Back in Action..

Yes, the book club blog has been stagnant since September.  I apologize.  The lives of mothers who read, and work, and blog, and quit jobs, and have their grandmothers suddenly pass away are pretty busy.  That being said however, here's to getting things back on track.

Our January meeting was at Melinda's house.  Thanks Melinda for hosting.  The book for January was, Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor.

I thought the book was great.  It was an interesting juxtaposition of a very deep thinking, soul searching mother and her young quick witted, trying to figure life out daughter.

For our meeting on Thursday, February, 24, 2011, we'll be at Michelle's house and reading, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.  It's a little bit on the long side so start reading now.



And, for our meeting on Thursday, March 24, 2011, we'll be at Rika's house and reading Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg.

A review posted on Amazon.com:
Michael Greenberg's spare, unflinching memoir begins with a bang: "On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad." Hurry Down Sunshine chronicles the summer when fifteen-year-old Sally experienced her first full-blown manic episode—an event that in a "single stroke" changed her identity and, by extension, that of her entire family. Simply told and beautifully written, Greenberg's memoir shines a stark light on mental illness, painting a vivid picture of a brain and body under siege—mania as a separate living thing squatting within the patient. As a writer who lives "so much in his head," Greenberg is particularly anguished by his daughter's fractured psyche, and his honesty about being both sickened and fascinated by his daughter's condition is breathtaking: "During the worst moments, I think of her as my disease—the disease I must bear...I am intoxicated with Sally's madness in both senses of the word: inebriated and poisoned." So desperate is he to understand her, that he relentlessly researches mental illness (the book is peppered with fascinating insights into drug therapy and anecdotes about writers who struggled with madness), and even goes so far as to sample a full dose of his daughter's medication. Startling, heart-wrenching, and yet unwaveringly unsentimental, Hurry Down Sunshine is an unforgettable story of a young girl's descent into madness, told through the eyes of a harried and helpless father trying desperately to bring her back. --Daphne Durham