I’m
a founding member of my book group that turned 25 this week. In three years, I
will have been in the same book group for half my life.
Like
most enterprises, book group started with one of those “Hey, you know what we
should do?” comments. My friends, Steve and Laura, were at our house one day
when Laura noticed the Robertson Davies books on the bookshelf. We instantly
went to the book conversation, and I don’t know what the boys did because all I
remember is talking books all afternoon with her.
At
some point, the conversation came around to stories or characters that had
stayed with us since childhood. When Laura said Mrs. Mike (aka Mary Katherine Flannigan), I was shocked. I’d never
met anyone who had read (and re-read and re-read that book multiple times) as I
had done. We could quote lines. We knew Oh-Be-Joyful’s backstory. We cried when
the babies died and were terrified when the wildfire jumped the river.
It
didn’t take us long to decide to form a book club. The two of us quickly
decided some parameters: the books had to be in paperback so they’d be cheap to
buy and easy to stuff in our bags for our metro commute. We wanted to read for
fun, so they had to be fiction. We wanted to support women writers, so all the
authors had to be women (although we made allowances if a book had a strong
female character). We agreed that we would never read the same author twice,
lest we read every book by one author. I’m proud to say this rule led us to
“discover” Barbara Kingsolver long before the rest of the world. And since
eating and drinking were going to figure in to this plan, we decided it had to
be at a different restaurant every month.
Laura
and I loved a good process.
We
picked a book, invited some friends to read it and talk about over dinner at
AV’s Ristorante, an old, family-run Italian place on New York Avenue that had
been there for literally 40 years. The
Shell Seekers, by Rosamund Pilcher, was on all the lists right about then,
so we started there. I recently found my copy at my mom’s house last summer and
reread it. It holds up, I’m pleased to say.
You’d
be amazed; some of those books you read decades ago are every bit as good as
you remember them to be. A Tree Grows in
Brooklyn will take you back to summers on the porch reading it for the
first time. Rebecca is even better
now. And hoo-boy! Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls! I felt like such a
bad girl reading those. It was fantastic.
In
the early years, we would all choose a book by consensus, a model that just
didn’t work for a group of well-read, type-A women. Half the night would be “discussions”
over the next book to read. People came and went. Singles got married, marrieds
got divorced, other marrieds had babies. There were weddings to discuss, job
interviews to strategize about and moves to contemplate. There were new guys,
new jobs, new haircuts, and book group became like therapy.
We
read; we talk; we eat and drink; we solve the world’s problems. Sometimes, we
forget to talk about the book. I remember one girl left the group because we
weren’t “literary enough.” Sometimes people ask how it works, if one person
“does the research” or “presents the book.” I just laugh.
My
friend Blair called Monday nights “BFC Night” as in “books for chicks.” My
friend Jeff calls it Bad Girls’ Book Group because sometimes only one person
has read the book and everyone else just shows up for the wine.
We
moved The Monday Night Book Group to Wednesday in the early years, but Wednesday
Night Book Group didn’t sound right. So we call it The Monday Night Book Group
That Meets on Wednesday.
Laura
and Steve moved to Denver, and book group went on. Laura would call me to talk
books and get ideas for what we called The Rocky Mountain Chapter of book group.
She planned work trips to DC to coincide with meetings, because a good book
group is hard to find.
We’ve
read a lot of books in the last 25 years. Not all of them have been good. Laura
never lived down choosing The Eight,
and I still regret choosing Peachtree
Road. I hated one book so much that I tossed it in the trash can as I
walked to work one day, having barely gotten halfway through it. Some of them I
didn’t read at all, some of them I remember so well I can quote passages. Some,
while fun, have been downright weird (Are you listening Geek Love?). There are characters I read about 20 years ago whom I
still remember (Clyde Chukka from Patty
Jane’s House of Curl springs to mind. Ruby and Rose Darlen from The Girls. )
Certainly
Mary Katherine Flannigan has stayed with me since I first read about her in
fifth grade. She taught me what pleurisy was. She opened the Canadian
wilderness to me, a suburban Houston kid. She gave me an instant and enduring connection to Laura.
In
1993, Laura gave her back to me. My inscribed copy of Mrs.
Mike is my favorite
book. I read it about once a year. Laura died in 2012 after doing her damnedest
to beat the cancer in her brain. After Laura’s funeral, I was telling one of
her Denver friends the story of how we met and the Mrs. Mike connection. She told me that Laura had been reading that
book to her daughter before she died. I love my book even more now. Happy memories, indeed, my friend. Thank you.
Here
are my top five book-group books, although this list changes from time to time. I’ve
left off the books that were bestsellers (like Memoirs of a Geisha & Water
for Elephants) because while I did love them, everyone loved
them. Here are some hidden gems.
The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern
The Girls
by Lori Lansens
I
was reading this on a plane, and at one part, I started weeping. It was
beautifully written but also a sad part of the story. I did what any other
weepy reader would do: I read it several more times. Later, when I was alone, I
read that passage out loud.
Snow Flower and the Secret
Fan by Lisa See
We
talked about this book over many months, and that’s odd for our group. One girl
even did research on Chinese foot-binding traditions, and believe me, we are
not a group that works that hard. This is a fascinating story of friendship
that got right to the heart of our group.
Keeper of the House
by Rebecca Godwin
A
young black woman, Mignon tells her story as a housekeeper in a white South
Carolina brothel over several decades. She is one of the wisest female
characters I’ve read, and I wanted her story to go on and on.
Moonlight on the Avenue
of Faith by Gina Nahai
I’ll
admit I like mystical realism in my novels from time to time (see above re: The Night Circus). This book delivers
that beautifully. Set in an Iranian ghetto with an unforgettable cast of
characters, this is some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever encountered. It’s
full of just beautiful images constructed in the most elegant way possible.
This book is probably why I’m so hard on other books.
Honorable mentions:
I think books are always better than the movie, and here’s a couple of reasons
why.
Chocolat. Look, I love Johnny Depp as much as the
next girl, and any movie with him and
chocolate can’t be ignored. But the book is more interesting, especially the
end. No disrespect to Alfred Molina, who I think can act the heck out of any
role, but in the book, the priest is a much more interesting antagonist.
The
Talented Mr. Ripley.
I didn’t even want to read this book because I thought the movie was so boring.
I’m so glad I didn’t listen to that voice in my head, because this book was really good. There were times when I
couldn’t read fast enough to see what was happening.
If
you want to see our list of books over the years, it’s public info.
