Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

We were 7 members at our September meeting, Betty, Carla, Linda, Marg, Michèle,  Shirley and our newest member, Sharon.  Welcome Sharon!  Michèle had some great vegetable and salmon sushi and a cream cheese dip with veggies.  We also enjoyed a great Mandarin orange cake made with almond flour. Of course wine, coffee and tea were also on offer.

Our book this month presented by Carla was Remarkably Bright Creatures by American author, Shelby Van Pelt.  This is Ms. Van Pelt's first novel.  It was on the New York Times Top 10 list of fictions for several months.  It has been picked up by Netflix and will star Sally Field.

The story is about a developing friendship between a giant octopus Marcellus and a woman, Tova who cleans the aquarium. Ms Van Pelt did a lot of research on octopuses before writing the book.  The main human character, Tova is an older widow who takes a night job at the aquarium after her husband dies, to keep busy.  

Almost all our members enjoyed the book.  They found the writing to be excellent, characters well developed, and the story to be charming, gentle, not a story with extreme drama but it developed well and was easy to read and follow.  Both Tova and Marcellus must deal with the fact that they are ageing and make choices to continue a pleasant life.   Many felt it was a satisfying book to read with a happy ending.  

Thank you Carla for beginning our Fall season with such a pleasant book.  

Books and Meetings 2025

 This list will be updated as members choose their book choice.

January 27 - Colette's choice, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer, Marg hosts

February 24 - Betty's choice, The Nurse's Secret by Amanda Skenandore, Shirley hosts

March 24 - Sharon's choice ,  Held by Anne Michaels,  Carla hosts

April 28 - Marg's choice, Michèle hosts

May 26 - Michèle's choice,  The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb,  Linda hosts

June 23 - Carla's choice, Colette hosts

September 22 -Linda's choice, Sharon hosts 

October 27 - Shirley's choice, Betty hosts

November 24 - Beth's  choice,  Beth hosts

The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis - Monday June 24, 2024

Colette was our host this month.  Present were Beth, Betty, Colette, Linda, Michèle and Shirley.  We were a small group this month.

Beth presented the book The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis.   Martin Amis was born in 1949 and died in 2023.  He was the son of Kingsley Amis, a well known British author who wrote over 20 novels including Lucky Jim.   Martin Amis wrote several novels, essays, memoirs and screenplays.  Two of his novels were  nominated for the Booker Prize.   

The Zone of Interest is the area around the concentration camp Auschwitz, about 40 sq. kilometres.  The commandant Rudolph Höss and his family, live in the region along with others who work at the concentration camp.   There are several characters, however Amis has chosen to tell the story via 3 of them,  the camp commandant Paul Doll,  Golo Thomsen, who is a very aryan, blue-eyed tall young Nazi officer and the third character is the head of the "Sonders" jewish prisoners who help the Nazis, with the hope of saving themselves. Many reviewers see the story as a comedic farce with a love story included between, Golo Thomsen and the Camp Commandant's wife Hannah Doll. 

All of us found the book challenging and difficult to read.  Some found it well written giving more the prospective of the protagonists, they believed they were doing the right thing.  Some however did not like the writing style and did not appreciate the German phrases that were not translated,  making it hard to read and understand.   None of us found the story to be funny.

Though it was not a story that members enjoyed reading, it was one that brought on a discussion about the war in mideast at moment.  Thank you Beth.

May - Poetry - Monday May 27, 2024

Unfortunately because of weather and an electricity outage, we had to cancel this month's meeting .

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama - Monday April 22, 2024

Michèle was our host for this April meeting.  She provided veggies with a dip, cheese and cocktail meatballs.  We also had a wonderful Persian Love Cake. The recipe is below.  

We discussed Marg's book choice The Light We Carry  by Michelle Obama.  This book is a follow-up to her  book Becoming that we read in September 2021.  Michelle Obama, as we all surely know,  was the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2015.

While we all enjoyed her first book, most of us were dissappointed with this follow-up book.  Becoming is an excellent autobiography, and very well written.  This book The Light We Carry is more of a book on how to improve your life, with anecdotes from her life repeated from the first book.   

For young women, certainly some of the anecdotes and suggestions on how to approach life may be useful but for women of a certain age, it is not much us.  

Thank you Marg for the book choice.  All of us were anxious to read it after Becoming.  

Recipe for the Persian Love Cake

Almond Cake With Cardamom and Pistachio

(Persian Love Cake)

 

This moist and springy Persian almond cake is generously spiced with ground cardamom (two full teaspoons). We like it with fresh berries. If you want to serve it for Passover, be sure to use kosher for Passover confectioners' sugar.

INGREDIENTS

Yield:One 9-inch cake (10 to 12 servings)

• ½cup vegetable oil, plus additional for pan
• 7 large eggs, separated
• 1cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon almond extract
• 3½cups /420 grams almond flour (see tip)
• 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• 1 to 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
• 3 to 4 tablespoons finely chopped pistachio nuts, for garnish

 

1.      Step 1

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Oil a 9-inch round or square pan and set aside. Using a stand mixer, whisk egg whites until stiff but not dry, and set aside.

2.      Step 2

In a medium bowl, combine egg yolks and sugar, and whisk to blend. Whisk in almond extract and oil. Add almond flour and cardamom. Gently stir a third of the whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest until just incorporated.

3.      Step 3

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and finish cooling on a rack. To decorate, dust with confectioners’ sugar and chopped pistachios.

TIP

• If you want to grind your own almond flour, start with 3 cups nuts. Using a large food processor, pulse almonds until very finely ground, stirring once or twice to prevent them from turning into a paste.

 

·       If you found the recipe online, you will see that it calls for 4.5 cups of almond flour. However, if you measure by weight, 420 grams is only 3.5 cups and that is what I used.  The batter will be very stiff and not as moist  if you use 4.5 cups. 

