365 True Things: 35/Books

I joined my book group in April 1990, at the invitation of a fellow Monterey Bay Aquarium volunteer. Once I came on board we were again a group of twelve women, the norm since the group was started way back in 1979. Since 2000 we've lost two, so for many years now we've been only ten. But we've been the same ten for over twenty years, and ten feels like just the right number now.

We meet for a potluck meal. It used to be dinner when everyone was working, now it is more often lunch (which I usually don't attend: it wrecks my day). Once or twice a year we meet at a restaurant, and over the years we've learned how to split the bill amicably--progress. After the meal, we have a discussion, always with some sort of presentation by the person who chose the book. The books themselves are farflung, but they tend to be novels rather than nonfiction. And in December (our business meeting) we usually do a children's book and always have buche de Noël.

I would not call myself a good book group member. I often don't finish the book. (Sometimes I don't even start it—but that's usually only if I know I'll be out of town for the meeting.) I have little patience for certain kinds of books. Like the entire year we did classics? Okay, it ended up not even being an entire year, but by the time we hit Moby-Dick, it sure felt like it. I'm not crazy about multigenerational family sagas either. One year we did all prize winners—Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker. That year I quite liked. Unfortunately, only one other member enjoyed the book I selected for that year, Midnight's Children. So who am I to complain?

Six years ago, two members compiled a list of every book the group has read, right back to the beginning, and presented it to each of us, in a pretty blue book tied with a yellow ribbon. That's how I know I joined in April 1990: I remember that month's book—a memoir, Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng—because it's one I never would have chosen to read myself, but it ended up being very interesting and the discussion lively.

Here are the books I've led a discussion on (as best I can recall—even with a list in front of me, I'm not entirely sure of some of these!):
The Road from Coorain by Jill Kerr Conway
Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose
Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Old Bones by Stanley Elkins
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Questions about Angels: Poems by Billy Collins
A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell
The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

That brings us to 2009, when the list ends. Since then, I do remember presenting these:
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
 . . . and there was one more, but it shall remain a mystery—unless I can coax our "secretary" to publish the lists for the last six years. We have a Facebook group; it would be the perfect place.

What prompted me to write this post today is the loss, yesterday, of one of our earliest members, Ann Priebe, 73—one of the two who departed the group in the past fifteen years; she moved to Seattle to be closer to her daughter. Many decades ago, before blood screening became the norm, she needed a transfusion; sadly, she contracted Hepatitis C— which is what cut her life short. I remember a lovely woman with fluffy silver-blonde hair and the most sparkling sky-blue eyes. She worked as a school nurse and could be sternly no-nonsense—moral, socially engaged (or, in some cases, enraged). But she also had a sweet sense of humor, big spirit, and beautiful laugh. I did not know her well, but I'm sad to know her light has been snuffed. And I know she will be missed by many people who loved her. She joined book group in March 1981.

[Update 5/3: My wish was granted, and the full list of all thirty-six years' worth of books—that's over four hundred—has now appeared on the Book Group Facebook page. My missing book? Atul Gawande's Complications.]