A Room with a View - April CC Book Club Selection

Certainly, would love to have lilacs with cedar.
My niece was married by Lake Winnipesaukee on a May day, and we scoured the neighborhood asking who would let us pinch some of their lilacs. The luscious scents, camaraderie of this tribe of clippers finding different colors, and lilac grace made it great fun. Thanks for reminding me of this.
Too warm here for lilacs, our home came with southern red cedars surrounding my northeast wall. They got salt burnt with hurricane Irma which has made their trunks more appealing texturally.

Fortunately, I live on the coastal breeze side and with the amount of rain has kept away the smell of any low tides. Although, last year brought a fish kill, where our county dropped dumpsters for folks on the bay …to clean their docks. It was horrendous, nothing like the rotting of huge dolphins and manatee. Almost as bad as a paper mill.

Conroy’s pluff mud descriptions are very accurate, I spent many a summer oyster and clam digging there.

Grey water as a pond of play should rock back memories. For me, Manhattan always smells like sweat mixed with gasoline; Fiesole is the vineyards, the wild grass, the finocchio, the hot dusty Florentine earth; Cortina d’Ampezzo is terracotta geraniums, basil, oakmoss, cedarwood. London is wet wool, used tea leaves, sweat, tobacco. Istanbul is turkish roses, patchouli, benzoin, frankincense.

Terrific nonfiction is Hare With Amber Eyes, a family memoir by British ceramicist Edmund de Waal.

Our neighborhood book club is reading “Harbor” by Lorraine Adams. My classics book club is reviewing: “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” I am currently reading “Gentleman in Moscow” having just finished, “The Plague and I”; and not to long ago read “Once Upon a River”<----good recommendation.
“Educated”; gripped me from start to finish.
Listened to “Bad Blood” on Audible on a cross country trip, it made it hard to make pit stops.
I will and do read anything.

That just brought vividly to mind a chapter from The Essex Serpent – an earlier CC selection. Those who read it will remember.

After you read A Gentleman in Moscow, you might enjoy our discussion from 2017: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1997887-a-gentleman-in-moscow-august-cc-book-club-selection-p1.html

I’m bummed that I missed a lot of the discussion on our current book. I have been sick and not up to much the last few days.
Regarding the next book to read, I really should abstain from that since I will be on vacation in June with no/limited access to internet. But I still want to try to read the book early and have notes that I can pull up for the discussion.
I am currently in the middle of Once upon a River. It is beautifully written and gripping. I have had Educated on my list from the library since January. The library has 99 copies of the book but I have barely moved from the high 3 digits to the mid. I doubt that I will get it before June.
These 2 books would be my choices. I have no vetoes at this point. I was going to suggest Life with Father to be paired with Educated but Cheaper by the Dozen is good.

I was also going to comment that a combo of 2 books about dysfunctional families doesn’t do it for me. I’ve read both “Educated” and "The Glass Castle. "Individually, both were excellent, but together? No thanks.

I rarely prioritize choices, but this time I will:
“The Weight of Ink”
“The Heart’s Invisible Furies”
“Once Upon a River”

Crisp,cold autumn nights will always remind me of high school football games. It is the smell of fallen, decaying leaves and fireplace fires, combined with the cold air. I grew up in Connecticut and now live in North Carolina. Every once in while I’ll get a night that has a similar feeling down here, but it is not quite the same. I think we may have too many gas fireplaces now.

Book choices -
Where the Crawdads Sing I just started this book!
Once Upon a River
The Weight of Ink

Hawaii smells like flowers and the clean smell of recent rain showers to me.

I’m glad there won’t be TWO books of dysfunctional/abusive families paired. I don’t think I could handle such a dark pairing.

I’ve only read Bad Blood of the books on the list. Have heard about sone of them though.

I’m trimming the list to remove a couple books that aren’t generating much “chatter” this time around. That leaves us with eight:

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

*The Heart’s Invisible Furies * by John Boyne

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

Educated by Tara Westover and Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth (memoirs)

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (non-fiction)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (non-fiction)

*Bad Blood by John Carreyrou/i

^ All great choices, but are there any on the list that a lot of people have already read, and therefore would rather not see chosen?

Just based on the descriptions, I would pick The Weight of Ink and Once Upon a River. Not that crazy over non fiction although Educated looks interesting.

Okay, based on the conversation, these are our five finalists. Go ahead and rank (or re-rank) your top three, if you haven’t already done so:

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

Educated by Tara Westover and Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth (memoirs)

If you feel strongly about a title–either pro or con–please share!

