To celebrate the launch of Lady M Book Club, we're doing a giveaway for our June book club pick! Enter by commenting on our Instagram announcement.
Summer is coming... just in time for the launch of Lady M Book Club! Our whole team loves to get lost in a good book, and we often find ourselves chatting about what we just read, what we're reading, and books our ever growing to-read list. We occasionally swap books, and we definitely make good use of the New York Public Library (a amazing resource... if you don't have a library card yet, please get one). Our tastes run the gamut from fiction to non-fiction, humorous to heart-breaking, from mystifying to thrilling, first time authors to well known vets. We're open to all your ideas and suggestions. A good book is a good book!
How does Lady M Book Club work?
Good question!
1) On the fourth Friday of each month, we'll announce the upcoming month's book. So today, we're announcing the book for June 2019.
2) With the announcement of the new book, we'll also introduce a few key questions/themes to think about while reading the book.
3) We'll circle back on the fourth Friday of each month with our recap/review/thoughts (and announce next month's book in the same blog post).
We did a internal book club test run for the month of May. Our pick was Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. If you're a book fiend, you'll have heard of this gem. Educated was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list (and named one of the ten best books of the year by the NYT book review). It was also noted as one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year and made Bill Gates' famed holiday reading list.
This is a non-fiction coming-of-age memoir that pulls you in deep. The author/narrator is Tara Westover, and the book is about her life growing up in rural Idaho with survivalist parents and abusive siblings. They didn't believe in school education, or even doctors/hospitals. The way it reads, you would think this book's set in the early 1900s, but guess what: Tara was born in the mid 1980s. They never figured out Tara's exact birth year because she was born at home, and never issued a birth certificate confirming her existence.
That puts Tara in her mid-30s today, which is not far off in age from many of us. I think, for many of us, the idea of growing up completely cut off from "normal" society and popular civilization, is not something that has ever crossed our minds. The book dives into the terrors and sheer craziness of her childhood, and then, how Tara was able to overcome it all and eventually get into Cambridge and Harvard. But there was a price to pay: the relationship strain and eventual break with her parents and siblings. The overarching questions/themes of this book? Family loyalty. And that is a theme that will resonate with everyone regardless of gender, age, and ethnic background. A story this profound is worth your time.
An interesting tidbit: If you look up the reviews for this book on Amazon and filter by "Top Reviews," you'll see that the first review is from a man name Drew. Drew is one of the key characters in Educated, and it is so interesting to read his take/response on the book.
And now on to...
Lady M Book Club: June 2019!
Less: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer is a Pulitzer Prize winner that has been on the reading list of many a famous book club. We thought this fun, fictional romance (set on a journey around the world) was an especially appropriate pick for Pride Month!
Andrew Sean Greer is a San Francisco-based writer and Less is his fifth novel (he also has a collection of short stories). Brush up on the author here... we always find it worthwhile to learn a bit about the writer before we dive into the book. It gives you a different perspective, and we feel that you get more out of the novel.
This is the story of Arthur Less, a not-quite-successful novelist about to approach his 50th birthday. His longtime lover has left him, and just a few months after the end of that relationship he receives an invite... to his ex-lover's wedding! Rather than face the matter, Arthur chooses instead to accept invites to random (and mediocre) literary events around the world, thus giving him a legitimate reason to avoid the wedding. The story follows his travels around the world. Such lengths we go to, to avoid acknowledging heartbreak!
Thoughts to consider while reading:
- What is love? (This is a question that Greer himself suggests for book clubs in this interview with Pulitzer.org).
- Are you sympathetic to Arthur's character? If so, why? If not, how else did you feel about him?
- Was the novel's finale expected, or did it come as surprise? Were you satisfied at the end?
We'll see you back for Lady M Book Club in a few weeks!
Till next time,
Lady M