Loving Frank by Nancy Horan not only sparked a great, in-depth discussion, but led club members to read other works about famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright such as Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William R. Drennan.

The widely-read post Wives and Lovers can be found here.  This selection complete with discussion questions has received over 1,000 hits in the past year.

These is my Words, written entirely in diary form by Nancy Turner, has also found favor with club members.  The post Pioneer Woman can be found here.

Told entirely in  letter format by Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society sparked a great deal of interest and a lively discussion.

One book club member wished that the fictional characters would indeed inhabit the aforementioned island, because she would love to visit with them to learn more about their war-time experience.  Click here for The Next Step – Discussing the Book.

The holiday season brings with it a chance to relive Christmases past and present.  Books read and discussed for our December meeting  include The Christmas Train by David Baldacci, The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans and Red Bird Christmas by Fannie Flagg. Of the three mentioned, Red Bird Christmas rated as number one.

The post, It’s Unanimous, proclaimed our love for Mma Precious Ramotswe, the main character of the The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

More information about its prolific author, Alexander McCall Smith, can be found here.

What are some of your favorites?

Sometimes the evening will feature the movie version of a favorite book and other times the high point will be a game of trivia drawn from the year’s reading list.

For December ’09, Anne compiled a jeopardy game using information from the following books:

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

84, Charing Cross Road

Wish You Well

The Persian Pickle Club

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Third Angel

Back When We Were Grownups

The categories and the questions were as follows:

The British Isles

1. A channel island between England and France where our August selection took place: (Guernsey Island)
2. The Marks & Company address Helene Hanff sends her reading requests to: (84 Charing Cross Rd)
3. Lucy Green is given a dog while visiting this country:  (Scotland)
4. Biddy, Patch & No No’s mother lives in this country:  (England)
5. The Lion Park Hotel in London plays a big role in this book : (The Third Angel)

Food & Drink

1. Precious Ramotswe enjoys this particular brew:  (bush tea)
2. Rebecca Davitch gets this spilled all over her shoes by her future mother-in-law:  (ham)
3. Dessert was always provided by the weekly hostess of this group:
(Persian Pickle Quilt Club)
4. Will Allenby’s nightly dinner: (chili)
5. Tinned ham and eggs were some of the gifts Helene sent because of this in 84 Charing Cross Rd: (rationing)

Mysteries

1. Besides coal, this other fuel was also discovered in the Cardinal coal mine:
(natural gas)
2. Ella Crooks husband Ben disappeared and was found here: (buried in a field)
3. The problem with Michael Macklin’s room on the 7th floor of the Lion Park Hotel: (haunted/ghost -of Teddy Healy)
4. Mma Makutsi figures out that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s house is being used as this: (illegal bar – shebeen)
5. Mma Ramotswe’s secret that she can’t bring herself to tell anyone:
(she thinks she is still married to her 1st husband)

Friends, Relatives & Others

1. Mma Ramotswe’s office manager proudest achievement:
(97% on her final exam from Botswana Secretarial College)
2. Louisa Mae & Oz Cardinal go to live with this relative when their parents died:  (great-grandmother)
3. Juliet & Dawsey decide to do this:  (get married)
4. How Helene Hanff and Frank Doel kept in touch:  (letter writing/post/mail)
5. The gift Zepha leaves for Queenie when she and Blue leave suddenly:
(Quilt- called Road to California)

Name That Book

Identify book by location

1. Takes place in Appalachia – (Wish You Well)
2. Kansas – (Persian Pickle Club)
3. New York and London – (84 Charing Cross Rd)
4. Baltimore – (Back When We Were Grownups)
5. Botswana – (In The Company of Cheerful Ladies)

Note: Elly won the prize for the most correct answers.

** To facilitate this year-end trivia bash, refer to the discussion questions distributed monthly.

What does your bookclub do for fun?

***Thanks to Anne for sharing the jeopardy book trivia with my readers!!

But the main character of Letters from Yellowstone puts passion before propriety in this 226-page novel by Diane Smith.

Defying conventional behavior, A. E. Bartram, a Cornell medical student, travels cross country  by herself to catalog the Rocky Mountain flora and fauna of Yellowstone National Park.

The year is 1898 before tourists, the railroad, local entrepreneurs and poachers destroy the picture of pristine nature found in this 3,468 acre park in northern Wyoming.

Not fazed by her less than warm welcome, amateur botanist Alexandria Elisabeth Bartram settles into camp, “with her own tent, bedding and other feminine necessities delivered (without any charge!) by a woman naturalist who considers herself a patron of the sciences”.

