27 Bookers, including our newest member,
Katherine Maxwell-McDonald, brought the spirit of the season to the home of
Beverly Dossett. Many thanks to Bonnie Magee for organizing the menu once
again, to those who furnished the perfect accompaniments to insure we would all
be merry and bright, with special thanks to Virginia Gandy for loaning her
champagne flutes, and to Beverly for hosting our celebration with devoted
bibliophiles.
In keeping with the festivities, we sang
Happy Birthday to Rosemary Farmer, who will turn ninety years young on December
26. We shared wonderful news about Elaine Bownes who is living up to the “PPC
can’t beat E!” motto on her bracelet as her Primary Peritoneal Cancer tumor
markers which began over 2,000 four months ago are now 27 (normal.) And, Sheri
Green who is fighting lung cancer, is tolerating her initial round of
chemotherapy well. To everyone battling health issues, we are planted in your
corner and will continue to send good thoughts and prayers your way.
Longtime Pinnacle resident,
Bookers’ member, and dear friend Jane Freer’s passing last July left an
indelible void in our community and our hearts. Gary has placed a brick in her
honor in the Memory Garden and Bookers will participate in a dedication
ceremony in remembrance of Jane. Spring is a season of new beginnings when
flowers bloom, animals awaken, farmers and gardeners plant seeds, and
temperatures rise as the earth is awash with renewal. Leo Tolstoy said, “Spring
is the time of plans and projects,” and we feel this will be the perfect time
for our tribute. Gary agrees. More details will be forthcoming.
In keeping with this month’s
selection, Janet Noblitt offered the inspirational story of a Greenhill high
school runner, Ariana Luterman, competing in the Dallas marathon who sacrificed
her own competition to aid another runner across the finish line. She saw
someone in need and she did not hesitate to come to her rescue. Ariana is
clearly in the “sheep” category!
The majority of our group read
this month’s selection. Three liked it. I made four. Some thought it was “much
to do about nothing…a waste of time.” I smiled through the whole book – it was
charming told through a child’s point of view – the innocence of youth and a
can-do attitude – nothing would stand in the way of their mission.
A parable is a simple story
used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson as told by Jesus in the Gospels.
It makes moral observations and is intended to teach. It differs from a fable
in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects where parables have
human characters. An example of a parable is in Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea
highlighting man’s perseverance through the hardest of times. Fables occur in
works like the tortoise and the hare.
Joanna Cannon used the parable
of sheep and goats found in Matthew 25:31-46 where all those on earth will be
brought before the Lord and He will separate them as a “as a shepherd separates
the sheep from the goats.” The core message of the parable is that God’s people
(the sheep) will treat others with kindness and love others, while the goats
can perform acts of kindness, their hearts are not right with God, and their
actions are not for the right purpose. It points out the difference between man
redeemed and saved versus man condemned and lost.
Before we start discussing
this month’s selection and because we are in the midst of this divine holiday,
I’d like to share “A Modern Parable” aired on the radio by Paul Harvey. It
introduced a kind, descent, mostly good man, generous to his family and upright
in his dealings with other men. He was not a Scrooge, but he did not believe in
what the churches proclaimed of God coming to earth as a man. He told his wife
he would not be joining her at church on Christmas Eve as he thought it
hypocritical. The family left and snow began to fall. He watched through his
window as the flurries got heavier and heavier discovering a flock of birds
huddled in the snow caught in the storm and desperate to find shelter. He could
not let them freeze so he planned to direct them to the warmth of their barn.
He opened the doors wide, turned on the light, and sprinkled breadcrumbs on the
snow leading them to safety – to no avail. He tried catching them and shooing
them into the barn – failed again. It was then he realized they were afraid of
him…if only he could be a bird and show them the way to the safe warmth of the
barn…if only he could mingle with them and speak their language so they could
see and hear and understand. At that moment, the church bells began to ring…the
sound reaching his ears above the sound of the wind. He stood there listening
to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas…and he sank to his knees in
the snow. Disbelief left his heart as his eyes filled with the miracle of
faith. The
concept of religion is such a personal one as pointed out in the book both
traditionally in the church references and in the pronouncement that you can
find God everywhere as illustrated in this modern parable. It demonstrates we
should do the best we can and trust that there is a power bigger than you
are…whether you call it God, or the universe, or a source energy, the universal
truth is that there is something out of our immediate control and all we must
do is trust that belief. Merry Christmas to all and
to all stay tuned as we pick apart Joanna Cannon’s debut novel.
The author, masterfully through her
phrasings, displayed the concept of showing
the reader something rather than
telling them…the goal of every writer. An example of this would be
describing a character whose shoulders slumped, his watery eyes dragging behind
every step in the direction of the maternity ward instead of telling the reader
he was distraught. Ms. Cannon would say, “The vicar smelled exactly the same as
the church. Faith had been trapped within the folds of his clothes, and the air
was filled with the scent of tapestry and candles.” That is showing, not
telling.
The story behind goats
and sheep developed from the author’s work in psychiatry, where she met a lot
of people who “unbelong,” those who live on the periphery of life pushed by
society to fit in but never can quite get it right. They are the “goats.” It’s
only when something goes wrong and society needs someone to blame, the sheep
turn to the goats and announce they must be guilty because they just look the
type. Unbelonging drives this novel…there’s a little bit of it in all
of us – it’s just that some people hide it better than others. Everyone on the
Avenue has something to conceal, a reason for not fitting in and in the midst
of the unprecedented heat wave in the UK coupled with a severe drought in 1976,
the stage was set for tempers fraying and “people going crazy” as the
neighborhood began to deconstruct. In the midst of the scorched earth, it
became evident no one was in control of everything – certainly not the weather.
