Meeting: May 14, 2015

Linda Jenkins hosted a cozy meeting, providing delicious veggie soup, quinoa salad, and other treats.  Nancy French, Christe Gillespie, Julie Howard, Linda Jenkins, Annie Larkin, Jo Smith, and Liz Webster were in attendance.  Prior to discussing the book, we talked a bit about empty nesting, which was on Annie's mind with Emma graduating from high school, along with customary topics that included the DNR, Scott Walker, the railroad, and education.

The view from the Jenkins' house on a grey, rainy evening

The Cellist of Sarajevo was a book that exhibited human spirit under duress. Liz found the book difficult to finish from an emotional standpoint. Linda noted that the characters in the story were so busy surviving and figuring out how to cope that their world shrunk. They didn't have time to be in touch with friends, family, and neighbors.  Jo was wistful when the cellist's 22 days came to an end.  She wanted him to keep playing.  It seemed that many of us wished chapters had been devoted to the cellist, as well, as we would have liked to know more about him.

Julie read this excerpt about Arrow because she thought such stereotyping of people eventually could make a group of people less than human, so they were more easy to kill:

The Sarajevo she fought for was one where you didn't have to hate a person because of what they were. It didn't matter what you were, what your ancestors had been, or what your children would be. You could hate a person for what they did. You could hate a murderer, you could hate a rapist, and you could hate a thief. This is what first drove her to kill the men on the hills, because they were all these things. But now, she knows, she's driven mainly by a hatred of them, the idea of them as a group, and not by their actions.

Nanc and Jo also thought the excerpt touched on the Bosnian Serbs attempt to cleanse Sarajevo of non-Serbs, which was largely the reason for the siege of Sarajevo.

These quotes (also in Arrow chapters) stuck with Annie:

You don't choose what to believe.  Belief chooses you.

and

She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human.  It's a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever.

and

... she felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. 

and sadly,

The opportunity to die was everywhere, and it just wasn't that surprising when that opportunity became an event. 

The group in attendance decided we'd like to make a donation to Trempealeau's Shirley M Wright Library in the name of the Waterview Book Club.  The smallest tile on the donation board requires minimum of a $250 donation. It would seem that we could reach that amount with about a $25 donation from each member.  We will begin to collect the donations at our June meeting.

June Meeting:

Book: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Location: Nancy French's

Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Time: 6:30pm

We've also planned for the following months:

July: Still Alice by Lisa Genova

August: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

September: Ruby by Cynthia Bond

October: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

November: Movie night to watch To Kill a Mockingbird ???

Books we've read so far:

January 2014 - Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
February 2014 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
March 2014 - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
April 2014 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
May 2014 - The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
June 2014 - Breaking Free by Marilyn Sewell
July 2014 - The Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline
August 2014 - The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
September 2014 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
October 2014 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
November 2014 - The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
December 2014 - No book.  Holiday gathering.
January 2015 - No book.  Watched The Book Thief
February 2015 - The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
March 2015 - Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

April 2015 - The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
May 2015 - The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway