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August Fiction Selection

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The first few months of the year got off to a rough start for several of our members and, due to these unfortunate events, we ended up bumping our scheduled January meeting to April. With the lengthy hiatus, our group enjoyed a long overdue catch up session to discuss our current life statuses and latest book. We had a lovely time visiting, and enjoyed a delicious homemade loaf of bread with an enormous charcuterie board spread made by our fabulous hostess. We were also gifted individual book-shaped pencil holders with clever sayings uniquely suitable to each member!  For this session, we moved away from our normal routine a bit with a new interactive method for discussion questions and a fun activity about our reading personalities. We also voted to read only fiction titles for the foreseeable future (to help us all escape the dreary state of the world we have all found ourselves in). It was a terrific meeting all around.  Our selection for our next meeting in August will be:...
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April Fiction Selection

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For our November meeting, our book club enjoyed a cozy meeting at one of our member's homes. The meeting was a festival of treats, as we sampled delicious homemade desserts and yummy tea. As our meeting started, we all agreed that this latest reading, while extensively researched and incredibly informative of women's lives during Victorian London, was quite a bit darker and more difficult to get through with the current political landscape. Going forward, our club collectively agreed that we would try to select lighter readings and reduce our annual nonfiction titles to one per year. We also decided to sneak in a few non-reading related meetings throughout the year to catch up with each other.  As we move into the busy winter months, I am hopeful that our next title will be both lighthearted and fun. Our selection for January will be a fiction title: Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki Excerpt from the agent's page :  "Butter by Asako Yuzuki follows jour...
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November Nonfiction Selection

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It was great seeing everyone and catching up at last night's meeting. I think we were all long overdue for the opportunity to visit with each other after a lengthy break between books. Our book selection gave us an excellent jumping off point to discuss (and vent about) the current state of affairs, as well as providing a opening to bond over some personal accounts from our own lives. I really enjoyed hearing everyone's differing experiences in comparison to the context of our book's overall themes. I would also like to give a big shout out to our host for providing a cozy space for us to discuss the book.  The summer is slowly drawing to a close and I think our next title will be a terrific choice for the upcoming fall.  Our selection in November will be a nonfiction title:     The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold    Excerpt from the author's webpage : "The Five was the 2019 winner of the Baillie Giffor...
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August Fiction Selection

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Our book club changed gears this month, as we opted to meet up at a member's home. We were greeted and hosted by several eager ushers, in the way of our member's menagerie of puppies and kittens. After a proper amount of petting and visiting with said furred hosts, we enjoyed hot beverages in our favorite mugs with a fine selection of yummy cookies. It was an altogether cozy experience, which made for a great book discussion and shared stories from our own diverse childhoods. Our selection for our next meeting in August will be a historical fiction:     The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods   Excerpt from the publisher : "On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found… For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved bo...
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April Nonfiction Selection

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  For this month's meeting, our members met up at the Saint Louis Central Public Library. The library, completed in 1912, was designed with lavish architectural themes borrowed from the Italian Renaissance period. Our group took the tour prior to our meeting and enjoyed the sights, which ranged from opulent stained glass windows to decadent ceilings inspired by the Vatican and Michelangelo, to name a few. It was an amazing tour and the library is definitely a must see for all. Thank you to all who were able to attend, and for those who were out due to other obligations or illness, I look forward to seeing you all in April at our next meeting. In April, we will be reading a memoir: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson Excerpt from the publisher :  "The only downside of my mother’s working was that it put a little pressure on her with regard to running the home and particularly with regard to dinner, which frankly was not her strong suit anyway. My mother ...
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January Fiction Selection

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Last month I was extremely grateful that we were able to meet via Zoom. It was a busy month, as the end of the year always seems to be, and I am glad that we were able to coordinate our busy schedules and utilize the current software trend so that we could meet up and discuss our book (absent one member who was unable to attend). Our January selection was chosen again by popular vote. I was excited to hear from several of our members that our current list of fiction titles was difficult to choose from. I know that a few of our members have expressed a desire for a lighter read after our almost too painfully relevant nonfiction title from November and I really hope this one delivers for them:  A Discovery of Witches: A Novel by Deborah Harkness (Book One of the All Souls Trilogy)  Excerpt from the author: " When historian Diana Bishop opens a bewitched alchemical manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library it represents an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordinary ...
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November Nonfiction Selection

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  I want to thank everyone for attending our first book club meeting. I hope you all had just as much fun as I did and I look forward to our next meeting in November. We also gained a new member! Yay! Welcome, Kari! Everyone sent me wonderful recommendations for our selection list(s) and I will continue to add to them as people send me their recommendations. We had a few stand out titles for our next reading and I will discuss at our next meeting if we want to read everyone's top five in order of interest or vote each quarter to take into account newly added selections. In the meantime, I chose our next reading based on popularity with our top five selections and in November, we will be switching gears and reading the nonfiction title:   In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of Witches and Why Women are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet   Excerpt from the publisher : “Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witc...
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