Book Clubs Are Where It's At!

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I had the most lovely time last night visiting a book club in Omaha, Nebraska! 

It was my wonderful mother-in-law's group. There were about 20 of us, and we met in the beautiful St. James church and school, which also happens to be where my husband went to grammar school. We had luscious homemade lemon bars and cookies and drank coffee and pink lemonade.

And we talked about books.  This group is a review group, rather than a book discussion group, and so one person reads a book and gives a synopsis and talks about it.  In this case, a wonderful and lively woman told us all about Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. It has a happy ending, but boy does it have a lot of excitement in the middle.  Just when you think it can't get any worse for poor Niamh/Dorothy/Vivian, it does.  She's a girl from Ireland who immigrates, loses her family, and then is shipped West on the orphan train to be adopted by one horrible family after another.  Eventually she gets a good family though reconnects with a boy she met on the train.

And they were so great about my book!  I read a bit from my short story collection, How to Be a Man, and they laughed in all the right places.  I talked about writing and publishing.  They all came up to me afterwards and chatted and were so great!  I love you guys! You are my people.

Book Club

Book club was at my house last night, and it was a hoot! In the middle of the month when you look at the book that you didn’t necessarily choose but have to read and think about the arrangements you’ve got to make to get ready, it seems daunting. But then you get together and have such a good time, you want to have book club twice or three times a month. Plus the group of women who get together are just fabulous. Interests vary from specfic/horror to Victorian novels to quirky mysteries to quirky nonfiction. So we’re always reading something different and we try to have something light after a couple of dark books. I’ve truly enjoyed the books we’ve read. Some were hard to get through, and some were pure delight, but I’ve loved getting to read things I never would have picked up on my own.

We read Tom Piazza’s City of Refuge, so we did New Orleans and hurricanes for the theme. One friend was going to make gumbo, but we had to cancel and reschedule a couple of times, so she made her delicious chicken enchiladas instead. We had rich pie ~ half pecan and half not ~ and yummy dirty rice and donut holes (couldn’t find any beignets). I made corn bread with cheese and chiles, and we had hurricanes to drink. We talked about the book but also about ghosts and the new scary paranormal movie and blogs and all kinds of stuff. We decided to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid for next month.

I had a revelation as I was trying to figure out why I felt so distanced from the characters in this month’s book. I pondered this a long time. One reason was that it was in the style of a newspaper article, but more specifically, the revelation was that we were being told, rather than lead through and shown, the emotions and what was happening. We were held at an arms’ length from the characters, or there was a wall between the reader and the characters. So that’s a note to self ~ Self, remember to show, not to tell. Let the reader feel the emotion, rather than telling him or her to feel.

And I’m making more progress on the story I’m working on.

What I’m Reading Today: Stephen King’s short story “Premium Harmony” in the New Yorker. Even though I don’t read much horror, I’ve always been a fan of Stephen King.