12 Years a Book Club
For 12 years plus. we have been meeting several times yearly to discuss a book and to share some food. We each take turns choosing the book, picking the date, moderating the meeting and bringing the food. If possible, we tie the food in with something to do with the book. ( KFC has become a favorite stand-by.) We've had members come and go through the years. The original three (Kathy, Dee Dee and Shellie) remain of the four that started it. Judy, the fourth original member, died almost 5 years ago. We miss her and what she brought to the club. Currently, we have Kim, Shellie's sister, who adds to our group with her wit and way of looking at things. Anna, Kathy's daughter, has joined us once and will try to do so in the future. She lives in Florida and the club meets in Ohio so it won't be all that easy to accomplish.
Coloring Books
Kim came up with the idea of finding books to read and discuss that had a color in their title. We not only liked the idea, we found books with various colors so that we weren't all doing the same color. We eliminated white due to the fact that is one of the books with a color in it's title that we have already used. Those books were The Devil in the White City, One Thousand White Women and White Oleander. Our colors for the next set of books are Red, Gold, Blue and Grey.
The dates for this year are still up in the air along with the coronavirus. It is mid March, 2020, and the pandemic is just taking root here. We have some bleak weeks to get through. I hope all of us and our families and friends are safe and healthy during the days ahead.
The Red Scream
by
Mary Wallis Walker
(Shellie's pick)
Kirkus Review:
'Now that homicidal drifter Louie Bronk's about to be executed for a murder he committed 11 years ago, Texas reporter Molly Cates, whose one claim to fame is her book on Louie, prepares her last article on the case. Oddly, her boss and powerful contractor Charlie McFarland, whose wife Tiny was the one victim habitual killer Louie will be executed for, pressure her to walk away from the story.'
Sun Sentinel Review:
"Finally Louis Bronk's time on death row is up - in days he faces execution by lethal injection. Molly Cates and Tiny McFarland's family are included on Bronk's list of requested witnesses.
Despite her reservations about the death penalty, Cates knows reporting the execution and the reaction of the witnesses will give her a powerful article. And the timing is perfect to promote her newly published book, Sweating Blood, the story of the Texas Scalper's rampage."
Good Reads:
" Mary Willis Walker brings a lusty new voice to the mystery scene. Already recognized for her first novel, she has now created a character just cheeky and gusty enough to take her place among the top ranks of female protagonists such as Kinsey Millhone and Kay Scarpetta. "
Darling Rose Gold
by
Stephanie Wrobel
(Kathy's pick)
Publishers Weekly:
"Wrobel’s debut novel starts where most MSBP (Munchausen Syndrome by proxy) sagas end. Patty Watts, the mother from hell, is being released from prison after serving five years for aggravated child abuse. She’d kept Rose Gold Watts in a wheelchair, shaved her head, and fed her PediaSure through a tube for 18 years when there was nothing wrong with the poor girl. Patty fooled countless doctors and her entire community, convincing them all Rose Gold had sleep apnea, cancer, pyloric stenosis, and a chromosomal defect."
Kirkus Reviews:
"--- After discovering that her mother had spent the better part of two decades poisoning and starving her, the then-teenage Rose Gold testified in the trial that sent Patty to prison for aggravated child abuse. Five years later, with the support of her hometown, Rose Gold has purchased the house where her mother grew up and begun renovating it to create a safe place to raise her infant son, Adam. She leaves everyone in her tight knit community reeling when she reconciles with the newly released Patty and offers her a place to stay."
Goodreads:
"She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...
And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home."
Blue Angel
by
Francine Prose
(Dee Dee's pick)
Kirkus Reviews:
"Ted Swensen is a well-reviewed novelist procrastinating on his own next book by teaching creative writing at a small New England college. Happily married to the college nurse, Sherrie, Swensen is a kind of academic everyman: Needful of the salary and freedom his job gives him, at the same time he’s resentful of his perceived failure to live as a big-time, big-city author. Into his dull if contented life comes a pierced and punked-out student named Angela Argo, who, Swensen discovers, can actually write."
