2012 Holiday Cookie Exchange

The Beehive ladies ended the year with their now traditional holiday cookie exchange hosted by Betsy at her storybook Christmas tree filled home of sparkle and tinsel. We dined together on homemade minestrone soup, salad and bread. After a most lively book conversation we recessed to the kitchen and family room to enjoy sweet treats as well as more stories and laughter. This party like gathering is a lovely way to welcome the holiday season and say good-bye to another year all while making plans for the next series of reading adventures.

November 2012 Book Choice

For the month of  November we chose The Great Gatsby by
F. Scott Fitzgerald, a classic tale of love and  power soon to be yet
another major motion picture.

As per Wikipedia


The Great Gatsby is a novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book takes place from spring to autumn 1922, during a prosperous time in the United States known as the Roaring Twenties, which lasted from 1920 until the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

Between 1920 and 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, commonly known as Prohibition, completely banned the sale and manufacturing of all alcoholic beverages: distilled spirits, beer, and wine. The ban made millionaires out of bootleggers, who smuggled alcohol into the U.S.. The setting of the novel contributed greatly to its popularity following its early release, but the book did not receive widespread attention until after Fitzgerald's death in 1940, when republishing in 1945 and 1953 quickly found a wide readership.

The Great Gatsby received mostly positive reviews when it was first published and many of Fitzgerald's literary friends wrote him letters praising the novel. However, Gatsby did not experience the commercial success of Fitzgerald's previous two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, and although the novel went through two initial printings, some of these copies remained unsold years later.

When Fitzgerald died in 1940, he had been largely forgotten. His obituary in The New York Times mentioned Gatsby as evidence of great potential that was never reached. Gatsby gained readers when Armed Services Editions gave away around 150,000 copies of the novel to the American military in World War II.

Today the book is widely regarded as a "Great American Novel" and a literary classic. The Modern Library named it the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century.

The cover of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature. A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel.

October beehive book dinner

Our October dinner was hosted by Mary Beth and Rory at their hauntingly adorable home in the pocket area.

There was not a lot of food/meals mentioned in this book but we managed to connect to the season and symbols quite well. Fiendish foods, goblin greens and other tasty treats filled the tables and our tummies.

A Monster Calls had many surprises and questions. The book talk last for several hours and way into the night...we covered life, living, action vs thought and dying...big topics for an evening discussion.

October Book Club Choice

Our October book choice is A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (based on the idea of Siobhan Dowd).

Here is an overview by the Independent UK

"Children's writer Siobhan Dowd died when she only had the idea for this fifth book; Ness has taken that idea and made of it both a classic tale and a tribute to her. Young Conor's mother is ill with cancer, and he is having nightmares regularly.

They take on a physical form when the yew tree he can see from his bedroom window assumes a human shape, and speaks to him. It tells him three stories – about a bad prince, a foolish parson and an invisible man – as Conor, who is being bullied at school, is estranged from his father and dislikes his grandmother, struggles to accept what is happening to his mother. Ness's fracturing of the family here in many different ways, and his lonely, alienated child-hero, gives his moving tale of death and loss a modern touch, whilst also endowing it with some much-needed fantasy."

From the Telegraph 2012

"This year, for the first time ever, the same book, A Monster Calls, has won the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children’s literature and its companion prize for illustration, the Kate Greenaway Medal. It is an extraordinary outcome for a book with extraordinary beginnings. Its author, Patrick Ness, was passed the baton of an idea from a previous Carnegie Medal-winner, Siobhan Dowd, who died of breast cancer in 2008. (Dowd won the Medal posthumously for Bog Child.) Although Ness wrote a book that was very much his own, the spirit of Dowd was in the book, and in the illustrations by Jim Kay. "

September 2012 Book Club Meeting

Molly hosted our September gathering at her elegant and charmingly eclectic home. Most members had not completed/started/purchased the book choice so the literary discussion was limited yet we still had hours of conversation.

Judy shared stories from Italy, Beth from Seattle and Rory her journey home. The rest of us had humorous tales of family/work adventures from the summer and the food was varied and as delicious as the talk!

September 2012 book choice

September's Book Choice

"The World to Come"

by Dara Horn

Entertainment Weekly Editor's Choice

New York Times Editor's Choice

A Book-of-the Month Club Smart Readers Selection

A Book Sense Top 20 Pick

Winner of the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction

Winner of the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize

Best of Young American Novelists 2007 - Granta



Prize-winning author Dara Horn interweaves mystery, romance, folklore, theology, history, and scripture into a spellbinding modern tale. She brings us on a breathtaking collision course of past, present, and future -- revealing both the ordinariness and the beauty of "the world to come." Nestling stories within stories, this is a novel of remarkable clarity and deep inner meaning.

August Bookgroup Dinner

Our end of summer group meeting was held at Lori's book-filled villa, a grand jolly time was had by one and all. The book made for interesting discussions regarding surgery, body parts and how much of "us" belongs to us? What about the needs of the scientific community and humanity? Is one persons freedom to much to sacrifice for the better of many?