February 2020 Book Choice

Moving into the year with a dynamic and moving selection by the one and and only Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon.

Kirkus Review
1977

And the scribbled no-name "Macon Dead," given to a newly freed black man by a drunken Union Army officer, has stained out a family's real name for three generations, and then we meet the third "Macon Dead," called "Milkman." Raised among the sour hatreds of the richest black family in a Michigan town, Milkman learns not to love or make commitments, learns to turn away from his father's hard, tight greed, his mother's unloved passivity, his sisters' sterile virginity. He stands apart from his outcast aunt Pilate (a figure reminiscent of Sula, living beyond all reason), a "raggedy bootlegger" who keeps her name in a box threaded to one ear. And he stands above the wild untidy adoration of his cousin Hagar, above the atrocities against blacks in the 1950s, even while his friend organizes a black execution squad. However, when Milkman's father opens the door to a family past of murder and flight, Milkman—in order to steal what he believes is gold—begins the cleansing Odyssean journey. His wanderings will take him through a wilderness of rich and wonderful landscapes murmuring with old tales, those real names becoming closer and more familiar. He beholds eerie appearances (an ancient Circe ringed with fight-eyed dogs)—and hears the electric singing of children, which holds within it the pulse of truth. Like other black Americans, Milkman's retrieval of identity from obliteration helps him to shake off the "Dead" no-name state of his forebears. And, like all people, his examination of the past gives him a perspective that liberates the capacity for love. Morrison's narration, accomplished with such patient delicacy, is both darkly tense and exuberant; fantastic events and symbolic embellishments simply extend and deepen the validity and grace of speech and character.

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you die."

Molly hosted the dinner at her lovely home filled with friendship and deep conversation. 

January Book Choice 2020

Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce started our new season of ready.
Here is the Kirkus Review July 2018:

Innocence and perky optimism are tempered by less sunny feelings over the course of British novelist Pearce’s debut, which opens with a relatively upbeat evocation of World War II London as experienced by 22-year-old legal secretary Emmy. Fond of larky contemporary expressions and capital letters—“I gave what I hoped was a plucky Everything Is Absolutely Tip Top smile”—Emmy yearns to be a Lady War Correspondent and finds a new job at Woman’s Friend magazine. But her duties turn out to include destroying problem-page letters on unacceptable topics (“Premarital relations, Extramarital relations, Physical relations,” etc.) on behalf of her boss, battle-axe agony aunt Mrs. Henrietta Bird. Warmhearted Emmy can't bear to leave these needy women's letters unanswered and begins replying to them in secret, forging Mrs. Bird’s signature. Matters turn more serious after Emmy has an argument with her best friend Bunty’s fiance, William, over his risky work as a fireman.  Vividly evocative of wartime life, with its descriptions of bombed streets, frantic fire stations, and the desperate gaiety and fortitude of ordinary souls enduring nightly terror, Pearce’s novel lays a light, charming surface over a graver underbelly. With its focus on the challenges and expectations placed on those left behind, it also asks: Who is supporting the women in a world turned upside down by war?

 “a jaunty, heartbreaking winner” (People)—for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Lilac Girls.

Jane hosted the dinner at her bungalow the conversation was lively and the food yummy.

December Cookie exchange 2019

And another Beehive year wraps up with our annual Holiday Cookie exchange, this year hosted by Suzi. Our book choice was perfect for the season of giving...One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. 

Here is what NPR book review had to say: 

Poet, short-story writer and novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni cut her teeth listening to her grandfather tell tales from the ancient Indian epics — the Ramayana and Mahabharata — by lantern light in his Bengali village. This storytelling legacy shines brightly in her entrancing new novel, One Amazing Thing, in which nine people in the passport office in the basement of the Indian Consulate in San Francisco are yoked together by fate when an earthquakes hits.

Trapped strangers are transformed into a chorus of Scheherazades, offering up tales of loss and love, and betrayal and redemption, to illuminate the gathering darkness.