Once Upon a River or Educated/Cheaper by the Dozen - I really like the duet but @AnAsmom pointed out the wait list at her library for Educated/Cheaper by the Dozen. I checked my library system and ditto. I wonder if maybe we should take a look at the duet a time or two from now. Then again maybe everyone will have read Educated by then.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies

Killers of the Flower Moon

A dysfunctional family but I remember as a happy memoir nonetheless, funny anyway. The author grew up in Rhodesia/Zimbawe. Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Lets-Dogs-Tonight-Childhood/dp/0375758992

^ loved that book -

A dysfunctional family but I remember as a happy memoir nonetheless, funny anyway. The author grew up in Rhodesia/Zimbawe. Alexandra Fuller’s * Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood* https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Lets-Dogs-Tonight-Childhood/dp/0375758992

I have to admit pairing Educated with Cheaper by the Dozen tickles my funny bone. Our sixth grade teacher read *Cheaper by the Dozen * to us, I think I reread it at some point when my kids were small. It’s a quick light hearted read, but I think would provide a fun contrast.

Our library system has 210 copies and 577 holds for the hardcover of* Educated*, about the same proportions for the large print and audio versions, but way fewer copies of those. I’d imagine something will be available in the next month. It’s $15 as a Kindle or as a used book.

This caught my eye, "Rachel Kadish’s “The Weight of Ink” is like A.S. Byatt’s “Possession,” but with more seventeenth-century Judaism. (Possession is one of my all time favorite books and the first book I read with the CC Bookclub. So that gets a thumbs up from me as well.

Once upon a river
Where the Crawdads sing
The weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink
Where the Crawdads Sing
Once upon a River

No preference; especially because I will be out of pocket/hiking in the Jabal Akhdar of Oman until June 10. No expectations on access for wifi. I will read what the group selects and check in when I get wifi/back.

Thank you for the group’s link to “The Gentleman in Moscow.”

The votes are in and our June selection will be Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield!

Six out of eight voters put Once Upon a River high on their list, and @gnatius and @AnAsmom had particularly good things to say about it. @Midwest67 and @mathmom did not list the book, but also did not veto it, so I think we’re all good. Some of our regulars did not vote, but history tells me that’s because they are pretty much open to anything. I hope our lurkers will join us as well (waving at @Singersmom07 ?).

I’m looking forward to June, but I’m also looking forward to August because we had such great choices on our list this round. I hope to see the Educated/Dozen duo and The Weight of Ink come up again. Also, I just started The Heart’s Invisible Furies and already want to talk about it with someone, but I guess I’ll have to look for a human being in real life. ?‍♀️

I’ll start a new thread.

What are you reading in the interim?

(@author, have a great time on your trip!)

P.S. I think this is the first time we’ve repeated an author. As @SouthJerseyChessMom pointed out above, we read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield a long time ago. I looked back and that was a selection from 2009…so the by-laws are hereby amended to permit a repeat author every ten years. ?

I’m reading a bunch of stuff at the same time.

My main read is the last book in J.K. Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy. It treads the line between fantasy and sci fi, bringing to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s famous aphorism, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In addition to an engaging plot, it’s also an interesting meditation on what it means to be human, and what it’s allowable for an oppressed race to do in order to obtain their freedom. Strong, flawed and interesting female characters, as well as plenty of characters of undetermined gender.

I’m also reading The Secret Lives of Color both the history of pigments, but also the psychology and social history surrounding various colors.

On my Kindle I’ve been alternating between two books that couldn’t be more different.

One is The Book of Hot by “Mrs. Hot”. It’s based on her blog and basically extols the virtues of staying young and sexy and hot (with a little help from plastic surgery). I went to high school with her, and she’s pretty funny, but so not me!

Second book I’m slowly working my way through is Journey to the West a Chinese 16th century classic. It’s actually fairly entertaining, but all action and very little soul. I don’t know if I’ll finish it since it’s enormously long, but I would like to get at least the flavor of it. It’s very episodic, so easy to put down and pick back up again. I mostly read it on subway rides.

I read Once Upon a River a month or two ago. Thoughts ranged from I need to alert the CC Book Club to this one to I want to read it again. Looks like I get both. I’m happy - and already looking forward to the discussion.

I’ve gone back and picked up some books we’ve considered as choices but didn’t quite make the cut. I just finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and picked up Another Brooklyn by Woodson. In addition, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I’m not a fan. I found it tedious; thankfully it was short. When we considered it, @mathmom suggested pairing it with The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. I picked that up and enjoy it so much more than The Curious Incident.

@mathmom also mentioned - once upon a time - The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories. My daughter just gave me a Kindle and I decided to start with this Penelope Lively collection.

A friend’s husband sent me a book thinking I’d really like it: Off Armaggedon Reef - military science fiction. At first glance, the page count, list of characters, glossary, and map overwhelmed me. However, the reviews are really good, so I plan to give it a try.

As usual, thanks to @Mary13 for another fun discussion. I hope to see the Educated/Dozen duo show up again - maybe even The Heart’s Invisible Furies should the need for discussion overwhelm Mary. Guess I also need to give a nod to @mathmom since she seems to have influenced my bedside table books this month. Thanks to all who join in the discussions; I get so much more out of the books because of you.