Good Reads, Good Friends

Ashley, Anne, Kiersten, Heather, Emily

So much of what I love about reading involves the people I love and the stories we share.

One of my earliest memories is cuddling up on the old white couch with Adam and Mary while my mom read aloud The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The music of poetry first became real when I heard my dad’s deep voice sound the vowels of “The Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee.” My sisters and I grew up believing we were L.M. Alcott’s Little Women, even if each of us privately knew herself to be the rightful Jo. Of Mice and Men will always belong to Wade and me because we read it to each other and cried over Candy and his dog. And Stuart Little’s admonition to “never forget your summertimes, my dears” is captured in the June afternoon Scotty and I sat on the grass in the generous shade of our front trees and started the summer by finishing the book.

For me, knowing what people think about what they read can be a sort of Cliff’s Notes for character. Will Scarlett find a way to get Rhett back? Will Snape be loyal to Dumbledore or Voldemort? Was Hamlet’s ghost good or bad? How you answer these questions can say a lot about what you believe.

I came to this theory one afternoon in my Victorian Literature class back at the Mighty Y. A graduate student who was writing his thesis on Tennyson’s In Memoriam was giving a guest lecture, and someone asked him about his favorite line. Without hesitation, he replied, “Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drown’d” (I.9).

Little did that plaid shirted, braided belted, newly married graduate student know that months later, the stressed-out sophomore (whose heart was pining for her Netherlandian missionary) standing in line behind him for a taco at the Cougareat was feeling a flash of recognition for his soul. “Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drown’d!” We’d never spoken, we never would. But I believed I knew him—his faith, his doubts, his understanding of and dedication to a duality I was coming to know myself.

This ponderous preamble is set the stage so I can brag that I get to go to Book Club tonight. It’s one of the best things I do. Once a month, four friends from high school and I get together to share a story, a treat, our lives. Sometimes we dress up, our perfume and high heels belying the frumpy day we’ve left at home. Other nights we don sweats and glasses, relishing this night of rest. And we talk and talk and talk and talk and talk—about our projects, our church callings, our homes, and our children.

But we also always manage to talk about a book, and as we do we share experiences and know each other in ways we never could otherwise. We know that Ashley wants every story to be about twisted love—not in a creepy way, but in an Age of Innocence way (because she has boundless imagination), Emily wants closure (because she has a gift for making things beautiful), Kiersten loves a story about coming of age (because she knows who she is), Heather goes for a good Marxist reading of poverty and suffering (because she is kind), and I want every story to be about redemption (because I know I need it?).

So if my point is (there’s a point?!) that you can know someone by their reading, I suppose it only makes sense to share the Book Club’s illustrious reading record. We haven’t all read every book, but collectively we’re not too shabby. Emily’s selections are absent for a few years because she moved to Texas (where she was busy doing academic reading and perfecting the art of brisket). Thankfully, she came back. We don't always (ever) agree about a book's merit and meaning, and just because we’ve read something doesn’t mean we recommend it (WARNING: The Sound and the Fury, Lady of the Camellias). If you're looking for something you haven’t heard of but will stay with you for a long time, I’d start with How Green Was My Valley.

Book Club Reading Record

Est. November 2003

2003

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen ( Emily)

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier (Ashley)

2004

Silas Marner, George Eliot (Kiersten)

The Persian Pickle Club, Sandra Dallas (Heather)

Miriam’s Kitchen, Elizabeth Erclich (Anne)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (Ashley)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (Emily)

A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton (Kiersten)

Middlemarch, George Eliot (Heather)

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (Ashley)

The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare (Kiersten)

2005

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (Anne)

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (Heather)

Plain and Simple, Sue Bender (Ashley)

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith (Kiersten)

Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier (Anne)

Short Stories

“Babette’s Feast,” Isak Dinesen (Ashley)

The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis (Kiersten)

“The Dead,” James Joyce (Anne)

Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts (Ashely)

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, J.K. Rowling (Heather)

How Green was my Valley, Richard Llewellyn (Kiersten)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares (Anne)

Howard’s End, EM Forster (Ashley)

2006

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (Kiersten)

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Anne)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (Ashley)

The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman (Heather)

Standing in the Rainbow, Fannie Flagg (Kiersten)

Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman (Anne)

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, Susanna Clarke (Ashley)

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (Heather)

Precious Bane, Mary Webb (Kiersten)

Peace Like a River, Leif Enger (Anne)

Lady of the Camillas, Alexandre Dumas Fils (Ashley)

The Life of our Lord, Charles Dickens (All)

2007

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows (Heather)

of Josephine B, Sandra Gulland

Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, John Gray

His Needs, Her Needs, Willard F. Harley (Kiersten)

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (Anne)

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson (Ashley)

Poems (Heather)

So Far From the Bamboo Grove, Yoko Kawashima Watkins (Emily)

When the Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka (Kiersten)

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (Anne)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See (Heather)

The Princess Bride, William Goldman (Emily)

2008

Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (All)

Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (Kiersten)

Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (Anne)

Stormy Weather, Paulette Jiles (Ashley)

Bleak House, Charles Dickens (Heather)

Watership Down, Richard Adams (Emily)

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (Kiersten)

Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie (Anne)

Dracula, Bram Stoker (Ashley)

Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns (Heather)

2009

1776, David McCullough (Emily)

Ex-Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman (Kiersten)

The Sound and the Fury, William Crazy Faulkner (Anne)

Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt (Ashley)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë (Heather)

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (Emily)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Mary Ann Shaffer (Kiersten)

Daniel Deronda, George Eliot (Ashely)

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely (Anne)

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (Heather)

Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare (Emily)

2010

Left to Tell, Immaculée Ilibagiza (Kiersten)

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Anne)

How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson (Ashley)

C.S. Lewis said, “We read to see with other eyes, to feel with other hearts, to imagine with other imaginations, as well as with our own.”

Why do you read?