Meeting the 3rd Sunday of each month at 1:00 p.m.
August 30, 2011
Hey all! Look who commented on my recent post — Chris Grabenstein himself! How cool is that?
Also, if you’ve read Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear) and Her Royal Spyness (Rhys Bowen), you might get a kick out this “interview” off of Amazon. Scroll down a bit.
Don’t you love the Brits?
Joan
August 27, 2011
Tilt A Whirl by Chris Grabenstein was our book for August.
The author, through the narrator Danny, warned us that we may think we know what direction the story is going, but the ride always suddenly changes direction.
“But when I was a kid, I loved how the Tilt-A-Whirl could surprise you. How it spun you around one way and the next time you hit the exact same spot, it spun you around some way completely different . . . . You never knew what to expect next. . . . [My math] teacher called it ‘mind-jangling unpredictability’.” [p. 25]
He wasn’t kidding. Just when you think you know what’s going on, you get thrown in a different direction.
We had a large group for the meeting, probably the biggest crowd I’ve seen since I started attending. Which was great fun and made for some lively discussions. Just about everyone liked the book and are eager to move on to the next in the series. One of our members didn’t like it and I won’t tell you why because that would give away key details. Another member found some of the police department aspects a little unbelievable, but the New Jersey location made for an interesting discussion about just where the little town of Sea Haven could be located. We also talked about why the author made up a town instead of using an existing locale.
The Code of Ceepak was a discussed at great length and when the group was asked who they would want to have dinner with, Ceepak was picked practically unanimously. I chose Danny, though, because being a local boy, he seems to know all the best places to eat.
Joan arrived with both a biography of the author and some book club questions off of the internet.
From the biography we learned that Chris Grabenstein is a former improvisational comedian who worked with Bruce Willis, he’s written six Ceepak mysteries (A Six Pack of Ceepak) and he’s written a childrens’ series.
The book club questions gave us some interesting things to talk about. One particularly amusing one was:
“Throughout the book women are depicted in a variety of roles–including waitress, lawyer, lover, mother, daughter, police officer, forensics expert, friend. Do you feel the author’s treatment of women is fair and/or accurate? What message will the female reader glean from this book regarding the role of women in contemporary society? The male reader?”
“The role of women in contemporary society”. Most of the group read this to be entertained, not to talk about contemporary society.
And we didn’t even discuss Bruce Springsteen’s music
We need to begin to commence to think about our list of books for 2012, so if you have something you’d like included, post a comment or send me an e-mail. We’d like to finalize this by October.
Joan
August 5, 2011
Meeting report Leave a comment
Our book this month was The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson. Only about five people came to the meeting and it seems that only Pam really liked this book. When asked to rate it, Pam gave it a 10, but most gave it a 2 or a 3. Most either didn’t read it or didn’t finish it. And one participant just read the “good parts”. When asked what the good parts were, it would seemed that she just skimmed until she encounter Holmes’ name and then read those parts.
Pam thought the details about the history, the visionaries of the era involved in the World’s Fair and the “perfect storm” of problems that arose were interesting. She also found the Pinkerton detective work fascinating. In an era without our technology and ease of movement across large areas, they did amazing work.
Nancy continues to slog along, determined to finish. She found all of the background, politics, design aspects and fundraising details about the fair to be a bit much, but is hopeful the “mystery” part of the story is better.
All you mystery readers out there, think about what you might want to read in 2012 and let us know!
June 23, 2011
Book Review, Meeting report Leave a comment
Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson is the 13th in the Goldy Schulz series. It’s been a while since I last read it, though, and I forgot who did what, so that was good. I’m not really a fan of figuring the mystery out before the end. I mean, the author went to all that work, the least I can do is suspend my disbelief until the end.
But I have to admit that in reading this series, I always get really annoyed with Goldy, our heroine. She’s one of those characters that you just want to smack upside the head and say “Geez, just let it go.” or “Don’t go in there!” She’s always going where she shouldn’t go, snooping where she shouldn’t snoop and her unreasonable angst about her son makes me want to throw the book against the wall. Maybe it’s because I’m not a mother, but I’m really sick of her trying to understand and interpret each and every itty bitty glance, sigh and schlumpy teenager-ism. No wonder he’s such a pill! He’s got an overbearing mother!
That being said, Diane Mott Davidson does create some interesting characters to populate her fictionalColoradotown. And, having worked for a law firm for over 25 years, I recognize a lot of the people in this particular outing!
Our group, as a whole, enjoyed this light-hearted romp, but it definitely wasn’t a favorite. No strain and you could put it down for awhile and when you picked it up again, there was no problem getting back up to speed. The complaints about it ranged from one-dimensional characters, everybody being so nice and sweet and the aforementioned insistence on going where a girl shouldn’t go.
We had an animated discussion about how, even though this is the 13th outing for our heroine, she really hasn’t grown and changed. Granted, she’s no longer single and her business has grown, but she’s still a busybody who drinks way too much caffeine and is just plain lucky to have the perfect Julian to follow her around and keep her business from going into the dumper.
The way this book ends, though, is rather sudden. Neither Goldy nor the reader really has a clue who the evildoer is until literally, BAM, right at the end. A weakness, in my opinion.
The food was wonderful, of course. I always finish these books starving for something tasty. For our meeting, I made the Strong Arm Cookies. But I’ve also got a craving for the Asparagus Quiche.
Pam didn’t attend our meeting, preferring to celebrate her anniversary with her husband, instead of us. But she did recommend the Lake District Mysteries by Martin Edwards, Coffin Trail, in particular.
I’ve been reading the Molly Murphy series by Rhys Bowen and recommended the first outing, Murphy’s Law.
Next month, we’ll be reading a true crime set in 19th Century Chicago.
Joan
May 18, 2011
Our book this month was What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman and I thought it was AMAZING! I had barely started it when I had lunch with another book club member, and she had already finished it. She raved about how great it was and I could tell she was dying to talk about it, but I wouldn’t let her. At the time, I had barely started it, but was already sucked into the heads of the different characters and eager to know more.
The multiple twists actually made me gasp out loud. Always the sign of a good story.
We had an excellent meeting of the group and even saw some new faces. Pam brought strawberry pie. Everything’s better with pie!
Everyone really liked the book and while most of us found it a little confusing, initially, to jump from head to head and from time to time, we got used to it and found it to be a really enthralling way to tell the story.
Other book clubs had posted comments on the internet about this month’s selection:
“Our group, for the most part, found this book to be somewhat predictable and not very believable.”
“Two of our members figured out part of the ending!”
The general consensus in our group was that those other groups are full of hooey. We loved it!
Working from questions specific to What the Dead Know, we discussed whether it was cheating for the author to withhold information at the beginning. The general consensus was that the author told the story the way the story had to be told. It could really only unfold one way.
Then we discussed which characters we thought were evil. We all agreed that the son was evil. And creepy. And the son’s mother was generally condemned because of the feeling that if it hadn’t been for her, there would have been a different story. And one other character was deemed to be skanky and not very nice.
Pam’s Picks is Laura Lippman’s first Tess Monaghan mystery, as seen in the sidebar. Pam also recommended Tim Cockey’s Hitchcock Sewell series whose main character has been deemed by one critic to be “the love child of Cary Grant and Groucho Marx.” The titles are: The Hearse You Came in On, Hearse of Different Color, Hearse Case Scenario, Murder in the Hearse Decree, Backstabber.
Next month there may be food!
