The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

What a perfect book for February!  We all agreed that we thought this was a great book and one that left us wanting to learn more about Islam, Rumi and Shams. One of the members wasn't able to attend and she shared her thoughts:  "This was a tough book to read for me. The cultural differences made me aware of how little background I had to understand and enjoy the book. Names, titles, practices, religion all created barriers for comprehending the novel within a novel. I recall a line from the book I will paraphrase. Religions are like rivers in that they all run to the same place. We are are all more alike than different."  I think that some of us felt that the Forty Rules of Love could very well have been directed with Christians in mind.

Some mentioned that the book was hard to get into with the characters until they looked back and re-read parts of the book and figured out who each chapter was about. Another concern was the book going from modern day to 13th century time period.  Some questioned why the author had the modern day storyline, would have just liked the medieval time period story alone.  We shared that combining helped to compare the two story lines.  Someone said they would have rather had the Ella part out of the book; another  person stated "Loved the Ella part, read every Ella page first."  A few people had stated they would have never picked up this book but was so glad it was a part of our book club.  {Noted:  a good reason for our book club, we read books we would have never picked up.  We would have missed out on a great read.}

It was noted that each chapter begins with the letter B.  Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, which I believe means, "In the name of Allah, the Benevolent and Merciful" is mentioned in the beginning of the book.  There are a lot of chapters and if I counted right I saw it came to 94.  I wondered if there were 99 chapters because there are 99 names of God in Islam. 

One of the fourty rules of love which I thought connected well with the story in this novel "Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things may seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!  It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given, but also for what he has been denied." 

It was a wonderful evening of discussion and the local cable channel was there to record some of our thoughts. We will keep you posted on their tv show.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

When I first was reading this story, I couldn't believe how big of a novel it was.  When I was about a third of the way through I understood why.  It is one of those stories that needs the expanded time to explain, that needs the artistic creation to exemplify what Verghese wanted to share.  For me, it was a classic novel.

Before we even discussed the book one member emailed her thoughts:  "Verghese is such a superb writer, it is hard to imagine that this is his second career. Set in Ethiopia made it fascinating to me with Italian colonization, Mussalini, then civil war as a background to the story of the twins Marion and Shiva life. With Marion as a narrator he tells the story of their lives. I fell in love with these characters and the challenges they faced. The ending seemed a little too neatly tied up. It seemed implausible that Thomas Stone operated on his long lost twins and saved their lives. But I did get caught up in the story and it made me feel good that all strings came together in the end of the novel. This was one of the best books we have read for a while."  And another one emailed:  "I read the book in 2012, and loved it just as much this second time around. I think Verghese is just brilliant."

There were seven of us at the Book Club, many out of town traveling these next few months, but we had a lively discussion about the book.  EVERYONE LOVED IT.  Someone said "Epic" in their description of the book, another said "characters are well-developed, you can get into their heads and I'm in awe in the writing style and his own experiences."  Three people in the book club had mentioned that they have read this before, and all said they enjoyed reading it the second time around, one stating she had her "horizons stretched twice."

We talked about the characters of the book, the medical part, the historical information written into it, and how it brought to us, the real meaning of a family.  A few times in the book we noted that real family wasn't just biological, both in Ethiopia and in New York, family included those who you worked with and were a team with.

We liked several of the messages through out the book, and I hope members comment below, as one has already.

One of my favorite quotes of the book:  "You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”

I think Abraham Verghese followed his advice in this book -- He completed his own movement, his own piece of what God has made possible in him.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron (May 19, 1941-June 26, 2012) was a playwright, screenwriter and novelist besides writing the book we just read for Book Club, "I Feel Bad About My Neck."  She grew up in a family of screenwriters and attached her name to many movies that most us know:  "Silkwood," "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle," "You've Got Mail," and even "Julie and Julia."  She wrote, directed and produced many movies over her years on earth.  Our group, who are all women, laughed when we shared our thoughts about her book, which was published in 2006.  She has been nominated and has won many prestigious awards, but winning our hearts through her laughter with this book was a big hit with us.

We all loved the book.  One person said "she takes every day situations that aren't the greatest and makes them into a story, which made me laugh."

Nora said her mother taught her a very fundamental lesson of humor, which is "if you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you, but if you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your joke. You are the hero of the joke because you're telling the story."

She did tell a good story and we all laughed.  Great book for our evening out as friends.

Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret

With only six of us in attendance (Thanksgiving maybe threw some people off we wondered?) there was mutual agreement we all loved the book. 

In my opinion, I loved the book.  It was one I would have NEVER GRABBED OFF THE SHELF.  But guess what?  I am pretty glad that someone in our group knew Peg Kehret and recommended it, because it made me think about how polio affected people so many years ago.  I have seen stories of the iron lung where polio patients stay in to help them breath, but Peg Kehret description of what she went through made it very real.  She also shared a story about a boy Tommie, who was in one of these iron lungs.


