Correction!! Correction!!

Apparently, reading a calendar is too challenging a task for me :(

The corrected book club date is Saturday, December 1 at 1pm.  Sorry for the confusion!! 

Better Late Than Never Book Club Brunch

&

Hey Ladies,

I can't apologize enough for the delay in getting in touch with all of you regarding our end of summer book club meeting!!  Although, I am happy to report that we have our next gathering all set up for Saturday, December 2 at 1pm at Aunt JoAnn's house.  We will be discussing Defending Jacob by William Landay as well as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  Please shoot me an email if you can make it and I can pass along driving directions.  I hope this proves to be a great time to get together before the craziness of holidays begin!  I put the discussion questions below and can't wait to see everyone.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS - DEFENDING JACOB

1. How would you have handled this situation if you were Andy? Would you make the same choices he made? Where would you differ the most?
   
2. Before and during the trial, how would you have handled the situation if you were Laurie? Do you feel she made strong choices as a mother and a wife?
   
3. Is Andy a good father? Why or why not?
   
4. Do you believe Jacob is guilty?
   
5. Is Jacob a product of his upbringing? Do you think he is he a violent person because his environment makes him violent, or do you think he has violent inclinations since birth?
   
6. Bulleying is such a hot topic in today's media. How did the author incorporate it into the story, and do you think it's role had anything to do with Jacob's disposition? How do you think people should stop adolescent bullying?
   
7. How much of a factor did Jacob's age play into your sympathies for him or lack thereof? If Jacob were seventeen, would you view him differently? What about nine?
   
8. Do you think Neal Logiudice acts ethically in this novel? What about Andy? What about Laurie?
   
9. What was the most damning piece of evidence against Jacob? Was there anything that you felt exonerated him?
   
10. If Jacob hadn't been accused, how do you think his life would have turned out? What kind of a man do you think he would grow up to be?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

1. Pride and Prejudice is probably Austen's most famous, most beloved book. One element, the initial mutual dislike of two people destined to love each other, has become a cliché of the Hollywood romance. I'm sure you can think of numerous examples.
   
2. This book has been described by scholars as a very conservative text. Did you find it so? What sort of position do you see it taking on the class system? It has also been described as Austen's most idealistic book. What do you suppose is meant by that?
   
3. In 1814 Mary Russell Mitford wrote: "It is impossible not to feel in every line of Pride and Prejudice...the entire want of taste which could produce so pert, so worldly a heroine as the beloved of such a man as Darcy.... Darcy should have married Jane."
   
4. Would you have liked the book as well if Jane were its heroine?
   
5. Have you ever seen a movie version in which the woman playing Jane was, as Austen imagined her, truly more beautiful than the woman playing Elizabeth?
   
6. Who doesn't love Elizabeth Bennet?!!
   
7. Two central characters in Austen have her own first name.
   
8. In Emma: Jane Fairfax is a decorous, talented, beautiful woman.  In Pride and Prejudice: Jane Bennet is everything lovely.  What do you make of that?
   
9. Lydia and Wickham pose a danger to the Bennet family as long as they are unmarried and unchecked. But as a married couple, with little improvement in their behavior, this danger vanishes.
   
10. In Pride and Prejudice marriage serves many functions. It is a romantic union, a financial merger, and a vehicle for social regulation. Scholar and writer Mary Poovey said that Austen's goal "is to make propriety and romantic desire absolutely congruent."
    
11. Think about all the marriages in the book with respect to how well they are fulfilling those functions.  Is marriage today still an institution of social regulation?  What about it would change if gay marriage were legally recognized?
    
12. Austen suggests that in order to marry well a woman must be pretty, respectable, and have money. In the world of Pride and Prejudice, which of these is most important? Spare a thought for some of the unmarried women in the book—Mary and Kitty Bennet, Miss de Bourgh, Miss Georgiana Darcy, poor, disappointed Caroline Bingley. Which of them do you picture marrying some day? Which of them do you picture marrying well?
    
13. Was Charlotte Lucas right to marry Reverend Collins?
    
14. What are your feelings about Mr. Bennet? Is he a good father? A good husband? A good man?
    
15. Darcy says that one of Wickham's motivations in his attempted elopement with Georgiana was revenge. What motivations might he have had for running off with Lydia? (Besides the obvious...)
    
16. Elizabeth Bennet says,".... people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever."
    
17. Do any of the characters in the book change substantially? Or do they, as Elizabeth says of Darcy, "in essentials" remain much as they ever were?
    
