Our New Book Selections

Our new selections for February, March and April were chosen at our last meeting.
February's selection Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon sounds like a quick and fun read. This book may not be your typical Valentines Day reading choice "but the surprising and rewarding treat is a bright, grown-up story of two women who discover friendship and trust in one another" Publishers Weekly.

Our next two choices are The Glass Castle a chilling, childhood memoir by Jeannette Walls and The Wednesday Letters by Jason Wright . The Glass Castle has been compared to the popular memoir Angela's Ashes as a story that should be profoundly sad, but instead, is uplifting and heartwarming. The Wednesday Letters seems to be the little book that could, initially published in a run of only 50,000 books by a small publishing company, it is already in its second printing.

The voting was very close with The Road by Cormac McCarthy just one vote short of being selected.

The books are available from both Amazon and the Carnegie Library. In fact, The Glass Castle is another Book Club To Go selection so we will request the book closer to March or April.

Remember ordering several books at a time from Amazon will qualify for free shipping.

Love In The Time of Cholera Discussion

A big thank you to Debbie for hosting us and Sally for leading our lively discussion. It was pretty much decided early in the discussion that most of us didn't like the book or the main characters from the book. Seeing the movie didn't improve our book reading experience since it was agreed no one really cared for the movie, either. (Although, it was generally agreed that Benjamin Bratt did look pretty good on the big screen!)

Florentino was described as an obsessive stalker, a pervert and a manipulative, unfeeling womanizer with an odd maternal relationship. Several members of our discussion group questioned his character when he seduced his fourteen year old ward and his reaction at her later suicide. Even having a child out of wedlock with one young women and causing the murder of another never seemed to matter to Florentino. While Fermina was depicted as a lonely and rigid women, she was also very class conscience, possibly because of her humble origins. Dr. Urbino, the only character that was described favorably by club members, was called a humanitarian but still a man of his times. The club also believed that Dr. Urbino and Fermina eventually fell into a true love while Florentino's love was called obsessive and selfish.

Several people questioned what, if anything, the suicide of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour had to do with story. It was agreed that one of the themes of the book was aging and also, living fully in spite of your age. The opinions on this point ranged from Saint-Amour's death having nothing to do with the themes of the book to the opinion that the manner of his death was the actual theme of the book.

Some of the themes we discussed included love as a disease, causing both physical and emotional pains; the environment (the river) as an analogy for the changes from young love to mature love; and the many birds throughout the book, the parrot that causes the Doctor's death, prostitutes called birds, the young mother carrying her child in a birdcage as well as the perfumed crows and the pigeons kept by the murdered girl.

Most of the girls next door agreed they were glad to have read the book but probably would not read anymore of Garcia Marquez' books. More than a few of us wondered 'what was Oprah thinking'?

Book Selection, Part 2

I was just on the Carnegie Library site requesting a few books when I ran across a new feature called Book Club To Go . It's a specially packaged kit containing 10 copies of a book and a discussion guide. There are 11 different choices and one of them is our next book, The Shadow of The Wind, which I did request.

The other choices are:

• Empire Falls
• Inheritance of Loss
• Memory Keepers Daughter
• Blessing
• Middlesex
• Atonement
• Snow Flower and The Secret Fan
• Glass Castle
• Suite Francaise
• Devil In The White City

Since it is the library, there are no guarantees books will be available in the order we are reading them, but it is still worth considering. I'm not familiar with all of these books but Bookreporter.com does review each of them. Also, if you're not using the Carnegie Library system you might want to give it a try. You can apply for a card, request a book to be sent to your local library and be notified when the book is available- all online, it couldn't be easier and it's free.

Book Selections

It seems like just yesterday that we choose our last three books and here we are already choosing the next three. A few of the girls next door have mentioned that they would like to see different types of books and styles of writing to mix things up a bit for the next three months. With hundreds of genres to choose from there are endless possibilities in fictional writing. We could read a popular short story, anthologies, poetry, a mystery or a graphic novel. We can go back to the classics, target books made into movies, or read Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winning novels. Of course, we are not limited to just fiction, we can choose biographies, travelogues, motivational books or even a cookbook.
If you're not sure what to recommend The New York Times Book Review has lists of best sellers and countless reviews; not only will it help you choose your recommendation but it will help you sell it to the rest of the girls. Another good site is Bookreporter.com , in addition to reviews this site has bookclub guides, lists of award winners and release dates of movies from books .
So you can see there are many choices, just so little time.

Victorian Christmas at the Frick

I am pleased to announce that, based on our on-line poll, The Girls Next Door Book Club members will be visiting the Henry Clay Frick Mansion for a "Victorian Christmas" on Saturday, December 15. And "thanks" to Dode who has agreed to host a post-Frick holiday celebration at her house immediately after our tour. The itinerary is as follows:

• Meet at Dode's (2700 Miles Avenue, Dormont, 15216) at approximately 2pm on Saturday, December 15
• Bring an appetizer, covered dish, or dessert with you for our holiday celebration which will begin after our trip to the "Frick." Dode will store it for you at her house while we are gone.
• Bring a used book that you love and would recommend to others with you for a "book exchange" - please wrap it so we can have some fun with this!
• Take 3 or 4 cars (depending on who all can make it) to the "Frick" for the mansion tour
• The tour is $12 and will take approximately 2 hours
• Return to Dode's house after the tour (about 5pm) to enjoy food and drinks - remember to BYOB
• Have a "book exchange" based on rules that we will discuss at the November meeting

I think that we will have a wonderful time and I hope that most people can make it since it seems to be the only date that will work for most people. I will try to get a "head count" at the November meeting so we know how many spots to reserve and Dode will know how many to plan for at our holiday celebration!

NOVEMBER MEETING

The November meeting will be held at 7pm on Tuesday, November 27 at Debby's house at 1506 Greenmount Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15216 (next door to Patti's apartment). Sally will facilitate the discussion for this month's book Love in the Time of Cholera, a love story that spans decades and explores the idiosyncracies of human thoughts and behavior. I am almost done with the book and I can't wait to have a lively discussion about this one. And I hope that some of us can make it to our "movie date" on November 20 to see the film version of the book. Remember to BYOB.

ALSO, as discussed at our last meeting, be prepared to nominate new books at our November meeting. Per our discussion at the October meeting, we will select three new books to read for the February, March, and April meetings. We will use the flip chart again to record nominations and will then vote with our stickers so please follow the guidelines that we discussed:

• There is no obligation to nominate a book unless you want to.
• If you decide to nominate a book, know the book title, the author, and enough about the book so that other people can make an informed voting decision.
• The three people who have already nominated books that were selected (Kathy, Patti, and Honey) cannot nominate a book for this selection cycle.

Hope that everyone can make it - I am really looking forward to our meeting!