December 2008 and January 2009

Our November gathering at which we discussed short stories selected by the group was great fun. We stayed up way too late yakking and I for one will treasure forever in my heart the tale of Jennifer's family's call-out responses to readings of "The Not-So-Pitiful Thanksgiving."

We also discussed our upcoming reading selections and decided to actually meet in December, like the crazy gals we are. Hoo-boy! There's no stopping us. We'll be meeting December 10 at Amy's house and instead of having assigned reading we will be having more of a party. (To be honest, this differs only slightly from our usual meetings.)

• Bring your favorite Christmas story to share. This can be a short story or a picture book or other appropriate shortish format.
• Bring a wrapped used (or new, if you're feeling spendy) book for a white elephant book exchange. It was stressed to me that this was not the time to pass off my copy of Raising Rabbits for Food and Fur. So only bring a book that someone might conceivably want.
• We said something about treats, and how we should all bring them. I didn't write down exactly what we decided, but when in doubt, bring food. Perhaps someone will enlighten me in the comments.
  

In 2009 we will be moving our meeting night from Wednesday to Thursday to avoid scheduling conflicts. For the first part of 2009 our book selections are as follows:

• January: Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson. Unfortunately there are only three copies of this book in the local library system and there's a wait, too. Perhaps we should revisit this selection?
• February: The Magic of Ordinary Days by Ann Howard Creel
• March: The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
  

Short Story Month

For November 2008 we're reading short stories selected by our club members. We'll be meeting the third Wednesday--the 19th--instead of the fourth, because of Thanksgiving.

Most of the short stories were passed out at the October meeting, but if you didn't attend or forgot your story, talk to Becky, our short story passer-outer. Here's the list so far:

"Charles" by Shirley Jackson (Amy)
"The Not-So-Pitiful Thanksgiving" by Alice Stratton, November 1979 The Friend (Jennifer)
"Pandora" by Bernard Evslin, Dorothy Evslin, and Ned Hoopes (Sara)
"Gilbert" by Rosamunde Pilcher (Becky)
"Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl (Lisa), available online here.

October and November 2008

In October we like to read spooky/creepy selections since our meetings fall near Halloween. In the past we've read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (we liked it) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (nobody finished it because it was boring and tedious and dreary and nothing ever happened).

This year we're reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's a short book, just over 100 pages, so there's no excuse not to pick it up from the library or read it online.

Also for October we're doing part 1 of next month's selection. We're reading short stories for November. Choose a short story and make copies to distribute at October's meeting so we'll have a chance to read all the stories by November's meeting. Many older classics are in the public domain and available online from sites like literature.org. Also, many current authors publish their stories on their websites under Creative Commons licenses, meaning they are free to read and distribute with proper attribution. And then of course there's the photocopy machine.