Category Archives: Book Group

We had an amazing turnout at our last meeting.  Thank you all who came and for the great discussion! Our February book is:

Stones from the River

By  Ursula Hegi

Born in the small German town of Burdorf, Trudi Montag is a Zwerg–a dwarf–who yearns to stretch and grow and be like everyone else. But as she matures to become the town’s librarian and unofficial historian, Trudi learns that being different is a secret that everybody shares.  Link

Carolyn has graciously invited us to her house, again!  The best part of Carolyn’s house is that Ursula Hegi herself has lived (and possibly written this book) here.  Our meeting will take place at:

Carolyn’s House (email us for directions)

February 20th

1-3pm

*Please bring a food or drink to share*

**Please bring any books you would like to recommend or give/trade with the group! We love reading books outside the book club as well and will greatly appreciate it!

Upcoming Reads include:

March

The Things they Carried

Tim O’Brien

(as part of the Get Lit! program)

Tracing the tour of one American platoon, The Things They Carried, is not just a tale of the Vietnam War, although it is considered one of the finest books ever written about combat. This award-winning book is a brutal, sometimes funny, often profound narrative about the human heart—how it fares under pressure, and what it can endure.

The Vietnam War still has the power to divide Americans between those for it and those against. Today it also divides us, just as surely, between those who remember its era firsthand and those not yet born when the troops came home. There may be no better bridge across these twin divides than Tim O’Brien’s novel in stories The Things They Carried. The details of warfare may have changed since Vietnam, but O’Brien’s semiautobiographical account of a young platoon on a battlefield without a front, dodging sniper fire and their own misgivings, continues to win legions of dedicated readers, both in uniform and out.

Link

North Spokane Library (44 E. Hawthorne Rd)

March 20th

1-3pm

April – Zeitoun – David Eggers
May - Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
June - Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com

If you’re on Facebook, check out our new fan page and “like” us!

Happy New Year!

First and foremost, I would like to thank E.J. for hosting our December meeting!  You can read a small recap of the meeting here.

For January,  we will be reading:

Water for Elephants

By Sara Gruen

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. Link

This book should be an easy find.  Both the county and the city libraries and Aunties should have several copies available! Also, check out 2nd Look Books!

January 16th

Carolyn’s House (email us for address/map)

1-3pm

Upcoming reads include:

February

Stones from the River

By  Ursula Hegi

Born in the small German town of Burdorf, Trudi Montag is a Zwerg–a dwarf–who yearns to stretch and grow and be like everyone else. But as she matures to become the town’s librarian and unofficial historian, Trudi learns that being different is a secret that everybody shares. Link

March – The Things they Carried – Tim O’Brien (Part of the Get Lit! program)
April – Zeitoun – David Eggers
May - Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
June - Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

We have had a few changes to our general plan, including having meetings at members’ houses, choosing books that are more accessible, verifying your attendance so we have a more solid count, and having a book swap/recommendation session at the end of each meeting.  For more information and to RSVP  (not require to attend), please check out our Facebook Event page.

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com

Thanks for a big turnout for the November book group meeting,  and I think we have some great ideas going forward. It was wonderful to have a few new faces! We really appreciate your feedback about what you’d like to see in the group and why you may not come to a particular meeting.

December

Rings of Saturn

by WG Sebald

A fictional account of a walking tour through England’s East Anglia, Sebald’s home for more than twenty years, The Rings of Saturn explores Britain’s pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company — Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges — conductors between the past and present. The narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions, and hears of the furious coastal battles of two world wars. He tells of far-off China and the introduction of the silk industry to Norwich. He walks to the now forsaken harbor where Conrad first set foot on English soil and visits the site of the once-great city of Dunwich, now sunk in the sea, where schools of herring swim. As the narrator catalogs the transmigration of whole worlds, the reader is mesmerized by change and oblivion, survival and memories. Blending fiction and history, Sebald’s art is as strange and beautiful as the rings of Saturn, created from fragments of shattered moons.

Link
This book may be difficult to find in Spokane.  It can be purchased online through Amazon, Alibris, Borders, Barnes and Noble, or Auntie’s Bookstore (if you would like to stay local)!  Also, a few Violets may be willing to lend their book to you (please check the comment section on Facebook Event page or email us.)

December’s Book Club Meeting

December 19th

E.J.’s house (email us for directions)

1-3pm

*Please bring food and/or drinks to share with the group!*

Future reads include: 

January

Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. 

Link

February – Stones from the River – Ursula Hegi
March – The Things they Carried – Tim O’Brien (Part of the Get Lit! program)
April – Zeitoun – David Eggers
May - Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
June - Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn

We have had a few changes to our general plan, including having meetings at members’ houses, choosing books that are more accessible, verifying your attendance so we have a more solid count, and having a book swap/recommendation session at the end of each meeting.  More details about all of this here.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com

Hello Violets!

