The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

"The beautifully realized elegiac tone of his childhood memoir invites readers to go tumbling down the rabbit hole of memory into the best days of their lives…by turns playful affectionate, gently mocking, laugh-out-loud funny and even wistfully sad. His greatest gift is as a humorist, however, so it is the snickers, the guffaws and the undignified belly laughs he delivers on almost every page that make it worth buying…probably the funniest book you’ll read this year. No, dammit. It is the funniest book you’ll find anytime soon. "
–Sydney Morning Herald

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. 

The flowers were beautiful....

the food was delicious......

and the company couldn't be better!

Sarah's Key by Tatania de Rosnay

Our July book was an excellent book!  It even got a shout out from Joy Behar--

"A wonderful book." --Joy Behar, The View

And who wouldn't believe the ladies from The View?????????

We met at Jackie's where we had a beautiful view of the pond, which you can see out the window behind Nancy and Barb.

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred Review. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.

Wow!  Some serious faces!  But the top of the book led to some serious discussion.

The food was great, as usual!!

With dessert lately, it's either feast or famine! This was our lonely dessert this time.:)

Look Again

We met for our August meeting at Karen's house. We enjoyed seeing her addition. Hopefully next year the weather cooperates and we can enjoy her new patio. We had a yummy dessert bar with a few salads thrown in!

Our book to discuss was Look Again by Lisa Scottoline.

FFrom Booklist

Ellen Gleeson was balancing life as a single mother and a feature reporter as well as could be expected. She had taken on single parenthood voluntarily, having fallen in love with her adopted son, Will, now three, when he was a very sick infant. A have-you-seen-this-child postcard featuring a child who could be Will’s twin catches Ellen’s attention, and while she should be pursuing her assigned story about the emotional effect of Philadelphia’s high teenage murder rate, she instead becomes obsessed with the missing child and with pursuing more details about Will’s background. Her questions multiply when she learns that, just three weeks after she adopted Will, the attorney who handled the proceedings killed herself. Where is the birth mother, and why doesn’t her family seem to know that she was pregnant? The answer only leads to danger, but Ellen, her reporter’s instincts on high alert, is hell-bent on finding the truth, no matter the cost. In a departure from her wildly popular Rosato & Associates series, Scottoline still sticks to what she knows in this taut stand-alone: female drama, family ties, legal intrigue, and fast-paced action. A sure-fire winner. --Mary Frances Wilkens

We enjoyed the book and had a great discussion!

Beth and Jill clearly LOVED it!!

It's hard to tell what these two villians thought.

These two certainly had other things on their mind.

The book club queens were in attendance.

AND A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!!

The Weight of Silence

We met for our May book club at Murphy's in Riverside. It was a small group, but we had a

good discussion. Our book was a great book and it was more special because we know the sister of the author and it was set in Iowa!

The Weight of Silence

by Heather Gudenkauf

Synopsis
It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.
Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler.
Calli's mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter's voice.
Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor.
Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

The Postmistress

We enjoyed discussing our April book, The Postmistress, in Nancy's home where the lilacs were beautiful and the food was yummy!

And here we have the luscious lushes--otherwise known as Jill and Susie.

There seemed to be some drinking of alcohol. Not sure why, but it was tasty!

Cheers!

The "techno-grannies" were quite happy just to play with their toys!

Showoff!

Here we actually have several members "on task"!

Two more show off! Some people are coveting those Kindles, ladies. Better hang on to them or the "techno-grannies" will get a hold of them!

Chicken Enchiladas

10-12 tortillas

2-21/2 c. cooked chicken

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1 me. onion chopped

grated or shredded cheese

tomatoes

Grease a 9x13 dish. Line with 1/2 tortillas. Arrange in layers--Tortillas, 1/2 sauce, 1/2 cheese & repeat all layers ending with cheese. Bake uncovered 30 min. at 350. Let stand a few minutes to set before cutting. Serves 8.

Orange Slush

9 c. water

2 c. sugar

Combine and simmer for 15 min.

Cool and add: 1 pint vodka

1 lg can frozen orange juice

1 lg can frozen lemonade

Put in ice cream bucket & freeze. Serve slushy: 1/2 of this & 1/2 7-Up.

