Our Book Group

I just love our book group! Once a month an assortment of men and women from different backgrounds with different tastes get together to discuss a book which has been chosen by the group. We choose a book by consensus which is the Kendal way. I said the members are varied but so are the books. We have read bestsellers, classics, biographies, and history.

One of our first choices in 2006 was "Team of Rivals". In 2007 we read several old classics such as "Painted Veil" by Somerset Maugham and"Madame Bovary" by Flaubert. One of our favorites was "Huckleberry Finn". Larry remembered that her daughter had written a paper years ago about this book in which she said that the river was a metaphor for good and the land was a metaphor for evil. Good things happened on the river and bad things happened on the land.

Last month we discussed a current bestseller, "The Help". We had a little "help" with this book from Susan Richardson, a retired English Professor at Denison. Most people enjoyed the book but several of us had reservations, including me. One of Susan's interesting questions was whether we thought the book was about the writer of the story or about the maids.

We have an ambitious project for December. We are reading "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy, a 900 page beautiful and sad story. Most of us have read this book in our younger years, but as with "Huckleberry Finn", we will bring our added years of experience, knowledge, and mature insights, so that it is almost like reading it for the first time. We will have help again this time. Betty's daughter, Carol, is a Professor of Russian Literature at Duke University, and she will lead our discussion.

Usually we do not have a reviewer or a leader. One of us just moderates the discussion. There are two rules: Only one person at a time may speak (no side conversations), and we have to pretty much stay on topic. I can usually tell beforehand which books will have a lively discussion because of the chatter I hear in the dining room. I have already heard lots of chatter about "Anna" and am really looking forward to our December meeting.