“Well, see, my son wants to go out every day:  he’s very social.  And there’s not a lot of places to go with a nine-month old where he can see enough people to get his fix for the day (he’s an early junkie).”
“Oh, my church has a whole bunch of great stuff going on for kids and moms.  You should give it a try!  They have a Wednesday morning Bible study and a MOPS group.  I also meet with a group of ladies mostly from there for a book group.”
“Sounds like fun!  But I already go to a church.  Wait, which one do you go to?”
“Newberg Friends.  Have you heard of it?”
“Yeah, I’ve gone there for 12 years.”
“Wow!  So have I!”
“Do you know Erinn?  She was telling me that I should go to the Bible study just the other day.”
“You should!  She’s actually part of my book group.  You should join that, too!”

By that point an old man with a coupon for 10 loaves of bread for $10.00 had shown up, and we had to cut our conversation short.  But I mentioned it to Erinn, and she said I should “totally come!”  The only requirements were that I read and that I actually show up.  Which I have, fairly consistently.

I just finished our read for the month:  Maisie Dobbs.  I thought it was fairly delightful:  nothing that would win a Booker Prize, but still – engaging, interesting, well-written, AND NOT DEPRESSING.  I’ve been voicing my “concern” lately that all our reads have been downers, and if I wanted to be down, I wouldn’t read but rather try and balance our checkbook.  Recently we’ve read a story about a doctor who worked in Haiti (poverty and disease), untouchables living in India during revolutionary times (disease, poverty, constant tragedy, and an Oprah book), a miserable doctor and his miserable family and his miserable mistress living in China, and a man who was an accidental tourist in his life (which many book groupies said wasn’t a downer, but I think they’ve been living in Oregon too long to know what happy really looks like).

“Isn’t it great to read new things?  To expand your reading list being part of a group that reads stuff you might not normally read?” folks might ask.  Yes, it is.  In fact, because of book group, I have now started reading books I rarely read before:  fluff books.  In an attempt to balance out all the “pain and beauty of the stark reality of human nature” that we’ve been reading, I’ve turned to books that sell in the trade paperback section of the book store for about five dollars – the kind you’d take on a plane because you want to escape from the reality that there’s a very large man with very small personal boundaries sitting next to you.

I recently finished (in about three days) The Cabinet of Curiosities (thanks for the recommendation, Bob!):  a sort of Da Vinci code, figure out who the murderer is, a little bit of wacky stuff going on kind of book.  And I’m now delving into  The Patriots Club because it recently won some award for being the Thriller of the Year:  it’s a sort of John Grisham/Clive Cussler/Tom Clancy type of book.  How does a writing/lit major such as myself justify putting pop fiction on my library hold list?  “Oh, Hubby would *love* this book.  I’ll get it for him.  And maybe I should check it out first, just to make sure he’d like it. . . .”
Never let it be said that I’m a genre junkie:  next up on the docket -

• The Holy Longing:  The Search for a Christian Spirituality
• Crazy in Alabama
• Living Simply with Children:  A Voluntary Simplicity Guide for Moms, Dads, and Kids Who Want to Reclaim the Bliss of Childhood and the Joy of Parenting (it’s marked as Non-Fiction, but I think it might’ve been miscatalogued)
• The Gift of Southern Cooking