Unfinished Desires

Our March bookclub was held in Valli's beautiful home where we discussed

Unfinished Desires

by Gail Godwin.

From Gail Godwin's site:

Set in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina, Unfinished Desires is a complex and deeply affecting story of friendship, loyalty, redemption, and memory.

The ninth grade class of Mount St. Gabriels, an all girls Catholic School, is strong willed (some might say "notorious"). Leading the pack is the unforgettable Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of the class, who quickly befriends Chloe Starnes, a day student recently taken in by her uncle following her young mother's mysterious death. The passionate friendship fills a void for each girl, and the headstrong Tildy soon has Chloe and the whole class enacting her vision for a play based on the colorful founding story of the school.

What happens the night of the play will profoundly affect the course of many of the lives involved, including that of the girls' teacher, a young nun, as well as the school's matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel. Fifty years later, she will still relive that night in 1951, trying to reconcile past and present, and reaching back even further to her own senior year at Mt. St. Gabriel's, where the roots of a tragedy are buried.

FOOD--Valli's soups were DELISH!! As was the rest of the food--apple cake, broccoli slaw, etc. Sorry, no pictures.

Kim brought "Sister Ethel" to share in the discussion along with several Catholic school photos from the 50s. Valli and Kim had first hand Catholic school experiences to share. Phyllis was also familiar with nuns.

Phyllis kept us on track as usual! Here she is penciling in the names of the people who didn't show up. You know who you are!!

Nun(none) of these three have ANY Catholic school experience. And, if I may say so myself----it shows! LOL

We all enjoyed the book, the conversation, and the food.

"WHAT HAPPENS AT BOOK CLUB, STAYS AT BOOK CLUB!"

The Help

Our February meeting was held at a local restaurant with the discussion being held in a place that shall remain nameless!!

Our book was:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Sybil Steinberg

Southern whites' guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don't tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.

Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns to her parents' cotton farm in Jackson. Although it's 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.

Skeeter is in some ways an outsider. Her friends, bridge partners and fellow members of the Junior League are married. Most subscribe to the racist attitudes of the era, mistreating and despising the black maids whom they count on to raise their children. Skeeter is not racist, but she is naive and unwittingly patronizing. When her best friend makes a political issue of not allowing the "help" to use the toilets in their employers' houses, she decides to write a book in which the community's maids -- their names disguised -- talk about their experiences.

Fear of discovery and retribution at first keep the maids from complying, but a stalwart woman named Aibileen, who has raised and nurtured 17 white children, and her friend Minny, who keeps losing jobs because she talks back when insulted and abused, sign on with Skeeter's risky project, and eventually 10 others follow.

Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett's accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.

The murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen through African American eyes, but go largely unobserved by the white community. Meanwhile, a room "full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women" pretentiously plan a fundraiser for the "Poor Starving Children of Africa." In general, Stockett doesn't sledgehammer her ironies, though she skirts caricature with a "white trash" woman who has married into an old Jackson family. Yet even this character is portrayed with the compassion and humor that keep the novel levitating above its serious theme.

It seems we all enjoyed this book a great deal!

A Change of Altitude

Our January meeting was at Phyllis' on January 23rd. Looks like she did a great job keeping the discussion on track!

Because of the bad weather and roads only the "townies" were able to attend. (Phyllis did host some us on Friday that didn't make it to book club. We were treated to trifle, treats and adult beverages! YUM!)

Our book to discuss was:

Change of Altitude

by Anita Shreve

Synopsis
Twenty-eight-year-old Geraldine travels to Kenya with her new husband James with the intent of staying a year. In a dizzying multicultural city, she struggles to maintain her balance as well as her sense of self. Her marriage, and her understanding of the world, are shaken to the core.Invited on a climbing expedition to Mt. Kenya, the newlyweds are caught up in a horrific accident. In its aftermath, Geraldine must try to understand exactly what happened on that mountain and what it has done to her and to her marriage. A major author in terms of critical acclaimand bestseller status, Anita Shreve limns the secrets at the core of our closest relationships and the ways in which lives can turn on the axis of a single catastrophic event.

The food looked yummy!

A great discussion was held.

Jan even stopped eating and talking to listen!!

Valli smiles at the camera while Jill wonders what Jan is talking about!

Phyllis certainly had their attention!