18. 10. Elizabeth is furious with Darcy for breaking up the match between Jane and Mr. Bingley. Although he initially defends himself, she changes his mind. Later when Lady Catherine attempts to interfere in his own courtship, he describes this as unjustifiable.
    
19. Should you tell a friend if you think they're about to make a big mistake romantically?
    
20. Have you ever done so? How did that work out for you?

Summer Reading

Phew, my apologies!!  I have finally recovered from the last book club (all I have to say is that we, eight ladies, managed to finish 1 HANDLE of Grey Goose, 2 bottles of Peach Champagne and 1 1/2 bottles of wine... oh me, oh my) and have gained my composure enough to begin to think about our summer reading list. 


We decided to dip back into the classics and read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice along with the New York Time's Best Selling Defending Jacob by William Landay.  I will reach out to you all around the end of August to come up with our next meeting date and time.  I hope you all have a wonderful summer, enjoy some good/trashy books (I may or may not be reading Fifty Shades of Grey) and I look forward to us all getting together, once again, in the fall (for our 3rd year!!).  

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain

REMINDER!!

Here is your friendly reminder that our next book club is this Friday, June 1 at 8pm.  Please shoot me an email if you need directions to my house.  I posted the discussion questions below, I didn't go through them(since I haven't finished the book yet) so I hope they are good ones.  Can't wait to see you there, pray for nice weather!!  Usually, we pick a couple books to read over the summer break, so make sure you bring a lot of suggestions!! 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(courtesy of Princeton Book Review)

1. In many ways, Hadley's girlhood in St. Louis was a difficult and repressive experience. How do her early years prepare her to meet and fall in love with Ernest? What does life with Ernest offer her that she hasn't encountered before? What are the risks? 2. Hadley and Ernest don't get a lot of encouragement from their friends and family when they decided to marry. What seems to draw the two together? What are some of the strengths of their initial attraction and partnership? The challenges? 3. The Ernest Hemingway we meet in THE PARIS WIFE—through Hadley's eyes—is in many ways different from the ways we imagine him when faced with the largeness of his later persona. What do you see as his character strengths? Can you see what Hadley saw in him? 4. The Hemingways spontaneously opt for Paris over Rome when the get key advice from Sherwood Anderson. What was life like for them when they first arrived? How did Hadley's initial feelings about Paris differ from Ernest's and why? 5. Throughout THE PARIS WIFE, Hadley refers to herself as "Victorian" as opposed to "modern." What are some of the ways she doesn't feel like she fits into life in bohemian Paris? How does this impact her relationship with Ernest? Her self-esteem? What are some of the ways Hadley's "old-fashioned" quality can be seen as a strength and not a weakness? 6. Hadley and Ernest's marriage survived for many years in Jazz-Age Paris, an environment that had very little patience for monogamy and other traditional values. What in their relationship seems to sustain them? How does their marriage differ from those around them? Pound's and Shakespeare's? Scott and Zelda's? 7. Most of THE PARIS WIFE is written in Hadley's voice, but a few select passages come to us from Ernest's point of view. What impact does getting Ernest's perspective have on our understanding of their marriage? How does it affect your ability to understand him and his motivations in general? 8. What was the role of literary spouses in 1920's Paris? How is Hadley challenged and restricted by her gender? Would those restrictions have changed if she had been an artist and not merely a "wife"? 9. At one point, Ezra Pound warns Hadley that it would be a dire mistake to let parenthood change Ernest. Is there a nugget of truth behind his concern? What are some of the ways Ernest is changed by Bumby's birth? What about Hadley? What does motherhood bring to her life, for better or worse? 10. One of the most wrenching scenes in the book is when Hadley loses a valise containing all of Ernest's work to date. What kind of turning point does this mark for the Hemingway's marriage? Do you think Ernest ever forgives her? 11. When the couple moves to Toronto to have Bumby, Ernest tries his best to stick it out with a regular "nine-to-five" reporter's job, and yet he ultimately finds this impossible. Why is life in Toronto so difficult for Ernest? Why does Hadley agree to go back to Paris earlier than they planned, even though she doesn't know how they'll make it financially? How does she benefit from supporting his decision to make a go at writing only fiction? 12. Hadley and Ernest had similar upbringings in many ways. What are the parallels, and how do these affect the choices Hadley makes as a wife and mother? 13. In THE PARIS WIFE, when Ernest receives his contract for In Our Time, Hadley says, "He would never again be unknown. We would never again be this happy." How did fame affect Ernest and his relationship with Hadley? 14. The Sun Also Rises is drawn from the Hemingways' real-life experiences with bullfighting in Spain. Ernest and his friends are clearly present in the book, but Hadley is not. Why? In what ways do you think Hadley is instrumental to the book regardless, and to Ernest's career in general? 15. How does the time and place—Paris in the 20's—affect Ernest and Hadley's marriage? What impact does the war, for instance, have on the choices and behavior of the expatriate artists surrounding the Hemingways? Do you see Ernest changing in response to the world around him? How, and how does Hadley feel about those changes? 16. What was the nature of the relationship between Hadley and Pauline Pfeiffer? Were they legitimately friends? How do you see Pauline taking advantage of her intimate position in the Hemingway's life? Do you think Hadley is naïve for not suspecting Pauline of having designs on Ernest earlier? Why or why not? 17. It seems as if Ernest tries to make his marriage work even after Pauline arrives on the scene. What would Hadley it have cost Hadley to stick it out with Ernest no matter what? Is there a way she could have fought harder for her marriage? 18. In many ways, Hadley is a very different person at the end of the novel than the girl who encounters Ernest by chance at a party. How do you understand her trajectory and transformation? Are there any ways she essentially doesn't change? 19. When Hemingway's biographer Carlos Baker interviewed Hadley Richardson near the end of her life, he expected her to be bitter, and yet she persisted in describing Ernest as a "prince." How can she have continued to love and admire him after the way he hurt her? 20. Ernest Hemingway spent the last months of his life tenderly reliving his first marriage in the pages his memoir, A Moveable Feast. In fact, it was the last thing he wrote before his death. Do you think he realized what he'd truly lost with Hadley?

