Butler Women of Wisdom Book Club

Hi Everyone, Hope everyone enjoyed the much needed Thanksgiving break. It has been a crazy November with Makenzie home from Italy for my niece Allene’s wedding and then the multitude of wedding festivities. Now I need to concentrate on updating all of you on our November meeting and the next book club, our yearly Christmas dinner. Only three of us attended the meeting on Saturday, November 13 - Becky, Ginnie, and me. It was a gorgeous blue sky Saturday, perfect for enjoying the outdoors and the remaining fall leaves. In response to our book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, we spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon in the Mennonite community of Harmony. There we browsed through the town’s quaint shops during their annual German Christmas Market. In every store we oohed and awed over the most unique treasures – art, antiques, German pastries, colonial crafts, and toys. For our book club discussion, we dined on the patio of the local “haunted” Harmony Inn, a rare ...

Hi Everyone, I know this is last minute, but book club will convene Saturday, November 13. After reading the book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, we will visit the Mennonite community of Harmony, PA. Saturday is their annual Christmas Market. To start, we will park at the Butler' Kohls parking lot at 10:45 A.M. then carpole to Harmony. While there we will have lunch and discuss the book and our upcoming Christmas book club. If you haven't read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress , treat yourself to a good time. It is a hilarious as well as an easy read. My comments on the Blue Notebook are brief as I only finished reading it in response to duress. Although mildly disturbing and definitely erotic, the story of Batuk has an innonence that survives the ugliness. Levine's style of writing is fluent and colorful. It sails. Cheryl and Ginnie identified a quote from their reading that I believe captures the essence or theme of the book, "You can never ...

Easy Company takes the flag up Mt. Suribachi; they had been fighting for 4 days and had already suffered 40% casualties. Hi Everyone, Our September book club convened on Wednesday, September 28, at Ginnie’s house in Chicora. Members in attendance in addition to Ginnie were Cheryl, Jody, Lori, Sharon, and me. Our selection  Flags of Our Fathers ; Heroes of Iwo Jima by James Bradley, provided a biographical account of the 6 flag raisers immortalized by their famous photo, raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. Clearly, a heartfelt work of love in memory of his father, Bradley’s book will affect every reader who peruses its pages. For the young, it will spark patriotism; for the middle-aged, it will remind them of their heritage; and for the old, it will take them home. My son-in-law, a US Naval Officer, read Bradley’s book, and I am certain its contents have inspired in him an even stronger passion for the service he is now giving to our country. My mother read it and throu...

Dear Book Club Members, With only a day to spare, I am writing the email up to the very onset of our next meeting, Wednesday, September 29 at 6:30 P.M. This meeting will take place at Ginnie’s house , Glenford Village, Chicora. We will be discussing the book Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. Butler people will leave from my house at 5:45 and from the old Eastland Diner, now Butler Heart Center, at 6:00 P.M. In attendance at our August meeting were Barb, Becky, Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, and Tammy. Junior member Makenzie, and “honorary male member” Vince also attended. (Now our Italian correspondents, we hope that Vince and Makenzie will allow us to live vicariously through them as we do the many characters we read about in our books.) In October, we will be celebrating six years as an organization. As we recollect the discussions at our meetings from childbirth, sending kids off to college, marriages, becoming grandparents, to the passing of loved ones, breakups, and heal...

Hi Everyone, If you didn’t read the July 2010 book, Love and Summer by William Trevor, there is really no need to take the time. Those of us that met on Wednesday the 14th to discuss the selection did not proclaim its virtues. Angie, Barb, Ginnie, Sharon, and me, attended the meeting at Panera Bread. We enjoyed our conversation and the warm summer evening under a patio set outside the restaurant. Love and Summer required “reading between the lines.” Ordinarily, I prefer analytical reading to the direct approach, but not with this one. I found the writing unnecessarily inflated with pointless observations by the narrator. In his rambling, he failed to create connectivity between the characters. No two characters shared a stimulating enough relationship to bind me emotionally to the story. Miss Connulty, for instance, clearly despises her mother and finds running the inn her most important vocation over those of being a wife and sister. As for Ellie and her husband Dillahan, their...

