I am so excited to belong to a Book Club. Something I've half-heartedly attempted to start and/or belong to for a couple of years now. Look out Oprah.
Over a fun lunch at the Met Grill, Shannon, Malia and myself chose our books for the year. Choosing this far in advance keeps us motivated by having books to look forward to months in advance, and keeps us moving on to the next one so they don't get bottlenecked. I think we've got a pretty good selection ranging from the American 1930's to Afghanistan's last 30 years. From "1000 White Women" to "1000 Splendid Suns", I think we've got a lot covered.
Here I will keep you posted on what we're reading and when we're meeting. Also you all can comment on what you are loving or hating, etc.
Our selections are as follows...
November Read - Meeting November 23 or 24...
"The Memory Keepers Daughter"
In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever.
December - Christmas Gift Exchange! Bring your favourite book wrapped on November 23/24 for a surprise selection.
January Read "Lullibies for Little Criminals"
This book is about a young girl fighting to preserve her bruised innocence on the feral streets of a big city. Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father, Jules, is scarcely more than a child himself, and always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that ’chocolate milk’ is Jules’ slang for heroin, and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance.
February Read "Water for Elephants"
Orphaned and penniless at the height of the Depression, Jacob Jankowski escapes everything he knows by jumping on a passing train—and inadvertently runs away with the circus. So begins Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen’s darkly beautiful tale about the characters who inhabit the less-than-greatest show on earth.
March Read "Love in the Time of Cholera"
UPDATED! New pick!April Read "Mommies Who Drink"
For young single women, every night is Ladies' Night. For Brett Paesel and her friends, Friday happy hour is all they get--if they can wrangle a babysitter. Like most mommies, they support each other through pregnancies, sleep deprivation, and the need to talk about it all. Instead of meeting at the playground, they convene at the local watering hole while sipping Black and Tans and flirting with the cute bartender. With a poignant voice and a fresh style that makes this memoir read like the best women''s fiction, Paesel navigates mommyhood in all its forms--the ecstatic, the terrifying, the tedious, the hilarious, the transcendental, and the sticky. Paesel''s laugh-out-loud perspective will appeal to all women who are braving the new world of motherhood, where the secret question on their minds at playgroup is "When is it too early in the day to start drinking?"
May Read "One Thousand White Women" 
One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man''s world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.
June Read "One Thousand Splendid Suns"
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
July Read "Almost Moon"
For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined
August Read "The Birth House"
The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. Filled with details as compelling as they are surprising, The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.
September Read "The Glass Castle"
A moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
October Read "A wild Ride up the Cupboards"
The story of a child's descent into autism, and Rachel and Jack's struggle to sustain
their marriage under this unanticipated strain.
