June 2012 Book Club "The Girl With the Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier

Hi Everyone,

Summer is certainly spiraling to an end since some of us met in June. During our meeting, held in unison with the Butler Symphony Garden Tour, we very lightly discussed the title The Girl with a Pearl Earring during breakfast at Anderson’s Restaurant on Main Street. Becky, Cheryl, Ginnie, Barb K., Lori, and I were in attendance. Greg, Cheryl’s husband, an avid gardener and horticulturist also joined us for our tour.

For our garden excursion, we were blessed with a perfectly lovely day, pure sunshine and the pungent scent of summer roses.  Those of you that didn’t attend missed one of Butler’s most captivating events. As we strolled through one enchanting garden after another, we were mystified by the range of plant varieties, the ingenious landscaping, the creative yard furnishings, ornaments, and “animals,” but most of all the vivid displays of color. After sauntering through gardens all day, I felt like I had just returned from a relaxing spa or a mini vacation. I believe we all came away truly inspired from the tour, newly invigorated to spend time in our own gardens weeding, planting, and creating magical places of beauty and solace. Needless to say, the Butler Symphony’s Garden Tour, like their Christmas Home Tour will definitely be a mainstay on our book club’s calendar. 

As for our book title The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, I’ll give it 2 stars out of 3. It was certainly a quick read, I read it on my flight to Portugal and finished it on the beach. It wasn’t particularly thought provoking, but it did not lack in page turning capability. Most definitely more fiction than history, Chevalier builds a subtly provocative tale of forbidden love simply from the romantic images she draws from Vermeer’s great work The Girl with the Pearl Earring.  

 I would consider the book more of a psychological drama. Written in first person narration, we enter the thoughts of the main character, Griet. Forced into a job as a servant by her parents who have recently undergone hard times, Griet is quickly infatuated with her new Master, the famous painter Johannes Vermeer. The unspoken interplay that Griet exchanges with the artist while going about her duties looking after his home and family contains just enough sexual tension to keep you reading. Griet never fully tells us the seedy intensity of her feelings towards Vermeer, but we recognize the subliminal messages in lines like, “Sir, perhaps you should have me do other things, things that a maid does.”

Vermeer softy asks, “What does a maid do?” 

Griet tells us she had to wait a moment to respond, her jaw was trembling. She adds, “I forced my gaze up to his eyes. I felt as if I were burning, but I endured it - he wanted me to.” 

Griet is willing to bare all as Vermeer paints her portrait. The passage where Griet agonizingly forces a needle through her ear namely for the sake of pleasing her Master, is symbolic.  The throbbing pain yet erotic satisfaction Griet feels from the piercing is equivalent to her excruciating desire to lose her virginity to Vermeer. However, when her hair (again symbolic) which always remains hidden under a cap is exposed after Vermeer interrupts her in the changing room, Griet undergoes a psychological change. The incident represents the figurative end to Griet’s virginity. Once done, her tresses unleashed, she feels used and exploited. So what does she do? She runs out into the night to find her suitor, Pieter the son, and lets him take her virginity, literally, in the back alley of a tavern. 

The Girl with the Pearl Earring offered enough implicit information for me to enjoy a bit of passion and romance. Unlike Fifty Shades of Gray, our May title, Chevalier did not resort to dishing out the trashy stuff. There is something to be said for modesty, and I rather prefer it. Sadly, however, there are more people who think otherwise. Recently, Becky sent me an email concerning our May title; read my attachment to learn about the alarming content she discovered. After you read it, then say a prayer for the state of the world’s moral demise!

As for our August book club, upon receiving only a handful of responses to my text message yesterday, I rendered a date for this month’s book club. We will meet at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, the 22st, at my house. There is no assigned book for August; it is your personal choice. Just come and share any book that you enjoyed reading this summer. I do have a homework assignment, though.  Try to identify an object of symbolism in your book then if you can, find the object or a picture of it to bring with you. It is sure to help you remember the most important details of your title when it is your turn to share. Be analytical! In addition, bring your favorite farmer’s market style snack and we’ll celebrate the tastes and textures of summer. 

Finally, for those of you who requested a copy of our book club’s reading list; it is included as a second attachment to this month's email.  I look forward to seeing everyone and sharing not only our books but our stories of summer travels and events. 

God bless,

Tammy

April and May 2012 Book Clubs "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James and "Fifty Shades of Gray" by E.L. James

Hi Everyone,

Our book club met for our May meeting at Natilie’s North Pizzeria. Those in attendance, Becky, Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, Mary Beth, and my-self, all agreed that the restaurant was a nice alternative to Panera Bread for our discussion; less crowded and noisy. Also, the pizza was tasty and the BYOB option was a bonus! We will definitely use Natilie’s North Pizzeria as a location for future meetings. 