In one of his frequent letters home, expedition leader, H. G. Merriam, assures his mother, that Miss Bartram will be allowed to stay since she is, “slight of build so would not eat much”.

Besides sad-eyed Merriam, the field study is composed of a drunken agriculturist teaching his pet raven to talk, and the driver/guide who, “ain’t gonna haul no woman”.

Eccentric entomologist Daniel Peacock rounds out the short-staffed undertaking along with two undergraduates expecting a vacation, Stony and Rocky Cave, plus the mediocre Chinese cook, Kim Li.

Coping with “worn-out tents, ramshackle tables, make-shift equipment”, along with a freak springtime blizzard, Alex and her male cohorts collect and preserve specimens in earnest.

Tensions escalate when Smithsonian representative Philip Aber arrives threatening to close down the project, citing the presence of Alexandria,  Merriam’s dismal leadership skills, the shocking lack of equipment and the Crow Indian family camped nearby.

But Miss Bartram proves her meddle, when she comes to the rescue of Professor Merriam after a 60-foot fall from a rocky ledge.  Finding him bleeding and breathless, the female botanist creates a make-shift tourniquet and builds a crude shelter of tree limbs as the snow continues to fall and darkness quickly closes in around them.

Even though the pursuit of science has left Alexandria, “thin, brown, weary, her hair unkempt and hanging in limp ringlets around her face and down her back”, she refuses to return home with her stiff-necked Cornell mentor, Professor Lester King until the summer’s end.

In letters and telegrams to the outside world, the novel’s rag tag crew of scientists debate the role of science in society, learn from each other, chuckle at the  raven’s antics, and find romance during their two-month stay in Yellowstone.

This bookclubber found the novel engaging, but one sided. Return letters from Professor Merriam’s mother and Alexandria’s parents would have heightened the  conflict as well as filled in gaps in the reader’s knowledge.

As a great fan of another epistolary novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, this bookclubber preferred the give and take as letters passed back and forth between  characters.  (See The Art of Letter Writing, March 14th post)

True, Diane Smith’s choice to tell Alexandria’s story through out-going letters only might not please everyone, but this format allows us to peek into each character’s thoughts in turn.

Drawing from her 15-year stint as a science and environmental writer, Smith sprinkles scientific terms and Latin species names throughout which can become tiresome at times.

Thankfully, the author introduces topics such as wild life management, commercialization/exploitation of national parks and the woman’s place in the world of science with such a light hand that the novel’s flow is uninterrupted most of the time.

Also set in the western states in the late 1800s, Smith’s second novel deals with a paleontological expedition. Told through the main character’s journal, Pictures from an Expedition includes an ongoing feud over the discovery of a Triceratops skeleton and the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Readers who enjoyed Letters from Yellowstone rated Pictures from an Expedition as an even better work.  In a recent interview,  Ms. Smith revealed that her current project, tentatively entitled, Evolution, will also be set in Montana territory in the late 1800s.

Discussion Questions for Letters from Yellowstone can be found at:  www.uspenguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/letters_from_yellowstone

Yet, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book comprised solely of personal and business letters interspersed with telegrams, has become a must read for book clubbers across the country.

It’s January 1946 and the great city that was London is climbing over the rubble left by the Luftwaffe and beginning to rebuild.  Enter 32-year-old Juliet Ashton, a light-hearted journalist, searching for her next project.  In one of those unexplained coincidences found only in novels, a Guernsey Islander, Dawsey Adams, has found Juliet’s name and former address on the flyleaf of an old book.

Dawsey’s simple request for a London bookshop’s name and address begins a five-month exchange of letters resulting in a new project and new life for Juliet.  Along the way, the reader meets the other quirky members of the Literary Society:  Isola, the practicing witch; the rag and bone man Will Thisbee; the footman, John Booker, pretending to be a Lord; the jumped up London servant, Elizabeth McKenna,  and  Dawsey Adams, a stuttering swine herder, along with the only two ‘respectable’ individuals Amelia Maugery and Eben Ramsey. (These characterizations are  courtesy of (Miss) Adelaide Addison in her letter to Juliet dated 1st March 1946.)

Each member, along with sundry other Islanders, has a story to tell-their version of five years under the tyrannical thumb of the German soldiers on an island sized 7 miles long and 5 miles wide.  We, the readers, share in Juliet’s joy of meeting the Islanders for the first time along with the poignant memories of bidding the Guernsey children goodbye as they sail to safety in the country sides of England.

It is an interesting yet  fanciful glimpse into the bygone world where receiving a long-awaited letter was reason for rejoicing.  Don’t miss the experience!!

Watch for reading guide questions soon!