Men's Group (3rd Tuesdays at 8:00 a.m.)
Tuesday, August 17Still Alice
by Lisa GenovaThe Book Group will be held at a member's home. Please email or call Beagle Books (218 237 2665) for directions.
Blue-Stocking Society Book Club
(Not accepting new members at this time)
August The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stie LarssonSeptember Rivertown
by Peter HesslerOctober Breakfast with Buddha
by Roland MerulloNovember The French Gardener
by Santa Montefiore
Virtual Book Club Special Review
Comments on Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Kurtis Scaletta, author of Mudville
There are books, about one a year, that become a big deal socially, i.e., everyone is suddenly reading it and talking about it. I find that magical. It is wonderful for everybody to be reading the same book; for a book to be a shared experience the way TV and movies are. I rarely regret reading such a book unless it involves art historians and assassins, so I decided I’d purchase and read Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (GLAPPPS) and rushed off to get it Saturday morning as soon as the bookstore opened. Turns out I got their last copy, and they’d sold a dozen that day. Astonishing.
It’s no wonder GLAPPPS is such a popular choice with book clubs; it’s about a book club, and the fellowship that develops around reading. Told in letters, the story is about a popular journalist known for whimsical pieces who’s considering her next project and by a stroke of fate begins corresponding with the residents of Guernsey, a Channel Island that was occupied for much of WWII. The islanders tell her their stories, and how their friends and their favorite writers helped them in the dark days of the occupation. They don’t all read the same books. For one fellow, Charles Lamb is always on the docket, it’s Seneca for another, while one reads only unnamed children’s books about dogs and another insists on reading from her own unpublished cook book (which passages torture the other half-starved members).
It’s a bit precious, true, with everyone writing wonderful letters, even if they are supposedly uneducated–and even the unlovely people are entertaining, such as the prissy, judgmental non-member who tries to set the record straight on the society by savaging the character of its members. Yet, I found this to be a wonderful weekend read, a good story and well-told, and a testament to the social nature of literature.
I‘ve compared GLAPPPS to Wodehouse, and a friend who didn’t care for GLAPPS but loves Wodehouse didn’t see the connection. I think it’s captured in Barrows’ end note, which explains that she revised a book written by Shaffer, her late aunt. Barrows says that the center of her aunt’s charm was “her willingness to be delighted by people — their phrases, their frailties, and their fleeting moments of grandeur.” That is, I think, what I was striving to say. That’s true of Shaffer, and it’s true of Wodehouse, however misanthropic he pretends to be when it comes to children and meddling aunts. You could say the same of Alexander McCall Smith, author of the Ladies Number One Detective Agency series and a few other authors. There are dark scenes in this one, but the delightfulness of the people make post-war Guernsey a lovely place to spend a weekend.
Go to Kurtis Scaletta's website.
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