Future Book Selection Possibilities

In preparation for May...

Here are a few possibilities for May and June I found after looking at a few book lists and digging them up on Amazon.  Take a look and see what you think, and bring more suggestions Wednesday if you've got them!

(All summaries and reviews below, as well as images below, found at: www.amazon.com)

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira:

The Civil War offers a 20-year-old midwife who dreams of becoming a doctor the medical experience she craves, plus hard work and heartbreak, in this rich debut that takes readers from a small upstate New York doctor's office to a Union hospital overflowing with the wounded and dying. Though she's too young for the nursing corps, Mary Sutter goes to Washington, anyway, and, after a chance meeting with a presidential secretary, is led to the Union Hotel Hospital, where she assists chief surgeon William Stipp and becomes so integral to Stipp's work she ignores her mother's pleas to return home to deliver her sister's baby. From a variety of perspectives—Mary, Stipp, their families, and social, political, and military leaders—the novel offers readers a picture of a time of medical hardship, crisis, and opportunity. Oliveira depicts the amputation of a leg, the delivery of a baby, and soldierly life; these are among the fine details that set this novel above the gauzier variety of Civil War fiction. The focus on often horrific medicine and the women who practiced it against all odds makes for compelling reading.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton:

Like Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic The Secret Garden, Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting--from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot. This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts, while the mysterious Authoress's fairy tales (every bit as magical and sinister as Grimm's) whisper truths and ignite the imaginary lives of children. As Morton draws you through a thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story could cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren't clothed in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the heady stench of emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that furtively flourished in the glasshouse of Edwardian society. While most ache for a spotless mind's eternal sunshine, the Authoress meets the past as "a cruel mistress with whom we must all learn to dance," and her stories gift children with this vital muscle memory. --Mari Malcolm

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls:

For the first 10 years of her life, Lily Casey Smith, the narrator of this true-life novel by her granddaughter, Walls, lived in a dirt dugout in west Texas. Walls, whose megaselling memoir, The Glass Castle, recalled her own upbringing, writes in what she recalls as Lily's plainspoken voice, whose recital provides plenty of drama and suspense as she ricochets from one challenge to another. Having been educated in fits and starts because of her parents' penury, Lily becomes a teacher at age 15 in a remote frontier town she reaches after a solo 28-day ride. Marriage to a bigamist almost saps her spirit, but later she weds a rancher with whom she shares two children and a strain of plucky resilience. (They sell bootleg liquor during Prohibition, hiding the bottles under a baby's crib.) Lily is a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player. Assailed by flash floods, tornados and droughts, Lily never gets far from hardscrabble drudgery in several states—New Mexico, Arizona, Illinois—but hers is one of those heartwarming stories about indomitable women that will always find an audience. (Oct.)

 Saving Cee Cee Honey Cutt by Beth Hoffman:

Momma always told CeeCee (short for Cecelia Rose) that “being in the North isn’t living—it’s absolute hell.” Of course, having to live with Momma—Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, that is, Vidalia Onion Queen, 1951—doesn’t make it any more heavenly, especially when Momma starts standing in the front yard blowing kisses to passersby. You know this is going to end badly, and so it does, when the erstwhile onion queen is run over by a speeding Happy Cow Ice Cream Truck. Before you can say “sweet magnolia blossoms,” 12-year-old CeeCee is sent off to Savannah to live with her elderly great aunt, Tallulah Caldwell, and her wise African American housekeeper and cook, Oletta. It being 1967, you know there will be one dark episode of racial hatred, but it’s quickly—and conveniently—resolved offstage, leaving all the characters free to continue being relentlessly eccentric, upbeat, sweet as molasses, and living, as CeeCee puts it with a straight face, “in a breezy, flower-scented fairy tale . . . a strange, perfumed world that . . . seemed to be run entirely by women.” Light as air but thoroughly pleasant reading. --Michael Cart

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton:

