March 2008

Dear Book Clubbers,

We had an excellent turnout for Wednesday’s meeting. Welcome to new member Katie Korn. It is so wonderful that our group continues to grow as we enter our 10th year! Most who attended had seen Pillars through to completion and on the average gave the book 4.5 stars. The discussion was lively, although perhaps limited somewhat by the amount of time we spent choosing books for the future. More about that later…

Following our 6 week rotation, our next meeting will be at 7:15 PM on Wednesday, April 23rd at Jill’s house. Our selection for that night is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Please let Jill know if you are coming by contacting her on her cell phone or via e-mail. The snack members for that night are Jennifer, Katie and Beth. I am sure there are tons of copies of this book around, but if anyone wants me to order one for them on Amazon, the regular paperback is $6.99 and the larger, trade paperback size is $10.85.

There were a lot of excellent selections proposed for future discussions. Unfortunately, when I attempted to research them quickly on the internet during the meeting, some were difficult to obtain (no recent printings) or only available in hardcover. Since Wednesday, I have had some member feedback suggesting that we dedicate part of one meeting every 6-12 months to choosing all the books for the upcoming gatherings. This way, ideas could be brought to the meeting with all the “background checks” already done and we could speed through the process faster. My input is that once a year seems like we would be less flexible to jump on “hot reads”. I think that what happened is that we usually know our books one to two meetings in advance, but between the co-ed get together and my absence at the January meeting, we fell behind. Perhaps we can think about an every 6 month power session? We’ll talk about that next time. Of the suggestions proposed Wednesday, only four satisfy our criteria at this time. They are:

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (lost out this time in a hat draw)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (not a light choice, but one we should do)
Wicked by Gregory Maguire (unsure regarding “discussability”)
Into the Wilderness by Sarah Donati (too lengthy after Pillars)

We all agreed that we will have Jill pursue the possibility of having Ann McCauley (actually that’s a pen name), the author of Runaway Grandma, as our guest for the summer meeting. Joanne is still working on reaching the author of Scatter My Ashes over Havana, but has been unsuccessful so far.

After the April meeting, our next date is June 4th. Don’t forget you can see the tentative schedule well in advance on the blog at www.crbc.blogspot.com.

I hope I haven’t forgotten anything.

Jan

P.S.
I forgot to say that I did follow up on our search for a possible selection about the Great Race of 1908 as we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of that event and the tie to Springville. The only books on the subject that I could find available were children’s books. Sorry.