First and foremost.. last month was the smallest book club meeting (Spokane Books Blog wrote a post about it here) in SVS book club history, and we’re hoping to get some feedback about why people were unable or did not attend. We want to make book club something that we all look forward to and can expect a solid conversation from, and if there’s anything we can do to make it more of that for you, please leave a comment here, email the coordinators, or go to our Facebook Event and post a comment there.
…
Things to ponder…
- were you less than excited about the book chosen?
- is the location out of the way for you?
- is the time inconvenient?
- any other factors that inspired you to pass this month?

Looking back, we have had some really large groups (The Red Tent comes to mind), and I’m hoping we can schedule things and pick books that really inspire thoughts and conversation. I’m excited to hear your thoughts.

We’re Getting On

by James Kaelin

We’re Getting On explores youth, dissolution, and the impact technology has on the modern world, and what happens when you try to live completely off the grid. The book follows five people, all in varying states of flux. This group of youth, through a series of linked events, decides one summer to move into the Nevada desert. Once there, they intend to abandon technology. They won’t have computers, phones, televisions, or even electricity. The troubles they face speak to the heart of the contemporary American condition.

Link

November 21st

Coffee Social

1-3pm

This book may be difficult to find in Spokane.  However, it is a short read. This book can be purchased online through Amazon and Alibris.  Also, a few Violets may be willing to lend their book to you (please check the comment section on  FB Event page or email us.)

Our future reads include:

December

Rings of Saturn

by WG Sebalt

A fictional account of a walking tour through England’s East Anglia, Sebald’s home for more than twenty years, The Rings of Saturn explores Britain’s pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company — Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges — conductors between the past and present. The narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions, and hears of the furious coastal battles of two world wars. He tells of far-off China and the introduction of the silk industry to Norwich. He walks to the now forsaken harbor where Conrad first set foot on English soil and visits the site of the once-great city of Dunwich, now sunk in the sea, where schools of herring swim. As the narrator catalogs the transmigration of whole worlds, the reader is mesmerized by change and oblivion, survival and memories. Blending fiction and history, Sebald’s art is as strange and beautiful as the rings of Saturn, created from fragments of shattered moons.

Link

January

Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen

**Location and Dates TBA**

If you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read, please contact:

Becky -beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com

Hilary -hilwhitt [at] yahoo [dot] com

or shrinkingvioletsociety [at] gmail [dot] com

The author of Armadillo, The Blue Afternoon and Brazzaville Beach—the novelist who has been called a “master storyteller” (Chicago Tribune) and “a gutsy writer who is good company to keep” (Time)—now gives us his most entertaining, sly and compelling novel to date, a novel that evokes the tumult, events and iconic faces of our time, as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover and man of the world—through his intimate journals.

Here is the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s eighty-five years in all their extraordinary, tragic and humorous aspects. The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay; then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book; then on to Paris (where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al.) and to Spain where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for Naval Intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London (where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity.

A moving, ambitious and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of twentieth-century life.

We’re Getting On explores youth, dissolution, and the impact technology has on the modern world, and what happens when you try to live completely off the grid. The book follows five people, all in varying states of flux. This group of youth, through a series of linked events, decides one summer to move into the Nevada desert. Once there, they intend to abandon technology. They won’t have computers, phones, televisions, or even electricity. The troubles they face speak to the heart of the contemporary American condition.

This month’s book choice is:

Link

For October:

For November :

For December

Rings of Saturn
by WG Sebalt

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or recommendations for upcoming reads:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com

“Brothers K  is a 1992 novel by David James Duncan an author, fisherman and environmental advocate from the Pacific Northwest. It builds on the sporting and spiritual themes of The River Why novel, Duncan’s first book, but on a much larger canvas, focusing on an entire family instead of a single protagonist. Duncan uses multiple points of view to reinforce this effect by including material supposedly written by different family members in the broad narrative by Kincaid Chance. The novel tells the story of the Chance family as they pass through the turbulent waters of Papa Chance’s minor league baseball career and the upheavals of the Vietnam War. It is also a deeply religious novel about love and family and spiritual growth and the difference between church and religion. The title is clearly a reference to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and to the baseball abbreviation for a strike-out.”
Link

Please Join Us on Sunday, August 15th at:

RSVP here on Facebook

If you can’t make it or would like a head start on September’s Book Read, we are reading:

by Teri Hein

“Combining a profoundly tender story of youth with politics and an unmistakable sense of place, Teri Hein has written a memoir that is part Terry Tempest Williams, part Erin Brockovich, part Garrison Keillor. In the end, she offers a rich and ribald journey into the universal mysteries of childhood, love, community, and home, a journey that confirms humankind’s infinite capacity for hope.”

During the August meeting, we will be choosing new books to read for the following months.  We will decide on a handful of books, so if you have any suggestions and cannot make the meeting, please email Hilary, Monique or Becky and provide a brief summary so we can share it with the group.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like more information:

April's Book Club with author Linda L. Hunt (center)

This month’s book club meeting was a special treat; Linda Hunt, the author of Bold Spirit not only joined us for our discussion but hosted the meeting at her spacious and inviting retreat center. Linda greeted us with a warm smile and a large pitcher of herbal sun tea as we began to assemble ourselves outside to take advantage of the opportunity to sit in her gardens with the sounds of babbling water and birdsong in the background.