Hi Everyone, Not surprisingly, I’ve lost track of time since the recent wedding festivities and nuptial aftermath. Now, with our next book club already upon us, I am fully aware of my neglect of administrative duties. With that being said, we will meet at Panera Bread on Wednesday evening, July 14 at 6:30 P.M. to discuss the book Love and Summer by William Trevor. Since discarding my temporary identity as “mother of the bridezilla” and unskilled “wedding planner,” it is now my goal to return to the uneventful groove of everyday living. In my next email, I pledge to be timely and full of interesting discussion topics generated from our upcoming book club. See you Wednesday! Tammy

Hi Everyone, Yes, this is an unusually early book club email, I know, but I thought I would get an early start this month as compared to the one day notice I gave everyone for our March meeting. Amazingly, seven members were present Tuesday night at Panera Bread: Becky, Barb, Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, and me. Our March book was The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli. Enjoyed by all, it is an intriguing history lesson in fourteenth century Italy. Set during the time of Leonardo da Vinci, the subject of da Vinci’s famous painting the Mona Lisa is the main character and narrator of the story. Elisabetta by name belongs to a family of nobility, the daughter of a struggling silk merchant. The book begins as Elisabetta is approaching her thirteenth birthday, the age of eligibility for young Italian girls. The plot revolves around a series of unexpected events that postpone then interrupt the success of her “coming out” party. A parallel plot is uncovered as Napoli weaves the tumultuous story o...

Hi Everyone, I procrastinated sending an email right up to the very day of our next book club meeting. In fact, we meet tonight at 6:30 P.M. at Panera Bread. The book we are reading is called The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli. If you missed last month’s feature read, Help by Kathryn Stockett, you may want to put it on your summer beach read list. It is now on our list of favorites. I was so glued to the pages that I barely took notes! We loved the the black maids, Aibileen and Minny who served their white “ass” bosses tirelessly and with true southern dignity. We hated Miss Leefolt for her treatment of poor little Baby Girl and Miss Hilly for controlling the lives of everyone in Jackson. It served her right to eat Minny’s “pooh” pie! In addition to the colorful characters, Help is heaping with household tips and advice for the lovelorn. We were mystified by Minny’s many uses for the miracle product, Crisco, and the possibilities of Miss Skeeter’s sexual correction tea. This book...

Hello Everyone, Unless you are lucky enough to have planned your island vacation this week, like me, you are probably tucked inside a mountain of white snow reading our next book, Help by Kathryn Stockett. This book is a perfect transition from the southern setting of our January read Adriana Trigiani’s Big Stone Gap, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, to the deeper southern roots of our country, Jackson, Mississippi. The story takes place at the onset of the volatile civil rights movement of the Kennedy years. With that in mind, the next discussion will be invariably enlightening; so if you missed the last meeting held at Panera Bread on Thursday, January 22, you may try to make it to the next “Panera” meeting slated for Thursday, February 25 at 6:30 P.M. Members who were present at our January discussion were Barb, Becky, Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, and me. All of the book reviews on Big Stone Gap were right on the nose. No one lost on this one. “Funny, charming, and origi...

Happy New Year Everyone, Already several weeks have passed since our festive bookless Christmas dinner. In all, we had a showing of 17 people. The members in attendance were Becky, Cheryl, Christine, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, Sharon, and me. Junior members Makenzie and Kristen also joined us along with spouses. We began our evening at the Ferguson home where we indulged in an abundant display of holiday appetizers while strolling from room to room admiring their charming Victorian home. Neither Thomas Kinkade nor Currier and Ives could have painted such a classic Christmas display. One could take pleasure in one hollied nook, and, yet, eye another just as delightful. Needless to say, when it came time to depart for dinner, we had to pull ourselves away from the charming warmth of the Ferguson home. St. Jude Country Club did not disappoint us. The rustic lodge décor of the restaurant featured leather couches and hard wood floors. Fresh pine bows were laden on chandeliers and windo...