Book List for 2010-11

Jan
25
Debbie
Half Broke Horses
Jeanette Walls

Feb
15
Change of date and book
Diane
Undress me in the Temple of Heaven
by Susan Jane Gilman


Mar
22
Margie
Life’s a Beach
Claire Cook

Apr
26
Angie
A Walk Through the Woods
Bill Bryson

May
24
Linda
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
　
Jun
28
Karen T.
Zookeeper’s Wife
Diane Ackerman

Jul
26
Stephanie
West with the Night
Beryl Markhan
　
Aug 21 (Sun.)
Barb
The Great Santini
Pat Conroy
　
Sep
27
Sharon
Infidel
Hirsii Ali, Ayann
　
Oct
25
Corinne
Testimony
Anita Shreve
　
Nov
15
Karen M.
(Gloria and Karen have switched months. Gloria will host the Nov. Meeting and Karen the December Meeting)
Remarkable Creatures
Tracy Chevalier

Dec
Gloria
The Christmas Mouse
Miss Read

　

Christmas Party 2010

Here are a few pictures of our 2010 Christmas party. We celebrated in the Pope's Room at Bucca di Beppo. We enjoyed our yearly ornament exchange and we also selected our books for 2011.

Organizational Meeting December 7th 2010

There will be an organizational meeting at Karen's house on
Dec. 7th at 7:30pm for those who are planning to attend WOW'S 25th Anniversary Weekend. Plan to come and share ideas to make our special weekend a once in a lifetime book club experience.

NOVEMBER MEETING 2010

Our November meeting was held at Karen M.'s home which was beautifully decorated for an Elizabethan feast. The huge table was groaning under the many courses that were served. WOW members felt as if they were attending King Henry's court, which fit perfectly with the theme of the November book, The Other Boleyn Girl. We had a lively discussion and learned some court history along the way. A great time was had by all who attended. Karen really outdid herself with the decor and the delicious food that she served.

OCTOBER MEETING

Corrine hosted our October Meeting. The book she selected was Tethered. It was a fascinating mystery story. Although I was not able to attend the meeting I know that everyone must have had a great time discussuing all the twists and turns that the book took.
I could not put this book down until I finished it and found out the ending.

September Meeting 2010

We had a great time at Sharon's with our September pick, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Karen M., Gloria, Karen T., Debbie, Diane and Stephanie, and of course Sharon, were in attendance. Sharon served a wonderful Oriental salad and yummy chicken and also pork egg rolls. We had a good discusion and everyone enjoyed the book.
We did notice a WW Two theme this year with several of our books taking place during that time.
We also discussed a new venue for our 20th WOW anniversary. This will be in Jefferson Tx in Janurary. I hope that everyone has seen the emails from Karen M. filling us in on the various activities for the book club anniversary.

NEW BLOG FEATURE

I am going to try to provide a link to each book, starting with Sharon's October 2010 book selection. If you click on the cover of The Corner of Bitter and Sweet you can go to a review or information about the book. Thanks to "The Other Karen" for providing links to our October and November books. I have also posted a link for our December meeting at Buca de Beppo. This should give us a little more information about each of our books or activities.

August Meeting

We had our August meeting at Joyce's house to discuss People of the Book by Geralding Brooks. Joyce served a wonderful pasta salad, a green salad, croissants (I don't know if there's spell check on this) and delicious lemon and/or cinnamon cakes. Yum!
After visiting and catching up we sat down to discuss the book. It was very well liked by all. We loved the fascinating research that this book required and how clever the format was to involve different stories for each article found within the book. We discussed several of the main characters to try to explain internal motivations and conflicts. Lots of religious practices were compared and contrasted. The main thing we felt from this book was how sad it is the people throughout history including the present, have seemed to feel a need to dominate and eliminate other cultures and religions. Wouldn't it be great if we could all work together to save and honor one another like the characters worked together to save this precious religious book?

People present included: Joyce, Angie, Karen Massey, Gloria, Linda, Barb, Margie and Diane.
Thank you Joyce for the book choice, the wonderful food, and the fine hospitality.

Respectfully submitted by Margie 8/24/10

JULY MEETING 2010

Meeting information submitted by Stephanie

Simply Bloodsucking!!

· General consensus was the book was well written

· The characters were described vividly by the author

· The reviews did not match WOW readers interpretation, until we began watching the movie

· Oh Mylanta, we had to turn off the TV and go back to discussion

· I had to bring the meeting to order a couple of times, but Gloria justified the group was not ‘bird-watching’

· Dinner was light; therefore, the group didn’t mind indulging in the array of M&M’s

· Linda was quite the character for the evening

· We missed those group members absent

MUSIC on the BLOG

Did you know that you can easily change the music that is on our blog? If you scroll down to the bottom on the page you can select from a variety of songs and/or music. Simply click on the music you'd like to listen to on Music Therapy for You during your visit to the blog.