November 2019 Book Choice

As we neared the end of another year, we selected  My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. 

Here is what the NPR review 2018 had to say about this novel and the desire for sleep:

Imagine taking a sabbatical, not just from your job, but from your life. How about going even further and taking a yearlong break from yourself and the world, courtesy of an extended nap? That's the desperate plan of the unnamed 24-year-old narrator of Ottessa Moshfegh's bizarrely fascinating second novel. This miserable young woman hopes she can hibernate for a year and literally lose herself — her haunting memories, obsessive thoughts, and acidic negativity — and emerge from her sleep-cure as "a whole new person." My Year of Rest and Relaxation is her hyper-articulate account of this disturbing, ultimately moving "self-preservational" project. You might call it a rest-oration drama.


Moshfegh knows how to spin perversity and provocation into fascination, and bleakness into surprising tenderness, but her dark humor and ghoulish sensibility are not for everyone. She's drawn to the transgressive and the disgusting, finding plenty of both in the offensive art at a downtown gallery where her narrator briefly works. (She has a field day mocking the ridiculous reviews these shows receive.) Reading her, you gawk and balk but can't turn away.


Suzi hosted at her charming bungalow and everyone had lots of comfort food and plenty of treats for the munchies!

October Book Choice 2019

The History of Bees by Maja Lude was our October read.
This complex tale woven through time gave us lots to discuss. Alayna hosted at her lovely cottage and she raises bees so it was an extra sweet meeting!

here is a expert from the Publisher Weekly 2017 review


In her first adult novel, Norwegian children’s author Lunde posits an apocalyptic future, weaving together stories on three continents in three different time periods that revolve around honeybees.

As the author adroitly switches back and forth among the intense stories, she explores the link between parents and children, and the delicate balance of expressing parental expectations versus allowing grown children to follow their own passions.

There is also the strong theme about the potentially bleak outcome for a world that ignores the warning signs of environmental catastrophe and allows honeybees to disappear. Lunde’s novel provides both a multifaceted story and a convincing and timely wake-up call.

September Book Choice 2019

We chose a very curious novel for our September read- the novel Little by Edward Carey. Here is just a bit about this historically based "fairytale" from the NPR book review 2018:

"Madame Tussaud is a familiar name — you may have visited one of her wax museums. But chances are, you don't know a thing about the life of the real Marie Tussaud. For example, she was tiny, which is why writer and artist Edward Carey has called his new novel about her Little.
She seemed like a character from a fairy tale, he says. A small woman, she fled the French Revolution, arrived in England with the wax heads of many of the famous people who had lost theirs under the guillotine, and set up a museum that became wildly successful. "It's a strange fairy tale but I feel it is the most extraordinary fairy tale. And it is a fairy tale about this little person and history."
Fiction, it turns out, was a good way to capture her — because Madame Tussaud is an enigma. No one is sure how much of what she said about her life is true. And, Carey says, "Nobody ever took a photograph of her, which seems to me perfect. Not her medium. She was wax."

We all agreed to meet at Obo's and enjoy a book group gathering out and about!

July 2019 Book Choice

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue was our July book choice. Here is a sample of what the NPR 2016 book review had say about this novel:

"Those who lived through the turbulent final years of the George W. Bush administration remember that it brought out the worst in a lot of people — not just in the bankers and politicians who let the crisis occur in the first place, but in ordinary citizens brought to the edge by the threat of financial ruin.

Behold the Dreamers is, at times, hard to read — not because of her writing, which is excellent, but because the characters keep getting hit, over and over again, by horrible circumstances beyond their control. Jende is reminded that "bad news has a way of slithering into good days and making a mockery of complacent joys;" Neni feels "crushed" by her own feelings of helplessness, "the fact that she had traveled to America only to be reminded of how powerless she was, how unfair life could be."

