Book Club Dinners

And two excellent books

Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash

Book Clubs

I have been going to monthly book ‘club’ dinners, for over twenty years, from the time my daughter was a baby and my son a toddler. On the evening of the first book club date, I arrived exhausted and a little nervous but left with some hope. The women had interesting careers, were about my age and had children. I had been struggling with parenting tiny children -the mire of nappies, feeding, cleaning and general sludge and had not read anything more than a clothes catalogue or the back of a cereal packet for at least a year. There had been a bolt-of-shock moment when I read somewhere, that the average person read 8 books a year. I had read the clothes catalogue and perhaps one book. The statistics look far more bleak today: 40% of people in the UK haven’t read a single book in the last twelve months. No doubt they are reading content on their phones, listening to podcasts. Whatever.

There are 13 women in our book club, but usually only around seven or eight at the table. One maybe working, another ill, someone away. This seems to work, as 13 is a big number to cater for on a weekday evening - we take it in turns to host. My mother has always worried about 13 at the table, placing a teddy bear on a seat to make 14. This occasionally happened at Christmas or a birthday. So it worries me too, (a bit) but not hugely as I was born on Friday 13^th so can’t go too deep with the number 13. It comes from the Last Supper when Judas was the 13th guest and betrayed Jesus, but that doesn’t resonate with me.

My mother sticks to this rule because there were 13 at her wedding breakfast and one of the guests died a few weeks after in some far off land. However he was an explorer (does such an occupation exist these days?) Perhaps he was killed by a poisoned arrow, or died of malaria. Or maybe he was mauled by a tiger or bitten by a snake. Poor man though. He was engaged to one of my mother’s best friends.

The only time we lapsed with our regular book discussion meet ups was during Covid. We tried to meet online but it didn’t work. Those boxes of faraway faces was just too hard to engage with. No nuance of tone or meaning, too many women trying to talk at once.

I am so grateful for the group. So happy to read regularly. Now that we no longer have competitive cooking, (we made a new rule about a year ago) the host bakes potatoes and gets imaginative with toppings, it’s so much less stressful. At one point it was so hard to know what to give these women to eat (me included). We had to veto meat, pulses, and gluten which only really left fish.

We have recently read two brilliant books. The first is Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I had wanted to read this book since I heard Chloe talking on a podcast a few months ago. She spoke in a crisp, clear voice and everything she said was fascinating. One day, in the middle of a freezing February she found a day old Leveret (baby hare) on the roadside. She wavered, wondering if the mother hare would return (it didn’t) so a few hours later, she took it home and cared for it, always intending to return it to the wild. It’s a magical, beautifully written story ­ – compassionate and heart-warming. A balm.

Photo by Rick J. Brown on Unsplash

The other is Plainsong by a Kent Haruf. The first in a ‘loose’ trilogy: Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction. One woman recommended Haruf, the rest of us had never heard of him. The books are set in the small fictional town of Holt, Easter Colorado. When Haruf died in 2014 Macmillan, his UK publisher, praised his “beautifully restrained, profoundly felt novels” which it said “reflected a man of integrity, honesty and deep thoughtfulness.’ We all loved this book, it’s just so dignified, and masterful. I have started Eventide and it’s just as good.

I also love what he said about writing: ‘The obvious thing is to read, read, read, read, read. Then write, write, write. There is no way around it. You have to do both of those things. But in terms of reading, I think you have to learn to read like a writer reads. That is, you are not reading for entertainment anymore. And you are not really even reading to see how a story plays out. What you are doing is reading to discover how somebody else has successfully done something on the page. So you are paying very close attention to what works, and what doesn’t work. And once you get to be a skilful reader, there is a different kind of pleasure in reading someone great. So no, I really don’t read much of anything except I go back over and over to Faulkner and Hemingway and, particularly, Chekhov.’