Next Meeting June 1

Hey Ladies,

Let me know if you all can make it on Friday, June 1 at 8pm to have our final book club gathering before we break for summer vacation.  I will be hosting and hopefully the weather will be nice, so we can lounge around in the yard.  I hope everyone can make it!! 

And the Winner is...

For our next gathering, and last one before summer vacation, we will be reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  Defending Jacob lost by a mere one vote, so I definitely think it's a book that needs to pop up in the rotation next year.  Sorry to not have everything sorted out ahead of time but I will send out another email in a couple weeks regarding dates.  So please let me know if there are days or weekends that will work best for you. 

Below are the suggestions I received for the next gathering, plus a  description about each book. I put up a poll for us to vote on the ones we like, so please vote over here.

I'm thinking we'd be getting together towards the end of May or beginning of June, I'll send out another email (I know, I know) in a couple weeks so we can nail down a date.  If you could please send in your choices by the end of the weekend, that would be fantastic.

*The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

* Defending Jacob by William Landay

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He's his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own?between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he's tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis?a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.

* The Paris wife by Paula McLain

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

* The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

There is a city where those who have died live on for as long as someone still alive on earth can remember them. This is the conceit behind Kevin Brockmeier's new novel The Brief History of the Dead. The novel is set in a not-too-distant-future where terrorist warnings are a daily, glossed over event and Coca Cola ad-campaigns inexplicably parody anthrax mailings and a plague is quickly wiping out mankind. This 'City' where the dead exist is rapidly emptying as the plague wipes out more and more of the world's population, as fewer people are left to remember them.
Laura Byrd, who is in Antarctica on a research mission and cut-off from the rest of the world (and the plague), is at the center of the story. She's only beginning to wonder why she hasn't had contact from headquarters in some time and being alone in her station is making her a little stir-crazy. Her research partners ventured out for another station nearby and haven't returned and now she's faced with the decision to leave her camp in search of them or remain where she is until the food runs out. Luckily for the sake of the narrative, she decides to go forth in search of her partners, setting in motion a series of adventures that cause her to recall so many of the memories that begin to connect her to all the people left in the City.
The Brief History of the Dead is a fantastic statement on the mercurial nature of memory. As the dead in the City begin to realize they all have one person connecting them Laura Byrd turns over in her mind all the people she's known in her life and the seemingly inconsequential encounters she's had with such a large number of people. The memories pile up as her attempt to brave the tundra reaches its inevitable conclusion. Who and what she remembers and why define Laura Byrd and because the inhabitants of the City are depending upon her memory to keep their world intact, her memories start to define their existence as well.
Brockmeier creates very believable pictures of both the City and Laura Byrd's trek through the arctic. He stumbles a bit here and there with digressions and side stories that are ultimately unnecessary. But what doesn't work isn't uninteresting- just extra padding and what works really works. The details and rules of the City are related and revealed with perfect timing. The gravity between Laura Byrd and the City's inhabitants, while always apparent, becomes heavier with an emotional resonance that works surprisingly well through to the end, as their separate orbits begin to collide.