Homage to my Book Club

Who knew I liked kale? And chutney sauce on ham?

For that matter, who knew I'd like Richard Russo, Jim Harrison, Junot Diaz?


Book clubs get a bad rap. Not always but often enough, they are dissed as gossip sessions with bad wine. (I just read that one.)

My book club (well, it's not mine, I was graciously invited to join years after the group of women who started it started it) is not like that at all. Not the slightest resemblance.

We drink excellent wine. And discuss killer books. We make it a point to read the Booker Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and spent the last several months reading female Nobel Prize winners, including a trip back to Willa Cather's early war novel. Wait. Or was it Pulitzer winners?

These retired teachers are the women I want to be in five, ten, fifteen years. They climb Mount Kilamanjaro (and even spell it correctly) and tutor homeless women and teach students suspended from their home schools.

But most of all, they think. They think hard. They think big, complex, perplexing, and difficult thoughts. They push themselves, they are still as eager to learn as one was at 18. They are funny, loving, witty, and strong. They rock my world.

We're going to read Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and the collected work of Fran (aka Dorothy Parker of the early 21st century) Leibowitz. And I lost track of the rest but they'll be good. That's a given.

How about you? Are you part of a book group? What are you reading? What is it like? What do you want to read next?