We talked about since 1979, the western hemisphere has been without a polio case, but how countries in the middle east are being affected.  November 30, 2013 NBCNews posted an article about 13 children having polio in Syria.  http://www.nbcnews.com/health/60-years-iron-lung-us-polio-survivor-worries-about-new-2D11641456

Martha  Ann Lillard, now 65 is quoted in the article

"If my mother would have had the opportunity to give me the vaccine, she would have done that,” says Lillard, who was a kindergartner in 1953 when she woke up with a sore throat that quickly progressed to something much worse — a life-threatening infection with polio virus. “To let somebody go through what I went through and what other children went through. What if people had to do that again? It would be just unbelievable.”

Published by WHO organization in the middle of November 

"Seven countries and territories are holding mass polio vaccination campaigns with further extensive campaigns planned for December targeting 22 million children. In a joint resolution all countries of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region have declared polio eradication to be an emergency and called on Pakistan to urgently access and vaccinate all of its children to stem the international spread of its viruses."

Seven countries will work to immunize children through WHO and Unicef in December.  What an undertaking this must be, but to read what Peg wrote in this book, it would quickly become a fear not only in the Middle East, but world wide.

We reflected on what we had for immunization years ago.  One person said the whole area was immunized.  They had three different times of immunization.  I found some Minnesota history at the MN Dept of Health.  The first Salk vaccination was May 20, 1955 to 1st and 2nd graders, only 112,000 given to students in Mpls, St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester.  This site also shows data charts about the virus which is interesting.  http://www.health.state.mn.us/library/dhsjournals/Chapter3.pdf


We talked about how children at that time, were treated differently then we do now.  They were told about their diagnosis, and like Peg, were very, very scared.  Parents weren't there with their children because of how contagious it was. Peg's parents were wonderful to connect with the girls in Peg's room.  Sad that they were so far from home and didn't get visitors often, but that is how times were.  We also talked about when Peg got back home someone commented about how their hair looked so bad, and Peg's thoughts were far from how her hair looked.  Life's perspective had changed.


We liked Dr. Bevis.  In the Epilogue of the Anniversary edition, published 10 years after her book, she shared that she was able to get in touch with Dr. Bevis.  We felt that Dr. Bevis believing that Peg will walk again gave her the hope to drive her to walk again.


In the anniversary edition of the book, Peg Kehret has written "More About Polio."  She shared that March of Dimes started in 1938 by then President Franklin Roosevelt to combat polio.

Life has changed our world as many people died and were affected by polio.  Having this eradicated disease return is a scary prospect that many who suffered years ago and to this day with Post-polio syndrome hoped never to hear of again.

Great book, would highly recommend it!

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

October's book was perfect for Halloween, a story about witches, both in old colonial times and more recently in 1991.  It was a story about subtle witches, using their "craft" for good purpose, more so to using it in healing.  Most of us, 11 out of 12 liked and enjoyed the novel, to different degrees.  One person said they just couldn't get into it, and struggled reading it.

The book, going back and forth through time periods stretching hundreds of years on US soil, illustrated the connections between Mother/Daughter and then lineage through time. ***see the end of article***  Some liked the character development and could definitely see this book as a movie.  Some of us didn't know the Salem Witch time period so wanted to delve more into that after reading this book, some liked the history of the book.  Some members wished the book would have been "scarier."

Our leader shared with us that the book is published in 20 some countries.  We talk about the mother/daughter relationships in the book, and how women have been perceived over the centuries.  We talk about the women's influence as midwives.  What has changed for us women in these 300 plus years, included the right to vote.

We talked about being a preservationist like Sam, or a historian like Connie.  Both are important, and some of us were more inclined like Sam, wanting to preserve history, but some said you can't save it all!  We agreed they complimented each other in this novel, glad she weaved that part into the storyline.

We had quite a discussion about Arlo.  In Ch 2, Connie talks about how she came to have Arlo with her at Harvard.  Some noted this with interest, while others, just flew over that information.  At the end of the book, the last chapter, we see an older couple sitting and observing a dog, sitting by a tombstone, which is revealed to have started with the letter "D."  Someone thought that maybe Deliverance came back as a dog, and someone else suggested, that the dog was the same dog through the years for the family lineage, and the tombstone, marked "D" for dog.  Fun that she wove that part into the storyline.

One question in the discussion was whether Christianity is contradictory or complementary to magic in this story.  In this story it is complementary, but we don't think it has been in the realm of Christianity.  You choose, someone said, what side.  Another said it was fascinating to read that the witches in this book found it important to have that connection with God.

We also talked about magic -- what does it mean?  It can mean many different things, there is magic that is spiritual, magic that is dark, magic that is fairy tale and optimistic, like a leprechen.  We even recognized we have the Magical Kingdom, so there is "magic" in the real world!

I found this story to be an easy quick read, one I personally did not want to put down.  The "witches" of the colonial days used their gift for healing, obtaining herbs to help along with their spells.   Having the book weave around Connie working on her doctoral dissertation while at Harvard and going back to her mother's family home near Salem is enticing, leaving us to wonder how these two worlds will combine.  We find out when she finds a key in a Bible.  Like someone said at book club, I can easily see this as an interesting movie.  Someday. 

