Book Club - January

I have began a book club with 2 friends, Val and Jess. For the month of January, Jess has chosen the American classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I only received my book today and have just finished the Forward by Anna Quindlen. (fyi: A. Quindlen is journalist, novelist and editor for Newsweek) I'm very excited and wish that I had all day, all night to devour this book quickly, but I have school, wifely duties and a Lucy-bug to play barbies with. smiles!

So...........first let me say, I am keeping an ongoing list of words that I look up the definition to. doesn't mean that I always don't know what they mean, but I want to get a deeper meaning. I love http://www.dictionary.com/. The first 3 words from the Foreward are: feckless, indefatigably and equanimity.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the Forward:

* "a story about what it means to be human",
* "Honesty is casting bright light on your own experience; truth is casting it on the experiences of all"

* "the fabric of family, the limits of love, the loss of innocence, and the birth of knowledge"

* "only tree that grew out of cement, a tree that liked poor people"

* "words that came in a can; the freshness was cooked out of them"

* "she suddenly sees the world as dingy and flawed, her parents as human and not omnipotent"

* "reads indefatigably, writes obsessively, dreams of a future different than what the past & present would portend."

I won't always have this much to write, or have the time, but the beginning is always exciting.

Love, Jenn