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| View from Christe's driveway... which I forgot to take at book club, so it includes this weekend's snowfall |
Elsa hears how the drunk starts singing her song. Because not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.
Grandma telling Elsa what they would do if/when the "world is crumbling": And then Granny had squeezed her forefingers hard and replied, "Then we do what everyone does, we do everything we can." Elsa crept up into her lap and asked, "But what can we do?" And then Granny had kissed her hair and held her hard, hard, hard and whispered: "We pick up as many children as we can carry and we run as fast as we can."
Elsa remembers how Granny said that "the bests stories are never completely realistic and never entirely made-up." That was what Granny meant when she called certain things "reality-challenged." To Granny, there was nothing that was entirely one thing or another. Stories were completely for real and at the same time not.
At Granny's funeral - to Elsa from the lady in the black skirt: "Don't fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you." Elsa to the lady in the black skirt: "Granny always said: "Don't kick the shit, it'll go all over the place."
It's snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You'd quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story. Christmas stories are supposed to have morals.
Annie Larkin's reading: It's hard to reason about death. Hard to let go of someone you love. Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups are generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all of the idiocy----------space exploration, the UN, vaccines, and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the not-a-shit side as one can."
Britt-Marie and Elsa together: "And they sit on the chest together and eat chocolate Santas. Because you can be upset while you're eating chocolate Santas. But it's much, much, much more difficult.
~ Judy Lee
I found a few examples of how I enjoyed his use of language to describe characters...
'And when Elsa at last says she has to do something at home on their way to the hospital, Alf doesn't ask why. He just drives. He's good in that way, Alf.'
'And they drink coffee. As brothers do. Sit in Alf's kitchen and compare postcards from Britt-Marie. Because she writes to them both every week. As women like Britt-Marie do.'
'Elsa's mum tries to throw the globe at him. But Elsa's mum gets there first. Elsa will always love her for that.'
~ Annie Larkin
Just finished My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. Got a bit behind since I started “The Snow Child” by Eowyn Ivey.
I really enjoyed my grandmother.... What a creative story full of lots of great thoughts to think about ourselves and our fellow humans. Chapter 14 was really where the book came together for me and made me hungry to keep reading to find out more about all these interesting and “different” people living around Elsa. I love this chapter also for how Elsa and her mother really started relating to each other and getting to know each other as well as the “real” granny . I laughed so hard at the part where they end up at the hospital emergency entrance asking each other while waiting for the policeman to get help for Mum’s “supposed delivery”, “what would granny do?” Elsa replies, “she would have cleared out”! So, they look at each other and Mum puts Kia into gear and takes off! A bit of granny in Mum.
On p. 315, “ It’s snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story. Christmas stories are suppose to have morals.”
Looking forward to starting Beartown and finding out what Fredrik Backman has for us to think about 😊.
~ Linda Jenkins
Next Book: Beartown by Fredrik Backman
Location: Julie's
Date: Thursday, May 10, 2018
Time: 6:30pm
Date: Thursday, May 10, 2018
Time: 6:30pm
Future meetings:
June ??, 2018 - The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman at Linda's
Possible selections for the future include:
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stroud
- Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
- The Boy Who Knew Too Much by Cathy Byrd
- In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides
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
June 2015 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
July 2015 - Still Alice by Lisa Genova
August 2015 - The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
September 2015 - Ruby by Cynthia Bond
October 2015 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
November 2015 - No book. Watched To Kill a Mockingbird
December 2015 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2016 - All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
February 2016 - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
March 2016 - Brooklyn by Colm TóibÃn
April 2016 - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
May 2016 - Jewelweed by David Rhodes
June 2016 - One Woman's River by Ellen Kolbo McDonah
July 2016 - Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
August 2016 - Deep Water Passage by Ann Linnea
September 2016 - This Road I Ride by Juliana Buhring
October 2016 - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
November 2016 - No book. Watched The Boys of '36
December 2016 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2017 - About Grace by Anthony Doerr
February 2017 - Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates
March 2017 - Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
April 2017 - No book - meeting canceled
May 2017 - Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
June 2017 - The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier also watched The Girl with a Pearl Earring
July 13, 2017 - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
August 2017 - No book - meeting canceled
September 2017 - A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
October 2017 - Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
November 2017 - The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
December 2017 - No book. Holiday gathering.
January 2018 - To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
February 2018 - Wonder by RJ Palacio
March 2018 - Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
April 2018 - My Grandmother Told Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
