My Choices, Pre 2008

In my non-book club reading life, my tastes run toward popular mystery novels and non-fiction, especially science non-fiction.  My book club choices therefore reflect those predilections while making an attempt at choosing something my fellow members might want to read.  I go back and forth between non-fiction and fiction.  When I choose fiction I try to choose things that no one will have read before (in order to follow the rules of book club) and that is not too far into the popular fiction category because I want to seem smart and better read than I actually am.

Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith
     This was a mistake.  I only picked it because someone had passed their copy on to me.  Too popular, too common and to be honest I didn't really like it.  I know that McCall Smith is a terrifically successful author but this is the only book by him I've ever read and I won't be using any of my future reading time on others.

Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner
     I loved this one, but I was the only one.  This is a very academic (though readable) book about why we are afraid of things that have virtually no chance of happening to us and why we don't fear things that may actually be a danger to us.  Other members of book club agreed with most of what was written in the book but did not find value in having read the book.

Metropolis by Elizabeth Gaffney
     This was one of my favorites.  It was a little hokey, but I enjoyed reading it and everything one reads doesn't have to be Important.  Can't remember what others thought.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
     Love, love, love.  This is the best of Erik Larson's books.  His works fall into my favorite genre, narrative non-fiction and he is a leader in this field.  This book is about a murderer and the architect behind the Chicago World's Fair, working simultaneously in Chicago.  Everyone enjoyed this one.

What's Wrong With Dorfman by John Blumenthal
     No one, me included, liked this book.  Depressing and yet not very interesting.

As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
     Fascinating.  Twins are born, both male, but one's circumcision goes awry and so the parents decide to raise that child as a daughter.  The book explores one person's experience as well as gender identity in general.  Everyone liked the book, though some were somewhat upset by some of the more intimate details.

A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
     Another book I loved.  I think others liked this one a lot.  This is the book the movie is based on, but as usual the book is a million times better.  One lawyer takes on corporations accused of causing the deaths of children.

40 Days and 40 Nights by Matthew Chapman
     This book is subtitled "Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania" which may be the best subtitle ever.  Intelligent Design and vaccinations are topics that always get my scientific hackles up so I was excited to read this.  Add that it takes place in Pennsylvania and is written by Charles Darwin's great-great-grandson and I am sold! Chapman followed the 2005 trial in Dover regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design in the public schools.  A great read, even if the idea that this is still being discussed is terrifying.

The Psycho Ex Game by Merrill Markoe and Andy Prieboy
     Awful.  I am not great at picking fiction.  Maybe it wasn't awful, but it wasn't good.

Ostrich by Michael A. Thomas
     This was another book that I chose because we had it in the house.  It was good, something about an ostrich farm, but I don't remember much, certainly not enough to recommend the book.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
     I liked this book, but I still feel bad about picking it.  It is just too pop-fiction, too stereotyped, too predictable, but well-written and enjoyable to read.

Out by Natsuo Kirino
     I have no idea how  I chose this book.  Probably wandering up and down the fiction aisle.  This book was a hit in book club despite a shocking and disturbing premise.

More of the Early Years

As we found our way through those first months, we found the need for some more structure.  We eventually settled on a few rules.  Book choice and host would rotate among the members.  We would meet once per month.  The book must be available in paperback.  (That rule had two roots.  In the days before ebooks, hardcovers could be very expensive.  Also, one member thought they were just too heavy to read comfortably.)  It was preferable, but not an absolute requirement that the book be easily available from the library.  No one can have read the book before.  Everyone MUST read the book or suffer a lifetime of gentle and not-so-gentle teasing about it.

A little later on, after a few members had come and gone, we added one more rule.  New members don't get to pick a book until they have attended a full rotation of meetings (meaning they have read a book chosen by every other member.)

Since I can't organize the early books chronologically, I'm going to list them by who chose them.  These are the books chosen by those members whose time with us was short.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
     I loved it, but mine was a minority opinion.  Others liked it, some thought it was just too out there.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
    Exact opposite.  Others loved it, but I was underwhelmed.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
     Not being an especially literary person, I hadn't heard of Sherman Alexie.  I was surprised how much I liked the book, though I haven't felt like reading any other of his work.

Master Butchers' Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
      Love! Pretty unanimous praise for this one.

Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
     LOVE!!! Again, rather unanimous praise, though a warning that the content may be uncomfortable for some.

The Doorman by Reinaldo Arenas
     This was a strange one.  I liked it (pause) but it was weird.  I felt compelled to keep reading but not in the same way I do when I am really enjoying a book.  Others liked it more than me I think.  I do remember that we read it shortly after the attacks on 9/11 and it had a weird resonance that it might not have had if we had read it when it was written (1994).

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
      I loved it.  Such a short, but beautiful book.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
     I confess to having no memory of this one which probably means I didn't read it.  Maybe I should...

The Alchemist by Paul Cohelo
     I liked this book a lot though such poetic writing is not usually my cup of tea.

The Very First Book

Anyone who knows me knows that I end up the secretary of every group, committee and team I join so it should surprise no one that I have kept an Excel spreadsheet of our book club choices for the past 13 years.  However, it didn't occur to me to put dates on the books we chose until 2008 which means there is no way to know the order in which we read the books for the first 8 years.   I do clearly remember the first book we read.  The year was 2000.  I had just turned 21. My sister-in-law (with whom we shared a house) and her friend, both teachers, wanted to start a book club.  We read our first book in September as school was starting - for them teaching, for me my second year at Santa Monica College.  Three other friends of theirs joined us, none of whom I knew.

The book was chosen by my friend D., a high school English teacher.  In order to ease our brains back into an academic frame of mind, she chose a young adult novel - Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. As I was not yet a teacher and had been a precocious reader, I had stopped reading young adult novels at least 12 years earlier, but I was game.  At least it was an easy assignment.  And I loved it.  That book has stuck with over all these years.  I am not the literary type really.  I don't revel in writing style or imagery as I read.  I tend to read for plot or information, but even I could appreciate how the author managed to sound like a youth, write in a way that would be understood by teens and yet still be compelling enough to maintain the attention of five educated adult women.

I still recommend this book to my students and I get excited every time I see a student pick it up.

13 Years In

So I have been part of a book club for 13 years, which is longer than a lot of marriages.  Some members have left, some have joined and a couple have been there all along.  Together we've loved, separated, married, had kids, not had kids, moved, moved back and even moved to other continents.  And still book club persists, once a month (more or less). After all this time, it occurred to me that there may not be anyone outside our book club who has any interest in what we've done or are doing, but 13 years is big and it should be commemorated.  So enjoy!

If you have read any of the books we would love your feedback and if you have any suggestions, we welcome that too.

Thanks for 13 great years ladies, and here's to at least 13 more.