December 2020 Bookclub News

 

 

image from Burroughs' Australian publication of

 "You Better Not Cry"

Dear Bookclub,

Being an 'unusual' year - let's just say - my taste for Christmas literature seeks escapism of the uplifting sort. Unable to finish Augusten Burroughs' "You Better Not Cry", I sheepishly started our holiday bookclub meeting with a dutiful zoom. 

 

After very cheering hellos and catching up, Ginger started our discussion with a surprisingly effusive description of her experience reading the book. My heart melted like a tightly held chocolate coin.  She laughed. Enjoyed. And wowed us with her amazement about the witches. Wait - what? Turns out her kindle version of "You Better Not Cry" included a chapter of another of his books, "Toil & Trouble". She's convinced me to revisit Burroughs' work.

Young Augusten's Jesus-Santa confusion concept cracked us up; can't resist:

 

Val, unable to attend and like myself, was also not a fan. Perhaps this image of Augusten at work will also melt her heart:

Augusten designed his apartment around his bed (NY Times)

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/garden/22burroughs.html%20https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/garden/22burroughs.html 

I doubt it. Everyone else did enjoy it though, appreciating Burroughs' empathy, path to sobriety and reality checks.

The New York Times article, referenced above is dated but interesting. A more updated account in a 2016 NY Times article continues to melt my heart, as Augusten lives in John Cheevers' old home in CT and his working environment looks much improved with an Italian Greyhound looking on:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/realestate/a-farmhouse-for-the-author-augusten-burroughs.html

 

Trudy's suggestions for an upcoming read:

"War" Margaret MacMillan

"The Vanishing Half" Bret Bennet

"Hidden Valley Road" Robert Kolker *chosen

Up next:

Joyful reading!

LK

PS:

November 2020 Bookclub News

 

Grandma Hillary and Grandpa Bill***

Dear Bookclub,

Any trepidation about November 3rd's Presidential Election colliding with our November meeting was quickly dispelled by a gorgeous afternoon on my back porch, while delighting in Curtis Sittenfeld's fantasy, "Rodham". And now, weeks later, feeling giddy about the election's outcome, Sittenfeld's emphasis of Hillary's sensitivity and accomplishments towards social justice reminds me that good people can get back to doing their good.

Bill & Hillary's mantra

The google factor was high. What was real; what was fiction??? Hillary's father was awful. Her mother did have a hard life. She was an extraordinary, intelligent woman. And she did meet Bill Clinton while attending Yale Law School. Certainly we knew the basics but the juicy and the crusty in "Rodham" entertained to a point of longing to believe the fiction could have been real and in our lifetime!

from "The Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton" website:

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/

 

 

 “Oh, aren’t you opinionated for a girl?"  Sittenfeld and grad school friend, Susanna, often quipped to each other, echoing remark to her as a child from a grown man.

 

Curtis Sittendfeld

Sittenfeld explains her ability to find Hilary's voice and the importance of understanding and conveying the fact and the fiction. The balance of respect for Hillary and the fun factor of the fiction is evident in this interview:

 https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/8/4/21350098/curtis-sittenfeld-interview-rodham-hillary-clinton-vox-book-club-live-event 

***Sleuthing, I found that Chelsea and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky now have three children.

 

 Lots of fun grandparenting for Bill and Hillary, with a granddaughter followed by two grandsons. Same sibling lineup that Hillary experienced as she had two younger brothers; Hugh Rodham and Tony Rodham. Sittenfeld highlighted their relationship via group text re: mutual interest in the Cubs. 

 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/hillary-clinton-brothers-hugh-tony-rodham-116674

In 'real' life, Hugh was also a lawyer and a Democratic politician (https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Hugh_Rodham_(born_1950)  

 Tony, not so much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rodham 

Our wonder about what Hillary would have thought of the book will have to stay just that until she lets us know. I could not find anything to suggest that she is sharing her opinion if indeed she read it.

