RIP - no pictures 'cause my kids have my cameras!

Today officially marks the demise of the book group. Many of my friends and neighbors met on the first Tuesday of each month to discuss a book that we had chosen. Someone was the discussion leader – that person also picked the book. Someone else was the hostess; this lucky woman had us all over to our house for a lovely luncheon. These were golden times. None of us worked. Well, we worked, just not for money. We all had children at home and that was our job. We often laughed as much as we actually discussed the book. Like the time someone said that the lemon Jell-o salad with the maraschino cherry on top looked somewhat similar to breast implants. I have no idea what book we actually read that month, but I do remember the Jell-o salad. Several people suggested that I write a book about the group. It would be great. It could be one of those pink-covered paperback books you pick up in the airport. You know the ones, about society women, bored, spenders; except we weren’t society ladies – just middle class moms. No one was particularly bored, and I am pretty sure that none of us were big shoppers. A book just wouldn’t have been a good idea, however. I am not sure that any of us wanted funny stories told about us to strangers, even if the names had been changed to protect the innocent/guilty.

Anyway, over the past 16 years, the demographics of the group changed. Children grew up, sometimes there was a divorce, and a group member went back to work. It was like sending a child off to college, only you were sure that they would never come back. Once gone, it seemed that it was true that you couldn’t go home to book group again. The next change came when we began to invite others to fill in the blanks. We chose women like us, whose children had grown up and maybe didn’t have enough to do. For a while, we powered on again until people began to move to smaller houses or travel because they were no longer encumbered with school-age children. We were never again able to bring more than 5 or 6 of us together at one time. We even stopped going to each other’s homes so it wouldn’t be a burden on anyone. We tried to choose an interesting new restaurant each month. I even suggested that we give up the intellectual pretense of being a book group and just be a lunch group.

For me, I think the beginning of the end came when we read The Life of Pi. Most of the group thought it was a great, deep, even profound book. I just thought it was silly and perhaps I am showing a little shallowness, but I just really didn’t get it nor did I want to. I tried to read it and got about 3 chapters into it and said, "Enough!!" Sort of when I tried to read The Hobbit and only got to page 60 (3 times). So last month, Lani and I went to lunch all by ourselves. We didn’t have a book to read and no one else around to discuss it. It was a little sad that there were not more of us there, but I did have a great time visiting with Lani, catching up on her family. It’s funny how we are neighbors and go to church together, but sometimes have no idea of what it happening with our friends. That was the best part of book group. I shall miss it.
I never felt compelled to read something I really wasn’t interested in, but did read some things that I might not have chosen for myself and loved them. Here are some of the things we read over 16 years. It is only a short list. There is not enough room on the internet for the complete list:

The Known World. Letters from a Woman Homesteader. Follow the River. Angle of Repose. The Kite Runner. Reading Lolita in Tehran. Lincoln by Gore Vidal. The Woman in White. Crocodile on the Sandbank. A Morbid Taste for Bones. Northanger Abbey. The Three Musketeers. The Count of Monte Cristo. Eight Cousins. The Scarlet Pimpernel. The Deep End of the Ocean. Cold Mountain. Snow Falling on Cedars. A Lesson Before Dying. Ellen Foster. The Road to Coorain. Tuesdays With Morrie. Birdsong. Possession. Interpreter of Maladies. Man’s Search for Meaning. Leave it to Psmith. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Book Group, Rest in Peace.