Book Club

As an attempt to read a few books outside of our normal comfortable range, my husband and I have joined a book club at a local library.

We've chosen our comfortable books because we enjoy them obviously. Almost always. Without wasting a great deal of precious time discovering that we don't like them. I often read books recommended by friends who know what my tolerances are for sex, pain, graphic detail, and general ugliness. It's a very low tolerance and this system works for me.

I guess it doesn't hurt to grow a little and try new things, but the successes this year have been few with the book club. Things are looking up.

I love Amy Tan. The other book was recommended by a lady in the club and I've always wondered about Salman Rushdie.

Last night we discussed The Birth House by Ami McKay and I loved the story and the writing. It was a nice change after the violence of Beirut and the crime and neurosurgical detail of Saturday.

I had a history with this book. A few years back I read The Birth House for the first time while camping. It was also a library book. One of the girls' best memories from that summer was the storm we experienced in southern Saskatchewan.

We're tenters, and one night tent was threatening to blow over and it was really raining. The girls are focussing on "Trustworthiness" at school right now and this tent had not yet earned our trust. My cousin wisely suggested that maybe a tent under a tall tree wasn't the best thing in a thunder storm. We carried our sleeping girls through the rain to share my cousin's tent trailer.

11 people in a tent trailer. Did we sleep at all? Would you? The kids actually did, waking up and wondering where they were in the morning.

After trooping back to our tent, we learned that the tent had survived and everything in it was dry.

Until later that day when I wanted to sit in the sun and enjoy my book. My sodden, water soaked The Birth House book. It had acted like a sponge in the corner of the tent, soaking up all the water that had managed to make it's way into the tent.

I finished the book, carefully turning the wet pages so they wouldn't tear, and then tried to dry it out. After paying the $30 penalty from the library, I thought maybe I could keep it and read it again. 'Twas not to be.

I'm terrible with my treatment of books. This is an extreme example, but don't ever lend them to me without knowing how "loved" they will look when returned.

This was a book we read a few months back in the club and I did enjoy it. I even started reading it a second time while I had it in my possession from the library. Well, now I can finish it...again! I won a draw last night and this is what came home with me. Yay me!