Boston Review:
A flirtation ensues against the backdrop of Angela’s own novel-in-progress, a promising student work about—you guessed it—a chick with a crush on her teacher. Again, the symbolism is heavy-handed, especially because the reader is well aware of Angela’s active interest in bedding Swenson without being made to reflect on her life-as-art musings.--- No sooner has she gotten him in bed than the trouble begins.
Chicago Tribune
"In previous novels, Francine Prose has trained her incisive, often satiric vision on such things as the New Age movement and the world of tabloid journalism. In "Blue Angel" she takes on academia. Prose uses the setting to poke fun at everything from political correctness to undergraduate dress habits, and, more compellingly, to examine the relationship between life and narrative, the complex workings of power, the blind struggles of a stuck and thrashing man."
Grey Souls
by
Philippe Claudel
(Kim's pick)
The Independent:
"On a bitter December morning in 1917 in France, within spitting distance of the trenches, a group of town officials have gathered around the body of a 10-year-old girl known as Belle de Jour. A young man is convicted of her murder and executed. Twenty years on, the novel's nameless narrator pieces together the events leading up to the little girl's death."
A Work in Progress:
"This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare. It has all the elements you would find in any story of suspense, but there is perhaps a greater depth and certainly a moral complexity to the telling of this tale which unravels slowly and is told methodically.This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare. It has all the elements you would find in any story of suspense, but there is perhaps a greater depth and certainly a moral complexity to the telling of this tale which unravels slowly and is told methodically.This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare."
Goodreads:
" But the death of the child was not the only crime committed in the town during those weeks. More than one record has to be set straight. Beautiful, like a fairy story almost, frozen in time, this novel has an hypnotic quality."
For 12 years plus. we have been meeting several times yearly to discuss a book and to share some food. We each take turns choosing the book, picking the date, moderating the meeting and bringing the food. If possible, we tie the food in with something to do with the book. ( KFC has become a favorite stand-by.) We've had members come and go through the years. The original three (Kathy, Dee Dee and Shellie) remain of the four that started it. Judy, the fourth original member, died almost 5 years ago. We miss her and what she brought to the club. Currently, we have Kim, Shellie's sister, who adds to our group with her wit and way of looking at things. Anna, Kathy's daughter, has joined us once and will try to do so in the future. She lives in Florida and the club meets in Ohio so it won't be all that easy to accomplish.
Coloring Books
Kim came up with the idea of finding books to read and discuss that had a color in their title. We not only liked the idea, we found books with various colors so that we weren't all doing the same color. We eliminated white due to the fact that is one of the books with a color in it's title that we have already used. Those books were The Devil in the White City, One Thousand White Women and White Oleander. Our colors for the next set of books are Red, Gold, Blue and Grey.
The dates for this year are still up in the air along with the coronavirus. It is mid March, 2020, and the pandemic is just taking root here. We have some bleak weeks to get through. I hope all of us and our families and friends are safe and healthy during the days ahead.
The Red Scream
by
Mary Wallis Walker
(Shellie's pick)
Kirkus Review:
'Now that homicidal drifter Louie Bronk's about to be executed for a murder he committed 11 years ago, Texas reporter Molly Cates, whose one claim to fame is her book on Louie, prepares her last article on the case. Oddly, her boss and powerful contractor Charlie McFarland, whose wife Tiny was the one victim habitual killer Louie will be executed for, pressure her to walk away from the story.'
Sun Sentinel Review:
"Finally Louis Bronk's time on death row is up - in days he faces execution by lethal injection. Molly Cates and Tiny McFarland's family are included on Bronk's list of requested witnesses.
Despite her reservations about the death penalty, Cates knows reporting the execution and the reaction of the witnesses will give her a powerful article. And the timing is perfect to promote her newly published book, Sweating Blood, the story of the Texas Scalper's rampage."