Local posts reported swarms of ladybirds searching for food attacking humans as
they tried to rehydrate by drinking people’s sweat. The minister for drought
suggested people pour washing-up water into the toilet, instead of flushing and
to “take a bath with a friend.” Mick Jagger performed a concert bare-chested…the
heat the justification for behavior. Through the eyes of Grace, the
ten-year-old narrator, the reader discovers that if we scratch the surface of
most sheep, we might find ourselves a goat and we learn that unbelonging
is actually a belonging all of its own.
The Avenue resembled a
small town, both in size and attitude. Most residents knew the business of the
other residents, but what they didn’t know until the end was each had secrets
and most were goats in sheep’s clothing. The talk of the town was the
disappearance of one of their residents, Mrs. Creasy. On the outside, the
neighbors worried for her safety, but on the inside, they feared she knew too
much about a decade old fire, worrying who she was going to tell. Acting on the
words of a local vicar saying God is everywhere, Grace and Tilly, young friends
and junior sleuths, set out to find Him convinced that was the only way Mrs.
Creasy would return home. Tilly stumbled upon an image of Jesus in a drainpipe,
and for the Avenue it gave them something to believe in…pointing out you only
really need two people to believe in the same thing to feel as though you might
just belong.”
Secrets play a significant role in this
novel. How many times have you heard, can you keep a secret? Orwell said, “If
you want to keep a secret, you also have to hide it from yourself.” We
rationalize that the person who entrusted us with the secret needs us to
protect them from being judged, which is most people’s biggest fear.
The
trouble with goats and sheep as the title suggests, is it is not easy to clearly
define who’s who. We talked about the characters and why they fit into either
category, some fitting into both. Tilly was definitely a sheep…she was
innocent, always wanting to please. Grace was a bit of both although her
intentions were pure and naïve like Tilly’s and she relished being the leader
with Tilly following her every step, she longed to be in the company of the
older, cooler, wiser, sixteen-year old Lisa Dakin. The rest of the Avenue
neighbors seemed to do nothing but wring their hands and try to protect their
personal secrets along with the group conspiracy to get Walter Bishop out of
the neighborhood…he was an unbelonger. He was persecuted, the
obvious scapegoat in the story as someone pointed out…he might have looked
different and acted oddly, and because of that, he was the person of interest
for anything and everything that went wrong in the Avenue. We decided goats
have more fun than sheep and they can eat anything they want. We put ourselves
in Grace and Tilly’s shoes sharing our childhood summertime adventures.
With regard to the open-ended ending…the
whole book led up to something happening, but it didn’t. If it had been tied up
in a neat little package, we would not have believed that once Mrs. Creasy
stepped off the bus, everything would go back to “happily-ever-after.” Buried
secrets had surfaced for the residents of the Avenue…the cat was out of the
bag…leaving them to deal with their fate and the chatter might not be pleasant
when the fingers began to point. There is not a sequel in the works but the
novel has been optioned for television…maybe the door will close then.
On the business side:
Jean McSpadden recommended a
possible Bookers’ book to consider, The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.
It’s a historical fiction about a woman who chaperones silent film star, Louise
Brooks, to New York in the 1920’s. Soon to be a motion picture.
COLOR CODING SYSTEM
WHITE: LIGHT READ
PINK: MODERATELY
CHALLENGING
RED: CHALLENGING
January
9, 2018 Beneath
A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Based on a true story of
a forgotten hero, an Italian teenager during World War II…soon to be a motion
picture.
RED
Home
of Daryl Daniels
Reviewer:
Patty Evans
February
13 The Mourning Parade by
Dawn Reno Langley
The mother of two sons
killed in a school shooting leaves her successful veterinary practice to
volunteer in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.
LIGHT RED
Home
of Bonnie Magee
Reviewer:
Jean Alexander
March
13 The
Rainwater Secret by Monica Shaw
Debut historical fiction
by Dallas author based on the life of her great aunt about a missionary woman
in Africa to teach leper children.
PINK
Home
of Patty Evans
We
are excited to announce the author will be joining us for the meeting
April
10 The
Uncertain Season by Texas author Ann Howard Creel
Follows the lives of
three women in the aftermath of the 1900 hurricane that devastated
Galveston…one living a privileged life, her disgraced and flamboyant cousin,
and an unnamed girl living on the streets.
Home
of Sandy Molander
Reviewer:
TBD
May
15 Change of date due to travel plans
To Everything A Season
– Sherri Schaeffer, a debut set in Amish country in Lancaster Pennsylvania
where two worlds collide forcing them together.
Home
of Donna Walter
Reviewer:
TBD
Summer
Read: America’s
First Daughter by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie
Thomas Jefferson’s eldest
daughter, Martha, “Patsy” becomes the keeper of the secrets and her father’s
confidant after her mother’s death and his appointment as the American Minister
to France.
Maybe a good New Year’s resolution would be shed our
goat coats and adopt a more wooly lifestyle. It is unrealistic to expect a book
to be everyone’s cup of tea but my hope for the rest of our reading year is
that more of our cups of tea are in alignment.
Merry Christmas and Happy
Reading,
JoDee