 

 

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good - March 25, 2024

Carla hosted this evening’s meeting with Beth, Marilyn, Shirley, Linda, Colette, and Betty in attendance. We were treated to our first ‘butter board’ along with a hot artichoke dip and a variety of nibbles. Dessert was a fresh fruit salad with mini lemon tarts.

Marilyn’s book choice this month was Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. Michelle Good is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. After working for Indigenous organizations for twenty-five years, she obtained a law degree and advocated for residential school survivors for over fourteen years. Good earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia while still practising law and managing her own law firm. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada. Five Little Indians, her first novel, won the Harper Collins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award, the Evergreen Award, the City of Vancouver Book of the Year Award, and Canada Reads 2022. It was also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

It was unanimously felt that while this was a difficult, grueling, and emotional book, it is also a well-written, important book that should be required reading and made part of school curriculum. For those of us who have never undergone the horrors of residential schools, this book gives a glimpse, better understanding, of what we, as a society, our government and our religious orders, did to those who were here in this land before us.

Michelle Good has written a fictional story that is based on true events. She has taken what happened to thousands of indigenous children and given us an account through five children who have been isolated from family and society since they were very young and follow them as they are released from the school to face uncertain futures with no life skills, no money, no support network, no family but with the memories of the trauma they underwent at the school. 

We see how the quiet, sensitive but strong Lucy escapes the hospital with her baby before the Social Worker could claim it and survives by channeling her emotions into counting and cleaning. We see Kenny trying to be a good partner and father but hides his trauma in drink. Howie, the quiet one, spends time in prison for beating up one of his tormentors and refusing to say he was sorry for it. Maisie seemed as if she had her life together, but she was living a falsehood and a double life; she committed suicide. We feel the anger Clara channels into her work with various Indigenous movements but after meeting with Maria and her sweat lodge, she becomes a court worker and is able help some who would otherwise spend many years jailed.

There was mention of the writing style as being simplistic and difficult to follow. But is this not a reflection of the five we are following? The education that was lacking in their upbringing? It may also be that Michelle Good wanted this book to be readily available to all, including young children, so that there can be no excuse for not understanding the trauma that was faced by those who attended residential schools. And perhaps Good was forward thinking in making this book suitable for inclusion in a school curriculum as our group believe should be done.

Five Little Indians was a hard book to read, particularly for those of us who grew up in the vicinity of residential schools but with no knowledge of the trauma that was being brought to bear on the children. It is an embarrassment to white society, our government and religious orders and, as Michelle Good undoubtedly wished, it was felt by all.

Thank you, Marilyn, for your enlightening book choice; an historical novel filled with truths that are hard to accept

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams - February 26, 2024

Shirley was our host for this February 2024 meeting. Present were Beth, Carla, Colette, Linda, Marg, Marilyn and Shirley.  Betty was not at the meeting but sent her review to Shirley. We discussed Colette's book choice, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. 

Pip Williams was born in London in 1969 to a Brazilian mother and Welsh father. She grew up in Sydney, Australia. Her first published work was at the age of 15, when she wrote a poem called Fifteen, and submitted it to a local magazine. She found out that she was dyslexic at the age of 17. In order to help his daughter, her dad gave her three dictionaries. Pip feels that this may be one of the reasons that she had such an interest in the compiling of the Oxford Dictionary. Ms. Williams has a PhD. In Public Health. She worked as an academic researcher and she feels it equipped her well to write novels. 

 

She and her family purchased a hobby farm and she began writing, leaving farming to her partner. The first book she wrote was One Italian Summer published in 2017 and popular in Australia.  She was inspired by the novel The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words by Simon Winchester, taking the part of this novel that dealt with the making of the Oxford English Dictionary as the basis for her new novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words that was published in 2020. It has been very popular worldwide and she has won several literary awards.  She has since written a third novel, published in 2023, The Bookbinder of Jericho. 

Our members, in general enjoyed the book and has a historical novel, found it interesting.  They did find, especially the beginning to be slow and tedious.  Most were surprised by the "unscientific" method that was used to make the dictionary.  The description of the scriptorium was quite interesting and added to our knowledge.  The description of the town of Oxford was particularly interesting to some of our members. 

Both Esme and Lizzie were well described and Lizzie, though illiterate was very smart.  The addition of the activities of the Women's Suffrage Movement was interesting and gave us information on how and when it began. The addition of this information, the description of the town of Oxford and the impact of World War I on Esme, Lizzie added to the interest of the book as a historical novel.  

Thank you Colette for presenting an interesting novel that generated a good amount of discussion. 

 

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict - January 29, 2024

Marg was our host for the first meeting of the 2024 year.  Present were Beth, Betty, Carla, Colette, Linda, Marg, Michèle and Shirley.  Betty presented the book The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict. 

This is the second book we have read by Marie Benedict.  Most of her novels are based on true women and tell the story of women that may not have been known. This novel is about the 11 day disappearance of the author Agatha Christie.  It is written in a different style than her previous books. Agatha had been challenged by her sister to write the unsolvable mystery.  Was this 11 day dissapearance the manuscript of this drama?

Marie Benedict tells the story of Agatha's life, her marriage to Archie Christie and the difficulties of the marriage.  She relates the search for Agatha that was the big story in Great Britain.  Is the story of her disappearance as it is written  what really happened? As this is a novel, we don't really know what happened during those 11 days and why Agatha dissappeared.  

It left us as readers, wondering what really happened.  They divorced and Archie's lover, Nancy Neele was named in the divorce decree as Agatha insisted.  This gave Agatha custody of her daughter.  Has Marie Benedict, in this novel managed to get to the truth of Agatha's disappearance?  We will never know. 

Thank you Betty for this recommendation.