new book club

Will and I had been part of a book club that began in our apartment complex back in the day - before we were even together. But then Will picked a book that "killed" the group or so he says (it was weird but I liked it. of course, I was also the only one to read it; Will included), people moved away (including us) and I started school and there just wasn't time for that sort of thing.

Well, now that I'm done with school, I've been fortunate to able to join a new book club with a few UD friends and some other fantastic ladies. There are about 9 of us - 4 from VA, 1 from MD and the rest in DC. All sorts of backgrounds, single, dating, married and even one little reader. It's been great to get into the group and they've all been very welcoming even though I've only been participating for about 3 months and they've been reading together for going on 2 years!

I thought that I might write about our book each month here. We'll see if I keep it up. If I get really inspired, I might even throw in some thoughts on other things I read (I'm a bit of a voracious reader so one a month doesn't do me).

But first I want to catch up and talk briefly about the 3 books we've read since I joined the group.

Complications: a Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande

The book is organized as a series of topics with one main case study example. I'm not usually a fan of non-fiction but I really enjoyed this one. One of the things I really liked about it is that it gave me a lot of insight into the world that my good friend, Callie, and my SIL, Kate, live in - particularly Kate because she's training to be a surgeon. It really puts a human face on the practice of medicine and it is indeed, practice. I highly recommend this one.

You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs

This book is a series of Christmas-themed short stories by the author of Running with Scissors which I had also read. If you know anything about Augusten Burroughs, you can expect weird and strange. Odd was more like it. Augusten grows up as the stories progress and it's a little dark at times for a Christmas book. Those of us who had read his other books (Running with Scissors and Dry: A Memoir) had a hard time fitting some of the stories around the events of his life that we were familiar with. All in all, it would be more enjoyable if you already like Burroughs and it's not quite what I look for in a Christmas story.

Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams

This was the story of a young boy growing up on the farm in Georgia in the post-Great Depression 30s and 40s. Porter is the only son in a truly Southern family and all that that implies and expects of him. Father is a drunk, Mother rules the roost while letting Father believe that he does, the sharecroppers are his friends and Porter's a precocious one. It was a really interesting insight into post-Great Depression life in the South which is not a common period to read about - at least for me. It may not have been the most immaculately written book (it kind of took a bit to figure out the flow of things while reading) but it held my interest. I would have liked to hear more about what happened to Porter later in life after the story was finished.

Well, hopefully I'll have better insights for future books.