Monday Memories--Book club memories 2002

From a letter. "I had book group here September 9. I finished the book, “John Adams,” that Monday morning!  I made my mother’s apple walnut “Autumn bread” recipe and Phoebe’s cheese ball with crackers.  The leader, Carolyn A. did a fabulous job.  She’s been a John Adams fan for 20 years, and brought along all her other books about him, many of which had wonderful illustrations.  Our next selection for Oct. 7 is “Peace like a River” by Leif Enger.  I’ve been taking it down to jury duty, but haven’t made much progress.  In December I’ll be leading “The Persian Pickle Club” by Sandra Dallas, a wonderful story about women in the Depression.  Everyone loved the condo [we'd moved in January 2002].  It was still light enough they could see the grounds.  One lady asked me if we overlooked a park.  It really is that lovely.  I must get busy and finish the decorating.  It is hard after you live with it for awhile, because you sort of don’t notice some of the oddities.  This group formed in 1979, and still has about 3 or 4 of the original members, and some who’ve been with it for 19 or 20 years.  I didn’t join until I retired in 2000, so I’m a real novice at reading on command.   One woman said that when they started they had 20 women and 24 babies."

From a letter.  "Book group meets tonight, [November 4, 2002].  I stop at Adrienne’s about 2 miles north, and she’ll drive us up to Muirfield (northwest of here) to the hostess’ home.  The book is Anne Tyler’s “Back when we were grown ups,” and I can’t say I enjoyed it much.  I hope someone else has something to offer.  I can’t imagine a woman taking so long (she is 53 when the novel opens) to figure out her 4 daughters are all losers. With names like Patch, No-No, Biddy, and Min-Foo, what can you expect? Although people usually talk about Tyler’s humor, I thought the only funny part was when she gets together with her old boyfriend from high school/college for dinner (she is a widow and dumped him to marry her husband) and finds out what a dud he is too.  She had sort of romanticized the memory of their time together. I sort of felt they deserved each other--she’s been wearing a fake happy face for 30 years and he’s been following rigid routines and is mad because she walked out on him."