Book Club: What are you reading?

[ssusan]

I ‘read’ it on audible. Michelle is the reader so she is telling her story. LOVEd it.
I was making chicken soup the other day while listening to it.
I was so happy.

[agate]

I just finished In the Woods by Tana French--well written, held my attention. I thought I'd try a police procedural. This one is set in Ireland and concerns two different murder episodes.

Now I'm starting on An American Sickness: How Health Care in America Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal. I believe someone here mentioned this book here a while back?

[Pegakafarmgirl]

"One More Day">>> by Kym Klass, is a good read about suicide, moving on, and healing,, a story about Katie {my neice}, who commited suicide,,,, her sister Kym is the author

[agate]

So sad about your niece, Peg--but how nice that her sister wrote a book about the experience. I hope the book will have lots of appreciative readers!

[Lazarus]

I just finished -Educated-. I think SSusan mentioned it earlier. Anyway, it is good. Tara Westover tells her own story raised as a Mormon and having a tyrant father who is like one of those survivalists. A king ruling his entire family who believes in every possible conspiracy theory much to the detriment of his wife and children. Tara escapes and gets educated. Even though she never attended those evil public schools she ends up getting several degrees Harvard Princeton? Cambridge in England and yet she suffers from hostile and violent family connections.

[stillstANNding]

Thanks Linda. I sent that to my mom yesterday.

ANN

[ssusan]

I just finished ‘The Invention of Wings’ by Sue Monk Kidd. It’s a historical novel that takes place in South Carolina in the 1800s. Two girls , friends from an early ag one is a slave, the othe the daughter of the slave owner. The story weaves from each’s perspective as each gains a voice.
Very compelling story. Well written.

[Lazarus]

I started a book today that is fantastic. It is so good I am reading it even though I have it on audible too. ( I will read and later listen before my book club meets)

I knew nothing about the book and expected a silly story but, from the moment I opened the book I was involved. Great style and important content. -The Women in the Castle- by Jessica Shattuck a book dealing with WWII that I think will focus on the greatness of ordinary people.

Here is a sample of it:
“
The Women in the Castleby Jessica Shattuck

Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.

Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah’s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck’s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.“

[Virginia]

I just finished The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills.

This is book about Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird. She had never authorized a biography of her life and this is more about notes, tapes, transcripts, interviews and conversations with the author. They became friends when the author, who was from Chicago went to a small town in Alabama where Harper lived with her much older sister to interview Harper for the Chicago Tribune for something the Chicago Public Library was doing. They were having something called "One Book, One Chicago" and To Kill a Mockingbird had been chosen.

The author was able to talk to Harper Lee's older sister Alice Lee and later Harper Lee called her at her motel and they had dinner. The author stayed in this little town and continued to talk to the two of them, many times with Harper over dinner at a small restaurant or over coffee at McDonald's or Burger King. They became friends and when later the author had to take disability from the Chicago Tribune due to her Lupus giving her problems she moved to this small town in Alabama, and eventually next door to Harper and her older sister.

They spent quite a bit of time together and she recorded a lot of Alice Lee's conversations and took notes with Harper Lee.

One interesting thing that I did not know is that Truman Capote lived next door to Harper when they were children. She went to Kansas to help him with research, etc when he wrote In Cold Blood. They became estranged when people tried to say that Truman had written much of To Kill a Mockingbird. He had not written any of it.

Now I am going to read Educated and then I will read The Women in the Castle that Linda mentioned and possibly The Invention of Wings that Ssusan talked about. That one I have to check out because there is a possibility I have read it.


Edited to add: It has been many years since I read To Kill a Mockingbird and I would not mind re-reading it after reading the book about the author.

[Lazarus]

I just finished The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills.

This is book about Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird. She had never authorized a biography of her life and this is more about notes, tapes, transcripts, interviews and conversations with the author. They became friends when the author, who was from Chicago went to a small town in Alabama where Harper lived with her much older sister to interview Harper for the Chicago Tribune for something the Chicago Public Library was doing. They were having something called "One Book, One Chicago" and To Kill a Mockingbird had been chosen.

The author was able to talk to Harper Lee's older sister Alice Lee and later Harper Lee called her at her motel and they had dinner. The author stayed in this little town and continued to talk to the two of them, many times with Harper over dinner at a small restaurant or over coffee at McDonald's or Burger King. They became friends and when later the author had to take disability from the Chicago Tribune due to her Lupus giving her problems she moved to this small town in Alabama, and eventually next door to Harper and her older sister.

They spent quite a bit of time together and she recorded a lot of Alice Lee's conversations and took notes with Harper Lee.

One interesting thing that I did not know is that Truman Capote lived next door to Harper when they were children. She went to Kansas to help him with research, etc when he wrote In Cold Blood. They became estranged when people tried to say that Truman had written much of To Kill a Mockingbird. He had not written any of it.

Now I am going to read Educated and then I will read The Women in the Castle that Linda mentioned and possibly The Invention of Wings that Ssusan talked about. That one I have to check out because there is a possibility I have read it.


Edited to add: It has been many years since I read To Kill a Mockingbird and I would not mind re-reading it after reading the book about the author.

I went to NY yesterday to see Aaron Sorkin’s new play of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I can’t believe My friends had gotten us tickets in the first place. Then there was no snow, no bad weather and no accidents on our way to NY that would have created a mess. And I hired the limousine driver I have used before. He took us to within 10’ of the door and was there to pick us up within 10 minutes after I called him at the end of the show!

The two friends who went with me used to to teach with me and both used to teach the novel. So each had read the book about 50 times. What an experience.

[Virginia]

What a wonderful treat for you Linda. So glad you got to do this. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird became very good friends with Gregory Peck, who of course played Atticus Finch in the movie. She was very close to him, his wife and all his family.

[Lazarus]

Yup. Harper Lee had an interesting life. As Truman Capote became a heavier and heavier drinker and as he had trouble writing anything he was quite nasty and their friendship ended.

PBS has been showing an interview with Harper Lee’s sister. Not sure what year it was or if the sister is still alive. Her sister in the interview is quite elderly and has a very gravelly voice that is at times hard to understand. But it is an experience watching it!

[Virginia]

She was in her 90s during the time the author of The Mockingbird Next Door was interviewing both of them. After the sister went into an assistant living place the author still visited her. She lived to be 100. According to this author she was the sweet one. She followed in her father's footsteps and became a lawyer in the same practice he worked in. She worked there even in her 90s. She was content doing this. Harper who was called Nelle in real life had a little broader horizons and therefore had traveled more.

However, Nelle still was kind of complex. She had traveled and met very famous people, but when she was living in Monroeville, Alabama she stayed in a back room of the modest house where her sister lived. It was the room her Father lived in when he was alive. They had no washer and dryer, and Nelle and this author use to take their clothes to a laundromat to wash and dry them. Alice, the sister had a lady who stayed in the room when Nelle was in New York where she kept an apartment. She died at age 89.

They were so close when I read that they were in different assistant living places, I just wondered why. Nelle had a stroke before Alice went to live in Assistant Living. I just wondered why Alice did not go to the same one. If this is mentioned please let me know.

[Virginia]

I just finished Educated, which has been reviewed on here by several people. I know Linda did. I liked the book. The story will stay with me for a long time I think.

Now, I am going to read The Invention of Wings. I remember the author from when I read The Secret Life of Bees.

[agate]

I'm trying another mystery--this time by Peter May, The Blackhouse.

And I'm going to try Elena Ferrante again. I gave up on the first book of her series of novels when I was not even halfway through it.
It's called My Brilliant Friendand is the first of four novels with the same characters and the same story unfolding over time.