April - December 2023

At a St. Patrick's Day Party at Cheryl's, our little book club decided to resurrect our actual book club meetings. The pandemic had interrupted us and we just never quite got it together. For a while, we thought we might just forego the book and meet socially but it was rarely happening without a specific plan. It was decided that we would meet on the 2nd Tuesday afternoon of the month beginning in April. We chose our first book The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. 

I thought I would create this blog as a way to help us keep track of what we've read, how we feel about it, and any other pertinent information. As I am starting it at the end of the year, rather than going back month by month, I will summarize it and start fresh with 2024.

April - Oklahoma's Atticus by Hunter Howe Cates. This story takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was recommended by Debbie Wear. This is really a "tale of two cities"; one the oil-rich downtown Tulsa and the other the dirt-poor slums of N. Tulsa. And, of two newspapers each taking different sides. I noticed that one of the papers had its start during the type of the Osage Murders. It is the story of two men both born of poor Native Americans but one an accused murderer and the other the lawyer who defended him. The victim is an 11-year-old girl, Phyllis Warren, who was a relative of the accused, Buster Youngwolfe. The lawyer, Elliott Howe, decides to take the case when he sees that Buster is being obviously railroaded for this crime as he is an easy target. The author got interested in this part of his family history when he was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. His mother kept referring to the "Atticus Finch" in their own family. This is one of those books where I'd like to invent a word for a story with a compelling narrative that is well-written but the subject matter is dark and hard process. 

May- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. The book was published in 1967 and turned into a film in 1983 by Francis Ford Coppola. We all loved the book. S.E. (Susan Eloise) wrote the book when she was 16 years old about rival gangs in her Tulsa home the Socs and the Greasers. The book was published when she was 18. The two gangs are divided by socioeconomic status rather than race (as in West Side Story.) We all felt that S. E. did a great job of writing from the male perspective. There was a lot of drama and emotion and we connected with the character's dilemma.  In the end, the kids from different sides of the track weren't so different. 

June - Tex by S.E. Hinton. We all liked The Outsiders so much we read another of the author's books. Tex is set in a more rural area outside of Tulsa and the dilemmas are family-related as opposed to gang. Tex, who is 15, and his brother Mason are raising themselves as their father travels the rodeo circuit and rarely shows up at home. Their mother died some time previously.  Mason, as the older brother is somehow in charge of keeping the rent paid and the utilities turned on. In the opening, scenes he is forced to sell their two horses which devastates and angers Tex. There is a feud between Tex's father and their neighbor, the Collins' father. Tex ends up running away from home for a time but realizes that living with his brother is the best of his options. We really liked this one as well. Debbie also read Rumble Fish and didn't care for it. We did not read it as a book club book. 

July - Lesson in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmes is a new book that everyone is talking about. In fact, Apple TV just released a limited series. This story is set in the 1960s as the major push for women's equality is taking full bloom. It is the story of Elizabeth Zott who becomes a beloved cooking show host in Southern California after being fired as a chemist a decade earlier. After her application as a doctoral student is rejected she works as a chemist at the Hastings Institute. She becomes involved with another chemist and they are on the verge of a breakthrough in their research and become personally involved. When he is killed in a tragic accident she is fired from her job and is left to raise their baby. She outfits her kitchen as a lab, continues her research, and finds her way to television fame through the father of one of her daughter's friends. There is more to the story and everyone enjoyed it.

August - Horse by Geraldine Brooks is also a new novel that should be a movie. She is an Australian-American author whose 2005 book "March" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel Horse is about one of the most famous racehorses in American history. The book covers three time periods; Kentucky 1850 where an enslaved groom forges a bond with the horse. This part of the story covers the Civil War and an artist who paints a portrait of the horse and groom. New York City, 1954 Martha Jackson, gallery owner, comes into possession of the painting. Present-day Washington, DC where the paths of one woman studies the bones of the now deceased horse and one man studies the painting. We thought the author did a brilliant job of spanning the decades without confusing us. We learned a lot about horse racing and thoroughly enjoyed the book. 

September - Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author for her book Beloved and also won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Deborah suggested this one and I was reticent but willing. I had read one other Morrison novel and did not care for it all. However, we all liked Song of Solomon. I thought this book was deep and made you work for some of its symbolism but, I like that. For me, this book was really about ancestors. You don't find out until the end of the book that Solomon is the great-great-grandfather of the main character, Macon "Milkman" Dead. The book is really his journey through the family history in odd and twisted ways until he takes a trip, to look for gold in a cave. to find people who tell him the story of his ancestors and suddenly it all makes sense. The ending is a bit ambiguous, I thought. But, I liked that it left it up to the reader. 

October - Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Deborah also selected this book. It is her son's favorite and she was eager to find out why he loved it so much. Carla had read it some time ago and it is one of her favorites. I had avoided it due to some graphic details but decided to take the plunge (pun intended as there is a shipwreck) and ended up being glad I did. Pi's family owns a zoo in India and during some political upheaval, they sell most of the animals and embark on a journey to take the others and settle in Canada. Pi's 277-day journey of survival in the middle of the ocean is most of the story. It is dramatic, filled with symbolism, and deeply philosophical. It is no surprise that the author was a philosophy major. Again, we all liked the book. And, to our surprise, Cheryl managed to bring a very ingenious recreation of Pi, the boat, and the animals. 

November - The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street by Karen White and The Little Prince by Antoine St. Exupiery.We decided to read a book from The Tradd Street series. I call it a Nancy Drew for a bit more adult audience. Our main character, Melanie, inherits an Antebellum house in the "South of Broad" area in Charleston, S.C. in the first book. Melanie sees ghosts, a gift she inherited from her mother. In this first novel, a Civil War treasure is found on Melanie's property but there's a race to see who actually finds it and pits Melanie against her arch nemesis Mark Longo. She also meets the man she marries, Jack Trenholm. The Christmas Spirits is the 6th novel in the series but you don't necessarily have to read them in order. Mark Longo reappears and this time it is a Revolutionary treasure they are after. 

We also decided to throw in The Little Prince by Antoine St. Exupery. Since our ghost story is for fun and we don't really have to "work" for this novel we decided to read The Little Prince. It's not quite a hundred pages and quite possibly my favorite book. I reread it last year and it affected me deeply. It seems short and simple, a child's story. But, it had a lot more meaning and is meant for children of all ages. 

December

The Quintland Sisters - Shelley Wood

A historical novel about the first known set of Quintuplets to survive into adulthood. Though the story itself is based on true events, it is told through the eyes of a fictional midwife. The quintuplets were born in 1934 in Collander, Ontario, Canada. The Quints were born to a poor, French Catholic farming family who already had five children. They were taken care of initially by a local doctor and a team of nurses and midwives. Eventually, they were made wards of the British Crown. Their oddity created fame far and wide and soon as many as 3,000 people per day were viewing the girls who were in an enclosed playground. Many companies offer the family large sums of money and products for the use of their images on their products. The tragedy of the story is that the girls survived against incredible odds but their options were limited to being confined and gawked at by strangers or returned to a home with an abusive father. As of our reading in December 2023, two of the five are still living.