Hello Book Club!
The April book club is soon approaching, but I would like to postpone it for a week. Last month at the March meeting we talked about junior club member, Makenzie, joining us and instructing a yoga class. She cannot make it this week, but she said she can make it next Thursday evening, April 30. Becky and Ginnie cannot make it on our original night either, so it may be best if we go ahead and move our date. We should meet at my house at 6:30 P.M. The book we are reading is called Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani. It is a page turner, full of romance and historical memoirs of New York during post WWII when conservative social customs were still in vogue.
Last month’s book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is another post WWII novel. Mary Ann Shaffer’s and Annie Barrow’s book is set in England and the English Channel. The book is compiled of letters between a writer, Juliet Ashton, and her publisher, friends, and a literary society from a small island called Guernsey. This book has everything I love about books. First, it has history. I found it interesting to read about how the Germans took over the island of Guernsey and especially how a Society like the Potato Peel Pie would operate as a front simply for its members to eat. It reminds me of the old TV show Hogan’s Heroes. The book also has romance. Juliet obliviously falls in love on Guernsey with the most humble of characters. Clustered between their blossoming relationship are a host of the literary society’s comical personalities whom create a sarcastic tone to the story that emerges. This leads me to irony, the third most alluring attribute of this book.
No book is worth reading if it doesn’t have its share of wisdom. When Juliet interviews Will Thisbee for her book, he shares his love of the prudent writings of the author Thomas Carlyle. This thought came to Carlyle while walking at the Abbey of Bury in St. Edmunds “… men used to have a soul, not by hearsay alone, but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! … but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls… we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.
Thisbee’s response to Carlyle’s quote was just as poignant. “Isn’t that something,” he said, “to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I had a soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.”
Only minutes after reading this passage, I picked up my daily devotional called God Calling. (This is the book of which I bought my first copy at a garage sale, and after crumbling apart from years of use, I happened upon another copy last summer at Punxatawney library’s used book sale.) This book, I have shared before, has been a consistent inspiration to me over the years. Let me share with you the passage from March 16, so you can judge how closely God’s message resembles the words from the previous quotes:
“My children, I am your life, the very breath of your soul. Learn what it is to shut yourself into the secret place of your being. True it is, I wait in many a heart, but so few retire into that inner place of the being to commune with Me. Wherever the soul is, I am. Man has rarely understood this. I am actually at the center of every man’s being, but, distracted with the things of the sense-life, he finds me not. All down the ages men have been too eager to say what they thought about My truth, and so doing, they have grievously erred. Hear Me. Talk to Me. Reflect Me. Do not say what you think about Me. My words need none of man’s explanation. I can explain to each heart.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a heartwarming story very skillfully written. I especially love how the authors cleverly penned the amusing anecdote about the famous writer Oscar Wilde into the story. The idea of Wilde’s chance meeting with a young Granny Pheen distraught over her drowned cat is delightful. The lovable character Isola had kept letters Wilde had written her Granny in an effort to console her grief over the dead cat. For years, Wilde composed for Granny descriptive tales of the cat living out his nine lives. Naturally, I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed “The Pie Society.” I’m sure everyone will share this title with friends as a book club favorite.
Visit our book club blog www.tsmithkcwwbc@blogspot.com to add your own responses to our recent reads.
Yours in reading,
Tammy
