The Book Club and Books

Book Club and Books

6/8/14

Well, I played cards lat night instead of posting a blip so here is yesterday…. Another beautiful day. Yoga, Pancakes, trail maintenance with rakes and clippers, some studio, AND we did talk about the books!

At camp we choose to read an African American book (either author or subject) that our good friend and former book club member, V, who LOVED to come here, would have liked. She died years ago so it’s always good to especially remember her here. and over the years we have read many excellent books I never would have found, including several slave narratives. This year we all read Herman Melville’s Benito Cerano, about a Spanish ship on the coast of Chili full of slaves in the 18th C.that encounters an American Ship and strange events unfold. It’s a short tale but according to the gals here - “torturously” hard to read. Old language and all, it’s a brilliant rather suspenseful (The gals all objected to that first word as being over the top)mystery story with a surprising climax and much ambiguity about Melville’s actual feeling about slavery in 1859 when it was published. Very interesting. Then we each read something on our own to bring… these ranged from 2 of Maya Angelou’s famous speeches, one about Mendela - appropriate for this year of their death. And 2 books by Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who lives in California now but writes of growing up in Kenya in Mau Mau times… it sounds fascinating and is on my list. The Tree of Forgetfulness, by Pam Durban about a Jim Crow lynching and history in the south. Home, by Toni Morrison was the last,- another grim tale of life for blacks in the south, now after WWll. Not her best, in my opinion.

A flickr set about some of our activities (for those who couldn’t come, sorry to miss you!)

We are all going back to Seattle on the evening ferry Monday….