In her cinematic debut novel, Kate Morton immerses readers in the dramas of the Ashbury family at their crumbling English country estate in the years surrounding World War I, an age when Edwardian civility, shaken by war, unravels into the roaring Twenties. Grace came to serve in the house as a girl. She left as a young woman, after the presumed suicide of a famous young poet at the property's lake. Though she has dutifully kept the family's secrets for decades, memories flood back in the twilight of her life when a young filmmaker comes calling with questions about how the poet really died--and why the Ashbury sisters never again spoke to each other afterward. With beautifully crafted prose, Morton methodically reveals how passion and fate transpired that night at the lake, with truly shocking results. Her final revelation at the story's close packs a satisfying (and not overly sentimental) emotional punch. --Mari Malcolm


Thoughts???

Book Club Combo: Dinner and a Movie Night

Paging the Book Club:

I need some input this week.  Let me know if you're coming, and what your vote is for the options below so I'm not left stranded alone at the movie theatre with nothing but highly caloric popcorn to comfort me.

I've looked up showtimes for Wednesday night, and the schedule isn't exactly working in our favor if we're sticking with our normal Book Club timing... so there's a few ways we can play this.  Give a holler and let me know what works for you.

The movie is at 6:30 and is two hours long, so we're looking at an 8:30ish end time. The only other movie time was after 8 and good night nurse, that would mean a post 11:oo bedtime and I'm just not sure I have it in me.  If you're game, let me know.  But I'm running with the 6:oo plan...

Option 1: Pull an early meeting and do dinner at T.R. at 5:oo then go see the movie.

Option 2: Slam a PB&J at home with the kids, then meet at the theatre between 6:15ish-6:30 and go out for dessert or coffee afterwards at TR or Coldstone or... [insert good post-movie restaurant here].

Option 3: Meet at Coldstone for ice cream at 5:45 (who says we can't just eat dessert for dinner?) and see the 6:30 movie.

Option 4: Meet at Jimmy Johns at 5:45 for a not-so-gourmet but still delicious and conveniently faster dinner then go see the 6:30 movie.

What I'm trying to say is...I don't think we'll have time for dinner at TR and still make the movie if we meet at our normal time around 6, and I'm tossing a bunch of ideas out there because I'm not sure when hubbies or babysitters will be available to watch the littles and we might need to fly by the seat of our pants this month and switch it up a little bit. =)  Let me know what works for you, and we'll nail down a plan in the next 24 hours.

Heads-Up: movie tickets are going to cost your first born child's college education, so plan accordingly. $9.50 unless you have an old college ID laying around or you have a grey wig and can get in as a senior. =)

Also...bring some book recommendations for May and June!  We'll pick our next two books Wednesday night!

All this willy-nilly planning for this month is going to give me a stomach ulcer.  I promise next month we'll have a solid plan long before the week of Book Club.  My sanity depends on it.

Shout out to *Pam* who will be spending next week in Florida!  Am I the only one wondering why she didn't invite the Book Club ladies to join her?!?! =)

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

April Book Club!

Hi Ladies!

I'm so sorry its taken me so long to pull together a plan for April...I've been scrambling to get my house up on the market, to throw my baby boy a birthday party, and to find a venue for our April Book Club.

I'm happy to report all have come to pass, and we have a plan for April!

 (image found at amazon.com)

We're reading Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, and we're going to combine our April Book Club with a showing of Water for Elephants!  Wahoo!  You can thank Trudy for that genius idea!

If you aren't excited about the movie, check this out....and get excited!

If you haven't started the book yet, fear not!  It is a quick read once you get started from what I remember- and the book itself isn't too long. =)

On April 27, we'll meet for an early dinner out at Twisted Rooster, where we'll eat, drink, and merrily discuss Same Kind of Different as Me,  then we'll head over to the theater to catch the show.

I'll be back with details regarding times in a week when they have the showtime schedule posted since the movie doesn't open until April 22. ...I picked Twisted Rooster because its near the theater, and I'm currently obsessed with their fish and chips- but if you've got a hankerin' for something else close to Celebration,  give a shout out in the comments and we'll hit it up instead!