JUNE MEETING 2010

At the June Meeting we had a good discussion about the book The Help. We discussed Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny's feelings. We also discussed Constantine's daughter. The majority of the group felt that the author left out some important background information about her father. We thought that maybe Skeeter's father was her father also. It's up to you to decide.
In the picture chocolate pie is being enjoyed by the group. They said that the pie was delicious but maybe also suspicious! Everyone did eat the pie and no one reported anything odd.

WICKED

Wicked Review by Gloria
We had a great time. Linda, Corinne and I rode the TRE and Dart to Fair Park from Richland Hills. Debbie met us at Fair Park Theatre as she had company to get back for. The play was fabulous. The sets were incredible. So were the costumes. As could be expected, it’s not the entire book that we read (that was quite a tome, wasn’t it?), but the story hangs together quite well, and of course, the ending was much happier than the book. All of the actors were wonderful: the voices were terrific, and the acting funny and extremely well choreographed. And in a sort of quirky way, it’s really primarily about the friendship between 2 women—a great plot for WOW women. I could go on and on, so I’ll stop. But, we’ve really ought to do a special event like this at least once a year. It was so much fun.
Oh, one more thing!: When we switched to Dart, we ended up sitting in front of a lady and her husband (also on their way to see Wicked) and we struck up a conversation. She was in a book group, too (and like Linda, was an Aggie Mom.) We talked books all the way to Fair Park. She recommended a couple of interesting books, and we recommended some to her. It was amazing how many of the same books our two groups had read!

May Meeting 2010

We had a great May meeting, here’s a short recap:
Our May meeting was at Gloria Hannon’s house. Book: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a small gathering. In attendance were Diane Casto, Angie Crichett, Karen Massey, Linda Miles, Debbie Roll, Barb Thomas, and of course, Gloria Hannon. The book opened up some interesting discussions about education, cultural differences, and definitions of success. We all agreed that defining success in only monetary terms, was a flaw in one of Mr. Gladwell’s premises. We wished more of our teacher members had been present for our education discussions. We also discussed our Christmas meeting plans, and while not completely final, we did definitely decide that we would not have a book for December, but that we would have our ornament exchange, and would provide our book selections for our 2011 reading agenda.

June 15th Meeting - Change of Date

The June meeting has been changed from June 22nd to June 15th due to Karen's vacation. Hope to see you on the 15th. I am going to use the lucky money that Stephanie helped me fine at the Texas Comptroller's Office when I am in Vegas.
Wish me luck!

April Meeting with Friends

The Girls From Ames was our book this month and the inspiration for a friendship celebration. I made an Iowa inspired meal to share including glazed ham, corn and cherry tomato salad, corn muffins, and friendship cake.
We played a friendship bonding game called "What's a Dame to Do?" which just was a fun activity to see how well we knew our book buddies. It turns out we DO know each other pretty well.
We discussed the importance of women friends to our health and happiness. The internet video was shown and as always we learned a little bit more about each other.
So here's to our friendship that started out as a "side by side" activity and has grown into so much more because women have face to face friendships and love to support one another. I'm grateful for my WOW friends!
Respectfully submitted by Margie

March Meeting

I'm a little late getting the inforamtion about our March meeting posted. Our March meeting was held at Linda's house. We discussed Angie's book selection for March, The Lace Reader. This was a fascinating book that takes place in Salem. It was very different with several plot twists and a surprise ending.
Linda and Barb pitched in when Angie had surgery and was not able to host her month. Everyone had a good time with Barb and Linda outdoing themselves with a delicious dinner and dessert.

February Meeting 2010

At our February meeting we had a full house, with only one member missing. (We missed you Stephanie) We had a great discussion of the book Sarah's Key. Everyone loved the book even though it was a difficult topic to discuss. We also enjoyed a delicious dinner of homemade soup and bread followed by Angel food cake for desert. Thank you so much Debbie. You are such a wonderful cook.
After the book discussion the group talked about our future 25th anniversary. We discussed where we might like to go for a special celebratory trip. Right now Washington DC is at the top of our list.
Someone suggested we all wear some type of WOW shirts with a Texas logo or theme aded to showcase our "gang".
Next month we will be meeting at Angie's home to discuss The Lace Reader. Hope to see everyone then. Although I took many pictures at our meeting I think this one of Angie turned out the best.

January Meeting

The January Book Club Meeting will be at Diane's house on Tuesday, Jan, 26th. The time for the meeting is 7:00pm. Light refreshments will be served. The book discussion will be about the book, The Little Pink House, by Jeff Benedict.