“You’re going out to a club tonight?” asked one of my son’s friends. I’m unsure of how that possibility entered his mind, and I didn’t ask – I liked the idea that a teenager thought I might be going out to dance. It was 7pm, and I was dressed in hard pants and a nice shirt on a Friday night. So yes, I was going out.
“That would be book club”, I responded with a smile.
I briefly had the thought that I could go to book club and come home and it would still be too early to go out clubbing. I had flashbacks to when I was 19 in University. My friends & I would get ready to go out at around 11pm. I remember having the genuine thought, “It’s only 11!” The night was young and we were eager to go dance to Brandy & Monica’s That Boy is Mine or No Diggity by Blackstreet & Dr. Dre, or Backstreet Boys Everybody.
But no dance clubs tonight. I was going to my monthly book club with a group of 7 fabulously dynamic women.
Rules of Book Club
For this book club, there is only one rule when choosing a book:
- Nothing too tragic or full of death
There’s a number of social workers in this group, and free time can’t be devoted to anything too dire.
The Unwritten Rule of Book Club
- Choose a book with well-written women
The book’s lead character doesn’t have to be a woman, but we all enjoy books by authors who write about women well. Character driven books are often my favourite. Characters who are complex – not purely the hero, not purely the villain. I enjoy books that capture the inner dialogue of women.
So if you find yourself leaning in at this point of this post, you’re in luck – here are two wonderful books to savour.
Today’s book pairing involves two of my favourite authors Curtis Sittenfeld and Margaret Atwood. I’ve read almost all of the books written by both of these authors.
Both recommended books are a series of short stories. All of the stories are mostly about women and written from their perspective. Sittenfeld covers women in their twenties to their sixties. Atwood’s stories range from women in their teens to their eighties.
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
To give you a flavour of this book, here are a few snippets.
“And yet I cannot help wondering this most of all: if my life of department meetings and strip-mall takeout and a mortgage – my ordinary life – would make her jealous.” (from The Richest Babysitter in the World)
“Nancy, who is fifty, tends to be overtly sexist in a way most men in 2014 no longer are.” (from Creative Differences)
“Up until the evening it occurred to me that we should get a divorce … it had never occurred to me that we might.” (from The Patron Saints of Middle Age)
“We then made an intense kind of eye contact, a kind I’d made with very few men in my entire life, which was followed by a shivery feeling in my heart, and I wondered if something was really going to happen between Jeff and me. Not like reunion sex in a hotel room but like becoming part of each other’s lives.” (from Lost but Not Forgotten)
There have been so many moments reading Sittenfeld’s books that I have paused and smiled and thought, “Yes, that captures it exactly.” Curtis Sittenfeld is an American author with such books as Rodham (A fictional piece about Hillary Clinton’s life if she hadn’t married Bill) or Romantic Comedy (is it only true that funny famous men get to date hot women or can the opposite be true?).
Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood
Here are a few sound bites from this book.
“Csilla is impervious to both questioning and mockery. She simply pretends she hasn’t heard, changes the subject, and forges ahead on whatever twisting narrative path suits her at the moment. She’s a strategic liar, being a memoirist.” (from Bad Teeth)
“I only eat seafood,” says Myrna. It’s nice to have a check mark in a righteous lifestyle box where Chrissy doesn’t have one. The truth is that meat now gives Myrna indigestion: her gut biome’s no longer up to it“. (from Airborne)
“She makes it to the bottom of the hill without mishap, an achievement. But, once she’s on the dock, she can’t follow through. She’s not feeling any amazement or joy, only grief and more grief. The old griddle hanging on the wall above the stove is one thing — easy enough for the gaze to avoid it – but the stars? Will she never be able to look at the stars again? No stars, not for you, not ever, she mourns. And in the next breath: Don’t be so fucking maudlin.” (from Old Babes in the Wood).
Margaret Atwood one of those people that makes me proud to be a Canadian. She’s got razor sharp observations, and I often find myself laughing out loud when I’m reading her work. I love an irreverent woman.
Have you read either of these books? Or any books you’d recommend where women are written well?
