APMC 2008-9 Book Club

Okay, so reading for pleasure and personal enrichment is not always possible when you’re the mother of an infant, toddler or preschooler…not to mention MORE than one! But many of we moms enjoy reading as a way to relax and continue to tap into those parts of the brain that aren’t so much used during the course of a typical day with our kiddos…you know, the days where you are primarily focused on navigating your way through diapering a squirmy infant, catering mealtime to a picky-eater toddler and/or playing your 23rd game of restaurant. And yes, some childrens’ books today are simply brilliant – who doesn’t love Sandra Boyton’s dry wit? – but it’s just not the same, so we offer the APMC book club.

At the start of the year we vote on books, and give members two months to read up, although reading NOT required to come to the book club discussions, since we invariably mix literary analysis with other grown-up topics and yes, some mommy sharing time. We rotate meeting locations and days of the week, but usually meet at 7:30pm or as soon thereafter as you can join us!

August
Wednesday, August 13th
7:30pm
Central Market Cafe
Book: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

October
Tuesday, October 14th
7:30pm
Triumph Cafe, http://www.triumphcafe.com/
3808 Spicewood Springs, Austin, TX 78759
Phone: 512-323-1875
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
336 pages
Description (from the Amazon.com website): In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of—Tiburon, South Carolina—determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.

December
Wednesday, December 10th
7:30pm
Clementine Coffee Bar
2200 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722
512-472-9900
http://www.clementinecoffeebar.com/
They have food, baked goods, coffees, beer and wine.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
352 pages
Description (from the Amazon.com website): It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake.

February
Wednesday, February 18th
7:30pm
Location to be determined
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
464 pages
Description (from the Amazon.com website): This is a superb novel, a many-cultured Middlemarch, but it's a rough one for an actor. James juggles a large cast of Brits and Yanks, middle- and working-class white, African-American, West Indian and African men and women, as well as street teens, wannabe street teens and don't-wannabe street teens. James has a beautiful, deep voice that at first seems antithetical to Smith's ship of fools, but he enhances the humor and pathos with vocal understatement. He helps give characters their rightful place in the saga. The parade of characters swirl around two antagonistic Rembrandt scholars in a Massachusetts college town. Howard Belsey is a self-absorbed, working-class British white man married to African-American Kiki and father to three cafe-au-lait children. Monty Kipps is a West Indian stuffed-shirt married to the generous Carlene, with a gorgeous daughter, Veronica. The book is funny and infuriating, crammed with multiple shades of love and lust, midlife and teenlife crises. Class, race and political conflicts are generally an integral part of a story that occasionally strays from its center. The theme of beauty as counterpoint to individual, family, cultural and social foibles and failures ribbons through the novel and wraps it up, perhaps to say that Beauty is, finally, the only Truth.

April
Tuesday, April 14th
7:30pm
Location to be determined
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
336 pages
Description (from the Amazon.com website): Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus—three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up. Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well—in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often

June
Thursday, June 11th
7:30pm
Location to be confirmed
Book to be determined at the April meeting

Contact the APMC Book Club Coordinator, Julie Kennedy, at Julie@austinmothers.org for more information.