Good Reads:
" Mary Willis Walker brings a lusty new voice to the mystery scene. Already recognized for her first novel, she has now created a character just cheeky and gusty enough to take her place among the top ranks of female protagonists such as Kinsey Millhone and Kay Scarpetta. "
Darling Rose Gold
by
Stephanie Wrobel
(Kathy's pick)
Publishers Weekly:
"Wrobel’s debut novel starts where most MSBP (Munchausen Syndrome by proxy) sagas end. Patty Watts, the mother from hell, is being released from prison after serving five years for aggravated child abuse. She’d kept Rose Gold Watts in a wheelchair, shaved her head, and fed her PediaSure through a tube for 18 years when there was nothing wrong with the poor girl. Patty fooled countless doctors and her entire community, convincing them all Rose Gold had sleep apnea, cancer, pyloric stenosis, and a chromosomal defect."
Kirkus Reviews:
"--- After discovering that her mother had spent the better part of two decades poisoning and starving her, the then-teenage Rose Gold testified in the trial that sent Patty to prison for aggravated child abuse. Five years later, with the support of her hometown, Rose Gold has purchased the house where her mother grew up and begun renovating it to create a safe place to raise her infant son, Adam. She leaves everyone in her tight knit community reeling when she reconciles with the newly released Patty and offers her a place to stay."
Goodreads:
"She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...
And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home."
Blue Angel
by
Francine Prose
(Dee Dee's pick)
Kirkus Reviews:
"Ted Swensen is a well-reviewed novelist procrastinating on his own next book by teaching creative writing at a small New England college. Happily married to the college nurse, Sherrie, Swensen is a kind of academic everyman: Needful of the salary and freedom his job gives him, at the same time he’s resentful of his perceived failure to live as a big-time, big-city author. Into his dull if contented life comes a pierced and punked-out student named Angela Argo, who, Swensen discovers, can actually write."
Boston Review:
A flirtation ensues against the backdrop of Angela’s own novel-in-progress, a promising student work about—you guessed it—a chick with a crush on her teacher. Again, the symbolism is heavy-handed, especially because the reader is well aware of Angela’s active interest in bedding Swenson without being made to reflect on her life-as-art musings.--- No sooner has she gotten him in bed than the trouble begins.
Chicago Tribune
"In previous novels, Francine Prose has trained her incisive, often satiric vision on such things as the New Age movement and the world of tabloid journalism. In "Blue Angel" she takes on academia. Prose uses the setting to poke fun at everything from political correctness to undergraduate dress habits, and, more compellingly, to examine the relationship between life and narrative, the complex workings of power, the blind struggles of a stuck and thrashing man."
Grey Souls
by
Philippe Claudel
(Kim's pick)
The Independent:
"On a bitter December morning in 1917 in France, within spitting distance of the trenches, a group of town officials have gathered around the body of a 10-year-old girl known as Belle de Jour. A young man is convicted of her murder and executed. Twenty years on, the novel's nameless narrator pieces together the events leading up to the little girl's death."
A Work in Progress:
"This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare. It has all the elements you would find in any story of suspense, but there is perhaps a greater depth and certainly a moral complexity to the telling of this tale which unravels slowly and is told methodically.This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare. It has all the elements you would find in any story of suspense, but there is perhaps a greater depth and certainly a moral complexity to the telling of this tale which unravels slowly and is told methodically.This war story reads almost like an edge of your seat crime thriller, but it's a bit more subtle than your standard mystery fare."
Goodreads:
" But the death of the child was not the only crime committed in the town during those weeks. More than one record has to be set straight. Beautiful, like a fairy story almost, frozen in time, this novel has an hypnotic quality."
Moderator's Format
- Book moderator explains why she chose book for the group
- Author bio is presented
- Discussion by all members on passages they picked to talk about
- Moderator's questions to the group
- Summing up the book and our feelings for it
- (thumbs up or thumbs down)
Members Responsibilities
Find a paragraph, sentence, or any short passage that stood out for you. It could be something that you loved or something that you hated. It could be something that made you laugh or made you cry. It could be something that inspired you or confused you or didn't make any sense at all. This should not be a recap of the book or of a character in it, just a passage/observation that caught your attention.
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