Thanks to one of our members, here is the lineage
Deliverance & Nathaniel Dale, dates mentioned 1681-1692
Mercy & Jedediah  Lamson, 1715-1763
Prudence & Josiah  Bartlett, 1741-1798
Patience (Patty) 1747
Sophia & Lemuel
Grace & Leo Goodwin
Constance  Goodwin

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

A lucky dozen met for this month's book club at the library and ten of those dozen loved the book.  Many of us commented we loved the historical information about Chicago's World Fair in 1893 and all the research that went into the book.  We enjoyed reading about Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction and others that worked with him.  We didn't so much like the part of the murders of  H. H. Holmes, but liked the contrast of the good and evil, and the facts of Holmes' life.  We really marveled at the research Erik Larson had done for this book, noting that he was a reporter and a good investigator.  We are looking forward to this coming out in a movie with Leonardo DiCarprio playing the "serial killer."

Someone said it read like a novel and I think many of us would agree with that.  Although some parts were very dark, it was interesting to contemplate how far we have come.  Women disappeared off the face of the earth, at that time, and no one questioned it.  People believed what others said without checking it.

We loved the World's Fair facts and what came out of the fair:  AC current, Cracker Jax, Shredded Wheat, Juicy Fruit, Dishwasher, Spray paint, Papst Blue Ribbon and the Pledge of Allegiance and Columbus Day, something that still affects all Americans.  We loved the Midway and Side Show that came from this and that the Ferris Wheel was first introduced here.

The Gilded Age was the late 19th century, filled with greed, guile, corruption in modern America, was someone's comment.  Personally, I would love to be in that time period with all the changes.  But it was a dirty time, with lots of coal heating the area, steam engines, dust from horses and chimneys in homes.  The White City, the Worlds Fair had buildings in white, it was clean where outside the Fair, that wasn't the case.  It was also illuminated with lights unlike again, outside the fair.  Disney's father, Elias Disney, may have influenced his son's future thoughts & plans that we still enjoy to this day.

We noted there were many dignitaries that visited the Fair.  The fact that Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley was an interesting part of history.  The fair was exhibition of extravagance, the biggest, the brightest, the gloriest both from the architects standpoint and from the venues for experimentation.  It even had an influence on better working conditions and better wages, even the creation of unions.

That Holmes arrived in Chicago for this Fair and built his "castle" with all its deviant rooms was horrible.  In the book, we read that Mudgett (Holmes given name) "claimed to have gone to Chicago in Nov 1985 and there to have acquired his "portion" of bodies (for medical research).  Unable to find a job, he placed his portion in storage and left for Minneapolis until May, 1986, when he left for New York."  When I read that I wondered what he may have done while in Minnesota.  He did travel quite a bit and did he leave behind any other murders?

Looking on a map of Chicago, you can see the Museum of Science and Industry, which was housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) and view Jackson Park along the shores of Lake Michigan.  You can also see 63rd Street from Englewood, which is where Holmes had his hotel.  They were interconnected, forever with their place in history:  The World's Fair and H.H. Holmes.  It is fitting that Erik Larson wrote a book about both.

To learn more about the World's Fair click HERE

Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis was our August Book.  When we start our discussion, we share our name and whether we like the book or not.  This book was pretty split in opinion of "liked" and "not sure."  One person was in the "did not like" category.  Someone shared that Hattie wanted hope and in this book, they didn't see much hope.  Another said, "Hattie survived, that was the hope."  We need to remember the good times.  Someone stated  "It was like reading short stories," about each of the 'tribes.'  "Excellent writing, grabbed me instantly.  It propelled me forward to see if something good happens."  "Didn't think I'd like it, it was depressing, but liked how written.  Don't know why it had such dysfunctional lives."

Our leader had a handout that shared the timeline of the twelve tribes (Hattie's eleven children and her granddaughter).  She asked our favorite character and why.  I think most of us liked Hattie, and a comment was she did the very best she could with not a lot to go on.  She was building emotional protection around herself after losing her twins.  She tried to meet her children's physical needs.  She went on the "dole," didn't want to, but she didn't want her kids to go hungry.  She developed a softness to be sympathetic, which she did at the end with her granddaughter.  She wasn't when her own children were young.  Floyd, when he encountered problems, called Hattie for comfort and peace.  We didn't see that with the other children.  Did she do this so that she felt she was preparing them for the world because the world won't love you.  Someone said they couldn't hate her, she had so much disappointment in her life.

In the beginning of the book, we noted that August stroked the fire before he went to work, so he tried to be a good husband at first.  Maybe life was too painful for him.  When Hattie leaves, August tries to do right.  Didn't she know he was heartbroken, too?  He was good with the children, gave hugs.  We felt the affairs didn't mean much, that he never felt like leaving.  She had, though.  We liked, at the end, that he found the Lord.

We talked a bit about some of their children.  We felt that there was a lot of dysfunction in the children and mental illness.  We talked about migration, broken up families, disconnection.  At the end of the book, Hattie had her house that she had tried so hard to get and would share it with her granddaughter.


 Click HERE for the Amazon link for the book.