Once everyone settled around the table Linda introduced herself and gave us a brief history of how the retreat center came to be. She and her husband created The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship with a focus on service in urban America, developing nations and environmental projects. The center was inspired by these three values possessed by her daughter, Krista, who was killed at the age of 25 in an automobile accident in Bolivia. The center serves as a meeting space for the organization in many different ways, sometimes for conferences, at other times for retreats; always, I imagine, it serves compassion, generosity and love.

Our discussion about Bold Spirit had much to do with imagining the twenty-first century equivalent of two women crossing the nation by foot in 1896. Not only was this a difficult thing to wrap our minds around but equally difficult was the idea that this story was nearly lost through the silencing of it by the family.

The act of silencing stories or, more importantly, the practice of passing along family stories instead is the message Linda would like her readers to hear. She talked about the importance of finding a way to include this piece in the story. In the book’s closing Linda states that sometimes silencing of stories is done to protect a family’s image in the face of situations like abuse, alcoholism or origins of birth but that, “at times the silencing of such stories affect those who need to hear them to correctly interpret events in their own lives.”

Remember this and consider whether you participate in the silencing or sharing of your own family’s stories. Do what you can to be your family’s storyteller and please do read Bold Spirit, a story that show’s an earlier picture of our city’s history and invites us all to contribute our own.

The Shrinking Violet’s Book Group has chosen:

Bold Spirit

by local author Linda Lawrence Hunt

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America.

Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb.

Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women’s achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

You can find the book in the Local Interest section at Auntie’s Bookstore.  Make sure you let them know it’s for the book club so you can get a discount.

Our book group meetings usually take place on the third Sunday of every month.  However, this meeting will be on the fourth Sunday, April 25th, at the Linda Lawrence Hunt’s retreat house on the north side of Spokane!

Join us on:

Sunday April 25th
1-3 pm
Linda Lawrence Hunt’s Meeting Place (Address TBA)

Click Here to RSVP on Facebook

If you cannot make this meeting and would like to join us for our May meeting, we will be reading:

Prisoner of Tehran

by Marina Nemat
May 16th
Location: TBA

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com
Monique – moneeeq [at] gmail [dot] com

If you would like to start a discussion or have any comments about this book, please post a comment on this post.

When I suggested reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” for our book club, I worried that it might be too bleak for already-gray January, and too “manly” for our mostly female group. After finishing the book (mostly in one completely absorbed sitting) my worries were discarded. Though the book *is* predominantly bleak and quite grisly and violent, it sparked and held my interest with its profound, tiny moments of beauty among the wreckage at the end of the world. Though I am not yet a parent, I would argue that ”The Road” should be required reading for anyone who plans to become or already is one; the Man’s balance of preserving the boy’s innocence while remaining truthful about the evil and horror present in the world can provide an example for those parenting in much less dire circumstances.  

After reading and re-reading the book, I received the bad news that I will not be able to attend book club this week. I have still prepared some discussion questions for everyone to use during the meeting. These are some of the things I would have loved to explore with you ladies (and perhaps gents), and hope that you enjoy doing so.

• Cormac McCarthy is known for his sparse use of language and he continues this stylistic trend in The Road. Do you think the simplicity of dialogue and specific description of setting in this book enhanced the overall story or distracted from it?

• The Boy, despite being a young child, is expected to fulfill the role of a fellow survivor and a man, with little exception. Discuss the shift in the relationship of the Man and the Boy throughout the book and the Boy’s refusal to be treated as a child by the end of the book.

• Compassion is widely absent in The Road, except for in the innocent character of the Boy. Discuss the role of childhood innocence in the book and how it benefits and endangers the characters.

• One of the most involved conversations that we witness in the book is between the Man and the Old Man that is invited to join the survivors for a meal. He speaks about being “the last man on the Earth” and whether one would recognize such a situation if it were true. Are the Man and the Boy the last “good” or “real” people on Earth? What would it mean for them if they were?

• The Man’s motivation for continuing to persevere is never directly revealed, but he tells the boy that they are the “good guys” and that they are “carrying the light”. Explain the role of good and evil and any religious themes in motivating the characters to continue in a likely hopeless situation.

• Women are conspicuously absent throughout the book, except for those presumably being bred like livestock as members of cannibal clans and communes. The only woman we see in depth is the late wife of the Man, who cannot handle the stresses of survival and considers death the only solution. Why do you think women are treated this way by the author?

• The Road presents an interesting take on the end of the world, showing humanity in complete regression, reverting to its primitive instincts to survive. McCarthy presents us with a bleak outlook for the survivors; kill or be killed or starve to death eventually. Compare this to other end of the world tales and discuss why you think the author presented such a thoroughly hopeless vision for the end of mankind.