 

Wanda's suggestions for an upcoming selection:

"Jack" Marilynne Robinson

"Normal People" Sally Rooney

"The Other Americans" Laila Lalami *chosen

 

Up next:

 

 Jolly reading,

LK

 

 

October 2020 Bookclub Nesw

 

 

a 'pumpkin'

Dear Bookclub,

Welcoming a socially-distanced afternoon, we gathered on my back porch to discuss David Quammen's "The Tangled Tree". Val promptly declared her enchantment with Quammen's 'radical new history of life' and the scientists in our group revealed and reveled right along. With the concept of genes passing vertically across species, our minds went vertical, horizontal and around the block. Interspersing the story of advancing ideas in biology of archaea, phylogenetics and horizontal gene transfer with the stories of the biologists involved, Quammen's book held our interest. We seemed especially intrigued by Lynn Margulis ... honoring her contributions to evolutionary science and her challenges as a woman. Her declaration that she could not be a good mother and a good scientist and a good wife will long stay with me. Carl Sagan indeed!

Lynn & Carl Sagan

Lynn Margulis

 

Please read more about Margulis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis

Carl Woese holds a model of an RNA molecule at General Electric Research Lab in Schenectady, N.Y., in May 1961. Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

The very next day after our meeting, Val alerted us:

Crisper news
Scientists win historic Nobel chemistry prize for “genetic scissors”
Two women have shared the prize for the first time, winning for their work on genome editing.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna

<Getty Images>

 

Read in BBC News: https://apple.news/AhV3i3KoeR5SyK9LMjH-8Zg

 and ......

a Spotify podcast with a terrific synopsis of the book

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Lo92NRsWXmf7vTve7RaVX

Thank you Val!

 

Meanwhile, back on the porch, graced with Ginger being present, we were missing Terry, as she was coping with a precarious maternity situation. Our heavy hearts were lightened to learn of Lucy's safe arrival a few days later on Friday, October 9th.

 

Lucy Jean Filice

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Terrie's suggestions for a Christmas read:

"You Better Not Cry" Augusten Burroughs* (chosen) 

"A Redbird Christmas" Fannie Flagg

"The Paper Bag Christmas" Kevin Alan Milne

My suggestions for our March selection:

"Hamnet" Maggie O'Farrell* (chosen)

"The Divine Miss Marble" Robert Weintraub

"Why Fish Don't Exist" Lulu Miller

"Owls of the Eastern Ice" Jonathan C. Slaght

Up next:

Happy reading,

LK

September 2020 Bookclub News

 

 

Here we zoom again....

 

Dear Bookclub,
Sarah M. Broom's "The Yellow House" had us clamoring for more on Katrina, reminiscing about our family houses, and appreciating the depth and complication of place, identity, race and inequality. The memoir's heroine, in our admiration, Sarah's mother, Ivory Mae, was a wonder. The heartbreak, resilience, tenacity, and radiance of New Orleans East beamed hard-core. Broom's task to inform the reader of an existence beyond our bubbled recognition loomed large. At times, we considered it too long and cumbersome. But the affection and love for the house was the thread, even when the house no longer existed. Sharing a vast variety of emotion, affection and otherwise, of our homes, past and present, proved a curious exercise. Returning to the day to day struggle Broom reported, the tedium necessary, left an exasperation for a solution:

"In 1970, the mostly white teachers still called students niggers. Things like this still happened: Michael, ten and in fifth grade, scored a perfect grade on a math test. "They put a big old zero on the thing," he said. "And so I'm checkin' it, going ... I don't know what's wrong. It wasn't nothing but adding and subtracting. So I'm saying, this supposed to be right. I said something must be wrong with my brain that this look right to me..... They gave me a zero so it have to be wrong? But everything was right." The white girl sitting in front of him - teacher's pet- turned around to look. "I was embarrassed for her to see my paper. I kept on checkin' it. I couldn't believe it. She said, loud-like, 'Gimme that paper nigger'" and snatched the test from Michael's hand." 

And then he stabbed her with his pencil, damning his future. How can that be forgotten? Chef Menteur Highway; cutting the lawn for a house not there; an enlisted man named Edward Webb, seemingly murdered, characterized as a 'hit and run'; the Road Home Program; and on and on.

New Orleans

 

 

 

Images from my photos:

 

 

 

 

 

I love this place.

