Entry 1: Summer Women's Book Club

Let's face it, I'll never be a competent blogger.  I resist almost anything that should be done daily, including but not limited to exercising, brushing my teeth, taking vitamins, charting my cycle, facebook.  However, I have had an inspiration.  Instead of throwing up random poems randomly, I am going to give reports on my attempt to create a book club.  I am doing this because I think it would be interesting and because my friend and neighbor Denise wants to do it so badly.  We've talked about it here and there for years -- years!  I guess I'm finally in a place to seriously consider it.  I have a wide reading range, but it tends toward the "high end" of literary work.  Whatever that means.  Denise wants romance and popular novels, and as I am not opposed to such things at all despite my leanings, that is where our club will go.

The Beginning:
Denise asks me to go with her for a girl's night out.  She says it has been over five years since we last did this.  That doesn't seem possible, but time is a very fluid thing for me and I cannot argue.  We leave much earlier than when the movie we are going to see starts, and decide to spend the intervening time in Barnes and Noble instead of the mall.  We stay together, and start pointing out books that might be good book club possibilities.  We have a vague idea of trying to read books that have been made into movies, and including that aspect as an option.  I get out the small journal I've been carrying recently in my purse, and start writing down authors and books.  We stay in the fiction section and eventually browse row by row.  Here is what we came up with, although I have ordered it differently from the rambling list I made in the store:

Jane Austen     Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Gilbert     Eat Pray Love, Committed
Sara Gruen     Water For Elephants, Ape House
Kathryn Stockett     The Help (everyone is talking about this book)
Jodi Picoult     My Sister's Keeper
Adriana Trigiani     Big Stone Gap, Life Lessons From My Grandmothers, Very Valentine
Alice Sebold     The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon
Jennifer Weiner     In Her Shoes, Good In Bed
Alice Walker     The Color Purple
Anne Rice     (Vampires), Of Love and Evil
Sue Monk Kidd     The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair
Toni Morrison     Beloved, a mercy
Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre
Louise Erdrich     Love Medicine, Plague of Doves
Barbara Kingsolver     Animal Dreams, Lacuna
Alice Hoffman     Here On Earth, The Red Garden, The Third Angel
Elizabeth Berg     Open House, Once Upon a Time There Was You, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
Ernest Hemingway     A Moveable Feast
Shakespeare
James Patterson     Sunday at Tiffany's
Elin Hilderbrand     The Castaways
Nicholas Sparks
Nora Ephron
Danielle Steele
Hester Browne
C.S. Lewis     The Chronicles of Narnia
Stephanie Myers     Twilight
J.K Rowling     Harry Potter

I have since made up a draft for a flyer advertising our club.  The heading is:  SUMMER (Women's) BOOK CLUB / Reading, Discussion, Friendship, Movies.  At the bottom I have listed a lot of the books we are considering, and on this list all of the writers are female.  Why not?  It gives us more than enough great stories to tackle.  Denise and I are supposed to meet for lunch this Friday, which should give me my next installment.  If you live anywhere near Dry Ridge, Kentucky and are interested, I can give you further details as they arise!  Or stay tuned.