As for our discussion of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, our book club was in less agreement.  The disturbing sexual content made reading for some a conflict of morals. Others accepted the raunchy sex acts as simply a part of a twisted plot and an addictive character.  I freely admit that I was one of those who could not wrap my mind around reading the pornographic material alluded to by the Fifty Shades of Grey media-blitz.  Above all, when I heard the initial reactions of members who had started the book, my decision not to read our May pick was confirmed. We all know our limits, what we can and what we cannot assimilate. I was comfortable with my decision not to expose myself to something that would obviously cause me personal distress.

Few people are more open to learning about the world than me; heck, I’ve spent most of my entire existence reading and learning. However, at this point in my life, there are just certain things that I refuse to waste my time understanding, and one of those things happens to be reading about the explicit descriptions of perverted sex acts. Naturally, if the topic happens to unexpectedly rear its twisted head in a novel I am reading, I’ll get through it; especially if the content is teaching me about a cultural norm or a historical occurrence. In fact, many of our book club titles have featured characters who either willingly or unwillingly participated in deviant sexual acts – The Kite Runner, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The Blue Notebook, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to name a few.  

I’m concerned that the hype created over James’s novel is going to trigger a profusion of copy cat books on a topic of which the descriptive details of sexual addictions will reach even more disturbing proportions. Just as Twilight propagated a craze for the vampire genre, the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey is already spawning a market for what the media is labeling “Mommy Porn,” a product which certainly will trickle into the hands of our teens and adolescents. Unfortunately, the book is already on its way into film and like Twilight, it will undoubtedly produce such a rage that television will be vying for a piece of the pie. So get ready, because “Mommy Porn” programs will soon be competing for the prime time slots on our local cable channels! 

This is my last thought on a book that I did not have the moral resiliency to read. Tell me those who did read the book, what is the difference between a book sold in an adult bookstore and Fifty Shades of Grey? Although I have never been inside such a slimy establishment, I am not innocent of the reading material sold in a porn shop. Can we not deduce that those individuals who buy the product inventory featured in such places are not the same individuals who perform the acts described in Fifty Shades? With James’s novel on department store book shelves, and future books like it, this clientele will be able to shop more openly for their products because now Target and Walmart will also be marketing for a share of the “Mommy Porn” gold mine. If I sound a bit over-reactive, think about this: we are living in a country that not only supports same sex marriages, legal and insurance supported abortions, but at any time of day or night all one has to do to find porn is to click on their computer and type in the least remotely related word to a sexual body part or organ and hundreds of pornographic sites can be accessed within seconds. With this in mind, it is for certain that soon we will be strolling shopping carts around the “Mommy Porn” displays next to the Hallmark aisle!  

Forgive my opinionated response; it certainly does not reflect the opinions of others in our book club. So in moving on, I would also like to go back a few months to our April meeting since I was neglectful in writing a response to P.D. James’ title Death Comes to Pemberley. Becky, Barb K., Cheryl, Ginnie, Lori, and my-self met at Panera Bread to chat about this mystery.  Again, I have to be honest; the Baroness of Holland Park’s book does not make my list of 3-star ratings. 

 My main disappointment in Death Comes to Pemberley is how uninvolved I became with any of the characters. While a large portion of the exposition was given to recalling the inspirational source for the book, the classic novel Pride and Prejudice, not much was given to leading the reader into an emotional affinity with the now married Elizabeth and Darcy. I wanted to see passion in their marriage and be a part of it, but nothing. They are about as staunch conservative as their friends and families, there is no room for casual lovemaking (the traditional kind; not Mommy Porn) in their lives of formalities. The book simply contained no lasting qualities whatsoever. What was P.D. James trying to prove? Okay, the language is succinct with its predecessor, I’ll give the baroness that much; but enough with the copycat book trends! Are writers really running out of original thoughts these days? Or is the dummying down of America finally materializing in our literature along with that of our broadcasting media? 

For June we are playing the book selection game a little backwards. This time instead of reading a book before the movie premiers, we have picked a book that was already adapted to film in 2003 and was nominated for 3 Oscar’s. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier takes us to the 17^th century world of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The story is resurrected from a collection of Vermeer’s legal documents and from his haunting painting of “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” I’m crossing my fingers on this one and abstaining from premature evaluations. 

We are planning on combining our June book club with Butler Symphony’s garden tour which is scheduled for Saturday, June 16. Our group will meet at 9:30 A.M. at the Element Café on Main Street for a quick coffee and pastry before driving to the garden sites. Tickets for the tour can be purchased for $15 presale at Smith’s Florist, the Butler Symphony office on Main Street, and at Meridian Station in Meridian. Check out the following website for more details: 

http://butlersymphony.org/2012/04/26/2012-garden-tour/

 

Hope to see as many of you as can make it on June 16.

Yours in reading,

Tammy