Behold the Dreamers is a remarkable debut. Mbue is a wonderful writer with an uncanny ear for dialogue — there are no false notes here, no narrative shortcuts, and certainly no manufactured happy endings. It's a novel that depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance. It is, in other words, quintessentially American."

Sally hosted our dinner at lovely poolside home there was conversation, cake and merriment !

June book choice 2019

For our early summer read we selected "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Here is a small sample of the NYTimes book review 2018

The book is divided into three sections — “Becoming Me,” “Becoming Us” and “Becoming More” — that sound like the bland stuff of inspirational self-help. Which isn’t to discount how useful empowerment can be; Obama emphasizes how important role models are, especially for young women of color in a culture that isn’t changing fast enough. But this book isn’t all unicorns and rainbows. By the end of it, she ultimately champions endurance and incremental change; she will probably be lauded and lambasted accordingly." 

Kim hosted the Beehive Ladies at her lovely home. Wonderful food, and a great discussion ! 

Look at this spread 

May 2019 Book Choice

Sourdough by Robin Sloan was our May book choice.
Here is an excerpt from the NPR book review 2017:

Okay... Robin Sloan's new novel, Sourdough, is exactly like his first book, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, except that it's not about books (exactly), but is absolutely about San Francisco, geeks, nerds, coders, secret societies, bizarrely low-impact conspiracies that solely concern single-noun obsessives (food, in this case, rather than books), and also robots. And books, too, actually, now that I think about it.

It is a beautiful, small, sweet, quiet book. It knows as much about the strange extremes of food as Mr. Penumbra did about the dark latitudes of the book community. It concerns one Lois Clary, a young proprioception engineer for a gleaming robotics company in San Francisco called General Dexterity. She ended up there kind of by accident: She was good with computers, good with machines, had a perfectly reasonable job in Michigan, close to her family, when she was suddenly recruited out of the blue by the robot people. And she took the job because, in Lois's words (via Sloan), "Here's a thing I believe about people my age: We are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted."

We had our dinner meeting at Magpie Cafe 

We shared Sweet Treats! 

April Book Choice 2019

For April we selected the book Educated by Tara Westover. Lots to discuss in this unbelievable true story. Here is part of a New Yorker review 2018:


" I am far from the first critic to recommend Tara Westover’s astounding memoir, “Educated,” but if its comet tail of glowing reviews has not yet convinced you, let me see what I can do. Westover was born sometime in September, 1986—no birth certificate was issued—on a remote mountain in Idaho, the seventh child of Mormon survivalist parents who subscribed to a paranoid patchwork of beliefs well outside the mandates of their religion. The government was always about to invade; the End of Days was always at hand. Westover’s mother worked as a midwife and an herbal healer. Her father, who claimed prophetic powers, owned a scrap yard, where his children labored without the benefit of protective equipment. (Westover recounts accidents so hideous, and so frequent, that it’s a wonder she lived to tell her tale at all.) Mainstream medicine was mistrusted, as were schools, which meant that Westover’s determination to leave home and get a formal education—the choice that drives her book, and changed her life—amounted to a rebellion against her parents’ world."

We met at Obo's for our book group discussion, drinks and dinner. 

March 2019 Book Choice

Our book Choice for March 2019 was An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.Here is small portion of the NYTimes review:

Tayari Jones’s wise and compassionate new novel, “An American Marriage,” tells us a story we think we know. Roy, a young black man, is tried and wrongly convicted of rape while his wife, Celestial, waits for his return. But Jones’s story isn’t the one we are expecting, a courtroom drama or an examination of the prison-industrial complex; instead, it is a clear vision of the quiet devastation of a family. The novel focuses on the failed hopes of romantic love, disapproving in-laws, flawed families of origin, and the question of life with or without children that all married couples must negotiate. It is beautifully written, with many allusions to black music and culture — including the everyday poetry of the African-American community that begs to be heard.