 

 

The levees cannot go unmentioned. Please check out the recent NPR piece, "The Legacy of Hurricane Katrina 15 Years Later":

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904292994/the-legacy-of-hurricane-katrina-15-years-later

 

Activist and author, founder of the levees.org website, Sandy Rosenthal, pictured here with "Treme" star and Garden District resident, John Goodman:

 

https://levees.org/ 

 

 

 

Terrie's suggestions for an upcoming read:

 

"Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" Isabel Wilkerson

 

"A Woman is No Man: A Novel" Etaf Rum *chosen

"The Girl with Louding Voice: A Novel" Abi Dare

 

 

Up next:

 

Short listen- review of "The Tangled Tree":

https://radio.wpsu.org/post/bookmark-tangled-tree-radical-new-history-life-david-quammen

 

Happy reading,

LK

 

 

August 2020 Bookclub News

 

The August Zoom

 

 

 

Dear Bookclub,

Lidian Jackson Emerson, imagined by Amy Belding Brown in "Mr. Emerson's Wife", brought forth a variety of bookclub observations. Being married to Ralph Waldo Emerson jettisoned Lidian into our imaginations as a woman to be admired and studied, yet the reality of 19th century life in Massachusetts dragged her into the trenches of drudgery, popping our happy, little thought-bubbles. Val commented on the pace slowed with the detail, yet the writing, very good. The pace and detail may accentuate the mundane in daily existence illustrating the obstacles for travel, exchanges, growth and development.  As Trudy noted, Lidian, being an activist for abolitionism, was also enslaved(not equating of course!)* in household management which allowed for Mr. Emerson to do his work along with hosting colleagues in their home. We really wondered how much was true, noting that Brown did strongly state that this is a work of fiction. At the forefront of that wonder, was Lidian's relationship with Henry David Thoreau. Much is illuminated on that topic in the article from Terrie below.

 

 

Lidian Emerson with son Edward, circa 1847

 

This is an excellent history although strangely, found on a blog "History of American Women" with 

Lidian being a 'famous wife', it ends up mostly being about Ralph Waldo Emerson. Note in the first paragraph: *'She opposed slavery, supported women’s rights, and considered marriage to an unfit mate to be tantamount to slavery.'

 

Please enjoy:

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2012/01/lydian-emerson.html 

 

 

 The link below to the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson just makes me long to go to Concord! Click on the link, 'People' ..'who lived here'.... to see some great pix of the cast of characters.

 

 

Bush

 

https://www.ralphwaldoemersonhouse.org/ 

 

 

Lidian

 

Terrie shared a New York Times article from November 1987 reviewing Delores Bird Carpenter's "The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson", the book Brown encouraged readers to explore in her Acknowledgements:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/29/books/dear-mr-emerson.html 

I weakened and bought the book! I love it of course. The letters do provide a much deeper understanding of Lidian for me, her letters portraying scenes, many familiar, others an enhancement to Brown's telling. Layering these letters with our book does Lidian's charm and intelligence much justice. 

 

Check out this dear picture of Waldo, placed by Lidia's letter to her sister Lucy, the first after Waldo's death. Just a week after he died of scarlet fever, the letter is heartbreaking to read.

 

 

 

 

Trudy's suggestions for an upcoming read:

 

“Women Rowing North”  Mary Pipher

“The Splendid and The Vile” Erik Larson

“Things We Cannot Say” Kelly Rimmer *chosen

Please note that our next book was to be Aja Raden's "Stoned" coordinated with a visit to the GIA. Wanda suggested three more selections to replace that choice until the GIA reopens:

  

"The Yellow House" by Sarah Bloom *chosen

"Overstory" Richard Powers

"The Vanishing Half" Brit Bennett

 

Val off to her coif

 

 

 

Up next:

 

 

 

Happy reading,

LK

PS My sleuthing found this interesting long ago lecture (well March 2015 - not 1895) about Ellen and Edith Emerson entitled:

"For the Love of Your Sister’: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and the Emerson Legacy”

 

Edith and Ellen

 

https://historyprogram.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wwwl-dorothy-o-helly-works-in-progress-lecture-for-the-love-of-your-sister-ellen-tucker-emerson-edith-emerson-forbes-and-the-emerson-legacy/

We are endeared to sisters! Kate Culkin's book is still forthcoming.