You’re “it” (question #3)

ARE YOU IN A BOOK CLUB?  WHAT IS THE BEST BOOK YOU HAVE READ RECENTLY?

Indeed, I am in a book club and write about it often. We are in our 24th year. Actually, as I write this, I really should be reading this month’s book instead of writing as I have over half of it to read for our discussion this evening. Ooops!

We have a standing rule in our group that we will discuss the book and its ending, even if someone hasn’t finished it. It works well for us. Everyone knows what book we will read far in advance. Besides, we never run out of words for discussion.

Tonight’s book is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. It is a long but interesting read and I’m captivated by it, the characters, Ethiopia.  Have you read it?

My most recent favorite book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I wrote about it here. I loved it and wished I had read it sooner.

My most favorite book discussion book of all time would have to be Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It has been about ten years since we read it. It was such a wonderfully crafted book and it stays with me still. For my midwestern friends, I understand that the Lyric Opera of Chicago has commissioned an opera to be written of Bel Canto. It is scheduled for 2015/16.

One of my favorite book blogs is Work in Progress, where Danielle shares thoughtful reviews of books that are well known and some that are not. Danielle has a regular feature she calls Lost in the Stacks. I’ve grown to eagerly look forward to these postings, which are about books she finds in the library stacks that have not been read it a long, long time. These books, you see, are in mortal danger of being discarded. By checking them out, the books stay in circulation. Danielle is a heroine of books if ever there was one and her posts have led me to checking out a book or two when I visit the library in hopes of saving a few as well. You can visit here most recent Lost in the Stacks here.

This is what I found in the library last week? I loved the movie but never gave a thought to whether or not The Lilies of the Field was adapted from a book. I’m looking forward to reading it and I am admiring the illustrations. It looks like one reader checked it out for a school assignment as there are several pages with passages underlined in, horror, ink. No matter. It is now still a circulating book.

Do you discuss the books you read? Are you in a book group? How do you select your book and discuss it? Where do you meet?

Do you have a favorite book blog?

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What we learn between the pages

I love the book group I am in, not only for the variety of books we read, but because it is such a caring and congenial group. There is always something new we learn about each other in between the pages we  discuss, which happened again last Thursday as we finished our discourse and enjoyed some refreshments our evening’s host  Donna had prepared.

Donna is one of our liveliest members. She has been a repeat medalist in speed walking and the long jump in the US National Senior Olympics, earning honors again this past summer.

Donna casually mentioned she didn’t mind missing the opening of an exhibit at the Elmhurst Historical Museum in order to host our group at her house. When pressed, she went on to say that she was invited to the opening of the exhibit on the Cold War and that they had filmed her oral history.

When Donna heard about the upcoming exhibit and that it would include artifacts of the era, she donated some pamphlets and ephemera on Civil Defense preparedness that she had kept from the 1960′s. She was subsequently invited to the museum to record her story.

With a little time to kill on Wednesday after my stroll in the park, I drove over to the Elmhurst Historical Museum to see the exhibit. It is a small museum in a historic house, much like town museums everywhere. It is where the world comes to meet the citizens and stories of a community.

Alert Today Alive Tomorrow is a traveling exhibit of the ways Americans responded to the threat of an atomic war in the 1950′s and ’60s. The museum also has its own exhibit of how Elmhurst and its residents coped with that threat. Among the artifacts, posters, and videos of Civil Defense newsreels, there were also several “declassified” videos of local residents telling of their experiences living in Elmhurst at the time of nuclear threat and what they and their families did. It includes two men who tell of building bomb shelters on their properties, one a child at the time, the other a young construction worker who built his own bomb shelter two feet under his basement. The interviews were quite cleverly done in black and white with a reel-to-reel in the background and one light hanging from the ceiling; an atmospheric interpretation of the era.

I was so proud of Donna’s willingness to share her experience as a young mother in the ’60′s and her contributions and appreciate that she gave up a chance to attend the opening in order to host our gathering. I thought about the Cold War and the sense of dread I sometimes felt as a child, especially at school on days we had Civil Defense drills, ducking and covering under my desk in the event of a nuclear attack. (I wrote about it last year here.)

I also thought about the book we just read,  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which spans part of the same time period. We tend to glorify the 50′s and 60′s and the simplicity of the times. In so many ways it really wasn’t simple at all.

I was reminded that reading books is not just about the words on the pages. It is also about the ways books expose us to literature and history, the famous and infamous and ordinary folks.  They help us learn and explore science and medicine, theology and philosophy. Books connect us as people to other times and places, and to each other where we learn the most amazing things.

I love the book group I am in.

These are a few pictures I took of the traveling exhibit.

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