December 2011 Book Club Christmas Party "Shakespeare's Restaurant"

 

Hi Everyone,

“Let the New Year begin!” Let’s challenge ourselves to read books in 2012 that not only entertain us, but enlighten and dare our thinking. Kicking off with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a great start. A best selling young adult pick and soon to be in the theaters, this book is not so much a work of science fiction as it is an allegory. Read it for fun or read it for the deeper meaning, but try to make it on Tuesday, January 24 to Panera Bread for our next meeting at 6:30 P.M. to discuss this first book in The Hunger Games trilogy.

Sitting at home for most all of my holiday vacation (stomach flu struck the Smiths), I had time to reflect on our book choices of 2011. I graphed them by preference and found it looked somewhat like a lopsided bell-curve. We had more dynamos than we did flops, so all-in-all it was a pretty good year. Go ahead and join me in critiquing our year’s books by using your own review system:

67. January 2011: Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambley
68. February 2011: Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay *
69. March 2011: Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown *
70. April 2011: The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Krung ***
71. May 2011: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen ***
72. June 2011: The Dirty Life by Kristen Kimball***
73. August 2011: The Paris Wife: a Novel by Paula McLain**
74. September 2011: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson ***
75. October 2011: 5th Avenue, 5 A.M. by Sam Wasson
76. November 2011: Little Bee by Chris Cleave

One thing I like to do at the end of a year is compile my favorite quotes from the books we have read. The quotes are those that may identify human weaknesses we all share, offer advice for mankind, or help us to become kinder towards ourselves and one another. These are my top 10 quotes for the year:

o    The Book of Bright Ideas  “You can’t judge a person by what they’re doing, till you know why they’re doing it.”

o    The Book of Bright Ideas  “Our kids are only nine years old and already we’ve got regrets. How damn bad is it gonna be by the time they’re grown?

o    Water for Elephants  “It’s a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my death, like when teenagers distance themselves from their parents in preparation for leaving home.”

o    The Dirty Life  “Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome.”

o    The Dirty Life  “I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people…did I really think that a person with genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets law?...There’s no better cure for snobbery than a good ass kicking.”

o    The Dirty Life  “All the rural places we’d seen in our search for land, the unused farms on good soil, the empty silos…and the generations of accumulated skill and local knowledge and the sense of belonging to a place would dead-end with this generation.”

o    The Paris Wife  “Not everyone out in the storm wants to be saved.”

o    Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand  “The world is full of small ignorances. We must all do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don’t you think?”

o    Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand  “Young people are always demanding respect instead of trying to earn it.”

o    Little Bee  “A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Be thinking about 2012 and what you would like to read. There are books out there just waiting for us; we just have to start digging to find them. Ask your friends, surf the net, listen to the radio and TV talk shows, search the library and book stores. I have attached a list of Butler Public Library’s book sets for book clubs. My homework for you is to look through the list and do some research on at least three that you think you might like to read from this list or ones you have found on your own. Come to book club with your sales pitch!

To recap on our last book club meeting, it was held on Friday, December 9 for our 7^th annual Christmas party. After meeting everyone at Appleby’s in Butler (very organized thank you!) we carpooled to Shakespeare’s Restaurant.  In attendance were Sharon and Steve Appel, Ginnie and Lee Barnhart, Jody Barnhart and Colin Gaiser, Barb and Jim Direnzo, Becky and Jim Ferguson, Lori and Doug Lawson, Cheryl and Greg Ramsey, Tim Smith and myself. We had a great turn out!

Shakespeare’s was one of the best dining experiences I have had since leaving Italy. Every course and every bite was delectable. It was an excellent choice both in dining and in atmosphere. The extravagant Christmas decorations really set the mood for our holiday event; the Christmas trees topped with wild game feathers were especially a hit with Jim Ferguson. I myself could have stayed the whole evening in the restaurant’s lounge and listened to the soft vocals of their local “Mel Torme” crooner. 

Although, as you all know, we traditionally do not read a book for December; our party is considered a formal meeting. One of the major items we discussed on December 9 and motioned to implement was to start collecting a small donation at meetings to go towards a charity. If everyone donates one to two dollars at each meeting they attend, by the end of the year we can give a sizable donation for books to our chosen charity. This is a wonderful idea of Cheryl Ramsey’s and a great motion to commemorate our seventh year as a thriving nonprofit organization! But most of all, the love we all have for reading will be shared with those who lack the enrichment of reading opportunities, and as we all know, they are many. Cheryl has been elected as our book club’s secretary, and as of December’s donations, she has recorded our first charity piggybank balance, $16.

In conclusion, I am excited about 2012. We have 7 years under our belt and 76 books to our reading credit. The charitable fund adds a motivational factor to drive us forward. So I’ll end as I began, “Let the New Year begin!”

Your friend in reading,

Tammy