March 2012's Chosen Book


http://www.katemorton.com/the-forgotten-garden/

March's book that we will all read is: The Forgotten Garden: A novel.  By Kate Morton

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book -- a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to fi nd her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.

The moment I read the synopsis I was hooked.
Check out the link I've provided to a slightly different synopsis from the Author. I can't wait!!!!
Happy reading!
Terry-Jo
~Listens With Sticks

Upcoming Themes

November - something from your stash of books

December - supernatural or scary

January - author Mona Simpson

February - love stories

March - book to be chosen by "listens with sticks"

April - biography

May - moms

June - dads or grads

October minutes

Recommended books about friendships among women:

The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

The 10 Best Days of My Life by Adena Halpern

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

Carried over from last month:

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand

Swamplandia by Karen Russell

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Looking forward to:

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton

Random:

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver

September Meeting Notes

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

Bad Girl Creek by Joanne Mapson

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Swamplandia by Karen Russell

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

Theme for October - friendships among women

Agenda for October - choose themes and locations for the year

What Matters

" . . . cell phones and faxes and take-out food isn't real life. Getting up every day is. Doing your work, even if it means risking your health, going to bed good and tired, and in between times, doing for your friends, that's what matters."

from Bad Girl Creek by Jo-ann Mapson

Maybe it's just because I'm having a bad year, but reading this made me cry. I love the way an author I've never met can eloquently express some of my deepest thoughts.

again from the gentlemen

In a book of 50 Great Short Stories edited by Martin Crane, the 41^st one is the best so far, and they were all good.  H. L. Mencken’s The Girl from Red Lion P.A. is the story I’m recommending.  It may also be available in the book Newspaper Days, by Mencken.  As to plot and storyline it might best be described as a romance of innocence.  If you were a young girl, how would you go about actively pursuing perdition in the big city?  Ah, but as a reading experience, it is a feast of cynicism, sarcasm, and irony—textbook examples—delightfully piquant .  The characters are Runyonesque without the vernacular, the perspective Twain without the exaggeration, and the story might be human interest journalism at its most interesting. 

The Gentlemen’s Auxillary

from the Gentlemen's Auxiliary

I have just finished a book, Herland, and selected stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I say finished in euphemistic form, I skimmed a bit of Herland, the initial novella and decided to skip it as both too farfetched in premise and too predictable in point of view and outcome—an undiscovered land of women, and the not very salacious adventures of three young Victorian gentlemen who stumble upon it.

Ah, but all the others, some 20 short stories unrelated one to another with the following exceptions. In each case but one, the heroine prevails with humor and wit and a perfectly sensible outlook, if a touch more modern than the minor characters find appropriate for the times. In sum, they are stories by a turn of the 20^th century female O’ Henry. Each with a gentle, feminine twist, each made me smile.

That one exception I noted, The Yellow Wallpaper, is her most famous, and probably most anthologized work. It is a dark tale of a woman slowly going mad. Well worth reading, to be sure, formidable of theme and powerfully written, but not light, not uplifting, nothing in the end to smile at. With that said, I believe I can recommend any collection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short stories.