struggling to fit in.

Rules of Civility, Amor Towles, , 2011, 335 pages

On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar with her boardinghouse roommate stretching three dollars as far as it will go when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a tempered smile, happens to sit at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool toward the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast--rarefied environs where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. 

Wooed in turn by a shy, principled multi-millionaire and an irrepressible Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, befriended by a single-minded widow who is a ahead of her time, and challenged by an imperious mentor, Katey experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life, she begins to realize how our most promising choices inevitably lay the groundwork for our regrets. 

Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan, 2010,   288 pages

Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall. 

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers. 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman, 2017, 327  pages

Meet Eleanor Oliphant. She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully time-tabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. 

Then everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living--and it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

December 3, 2017, Meeting at Six Burner Bistro

Ann S's Minutes of our Meetng

We enjoyed A Happy Holiday Luncheon at the Six Burner Bistro.  We were glad to see Marlena could make this meeting and were pleased to meet Shafer and Pixie.  

The story “The Innocence of Loss” was lost on most of us and many did not finish the book.  Although well written as Marilyn noted, it was depressing.  None of the characters (except perhaps the cook) seemed “at home” in their place in life and all were therefore miserable.  Sai is an orphaned Indian who falls in love with a Nepalese; the cook’s son belonged in neither country; the judge could be neither Indian nor British. 

The next order of business was voting on the February book list submitted by Kathy.  

The book chosen (after a second round of voting) is THE MARRIAGE OF OPPOSITES by Alice Hoffman.

Ann Fitzherbert has volunteered to host the February Meeting.

Judy has volunteered her home for June meeting.

Marilyn will submit book suggestions for March meeting.

Lori will submit book suggestions for April meeting.

Claire will let us know more re celebrating her January 19, 2018, birthday when she becomes officially old.

Next Meeting:        January 28, 2018

Place:                       Stephanie’s

Book Discussion:    The Day The World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

 

The business part done, we went on to brighten our day with the Yankee Book Swap.   Great books were unwrapped, we hope to see them come back to be passed along.

Happy Holidays and here's wishing all of us and our families a healthy 2018.  See you next year.