Book Clubbing on a Tuesday Night

It's official: I'm a book clubber. And I have been since Tuesday night. That was our first meeting. Well, my first meeting, anyway. Apparently this book club has been around for some time, though this meeting called an end to the "summer vacation" they took from book club reading.

As One Who Reads Books, I am very excited to have been invited in to the club. Not that this is an exclusive, top-secret mafia deal or anything. But it was generally acknowledged by those present on Tuesday that this is to be a book club for Readers Yearning For Stimulating Discussion, not Gossipers Looking For a Social Hour. It may also be noted that again, while the club is not exclusive, top-secret, or mafia-related, it is not associated with Relief Society and its accompanying enrichment groups. All this basically means is that our reading material has the ability to expand beyond items published by Deseret Book. In our club we can read things written by Jane Austen, Pearl S. Buck, and Julia Alvarez.

In fact, at our meeting, we shared and suggested books to be read by the club in the coming months. Here is our no-fluff, serious-discussion-inducing list (or something to that effect):

September: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
October: Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan
November/December: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
January: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith & Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
February: This Was Andersonville by John McElroy
March: These Is My Words by Nancy Tanner
April: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
May: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Feel free to join in and read along. It should be great fun.

A book club meeting just wouldn't be complete without a book to discuss, even if for the past three or four months the club was on hiatus. So we all came prepared to discuss The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. It's a relatively quick-read of a young adult book. I was able to finish it in almost one sitting. The premise, as told to me by the book flap, seemed awfully similar to The Giver, which was a slight turn-off for me at the beginning. I mean, you can't just copy-cat The Giver and get away with it, right? Yeah, I didn't think so. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it was its own story. I enjoyed it, even. I'm not going to give away the plot here because if you want to cheat, you can go look it up on Amazon, or maybe just read it for yourself, but I will tell you that our group's discussion of the book was stimulating and somehow led to a brief but lively tangent on solving the problem of world hunger. (See what an intelligent bunch we are?)

So anyway, I need to go re-read How Green Was My Valley for the next meeting. I'm excited to dive into it again. It's one of my favorite books -- and not too many books get rated as "favorite" by me. Actually, scratch that. Most books I like get called my "favorite." Hmm...anyway, though, it's still a great read. I give it many stars.