Part One: Non-Contradiction

I understand that Dagny and Hank and Ellis are the heroes of this book and I can see many of their virtues. But why so cold? Dagny's mother acuses her of being "incapable of emotion" and I'm for sure not getting any warm and fuzzy feelings from Hank. The man is ice! Is this lack of emotion part of Rand's philosophy on happiness? And is it a necessary part?

Next week, we'll start talking about Book One of Atlas Shrugged. Chime in if you've got a question or topic you'd like to discuss.

As threatened, er... promised, we are starting Atlas Shrugged. If you're my dad, you just read it in the last couple of weeks. If you're me, this may take a lifetime.

I'm trying, I swear.

The format will be a little different this time. I will set up a loose reading schedule which you may choose to follow or ignore. (Likely, I myself will ignore.)

As we go, we may want to ask each other questions (or more specifically my dad, because he actually understands it) and start discussions based on these questions.

The questions need not be traditional "book club" questions. We're mostly just looking for a chance to discuss as we go. Clarify. Share. Converse.

Look for a schedule in the next few days and in the meantime buy your baby one of these funny onesies here.

Question 3

This question is from the author's website.

Did it bother you that Skeeter is willing to overlook so many of Stuart's faults so that she can get married, and that it's not until he literally gets up and walks away that the engagement falls apart?

Hello, readers! We will post two questions a day for the next three days on Kathryn Stockett's The Help.

The questions today have been provided by Kelly (despite the "posted by" with my name on it at the end of the posts). So, thanks, Kelly!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for more questions...

Question 2

Even though Minny is stubborn and brusque and I really wished she would be nicer to Celia, I was surprised when I realized I was anxious to see her name at the top of the next chapter. Her home life is horrific but I think her story has hope. And I'm just waiting for the next opportunity to drop one of her choice phrases into my lexicon. Maybe "she call the roll [at] the crazy lady club" (13) or her sweater's "so tight it'd make a hooker look holy" (223). We'll see.

From whose perspective did you most enjoy reading?

-Kelly

Question 1

Both Hilly and Skeeter's mother are deeply flawed characters but they aren't irredeemable. Hilly is a doting mother and Charlotte obviously loves her family and even genuinely cares for Constantine. Are these women simply products of their time and culture? How much of a person is by nurture and how much is by nature? Did this book make you think about who you are as a result of where and who you came from?

-Kelly

One of the things we worried about with The Tender Bar, neither of us having read it before, was content.

In fact, content is something we worry about on some level with most books we present to you on Bookish Girl. Every reader is different... Some more sensitive than others, and I mean this in the most positive way. Sometimes I worry that I'm not sensitive enough to content and that I tolerate too much in the name of art and in seeking empathy for human experience outside of my own through books.

Kelly and I both started The Tender Bar and we both feel it warrants a "reader beware", which likely isn't a huge surprise to you given the book's setting. Nevertheless, we make it official. Reader beware.

Happy reading and we hope to see you back here again soon...

Thanks for voting! The Help by Kathryn Stockett has been chosen as our next book. I just finished it last week and I really enjoyed it. A lot. I think you will too.

A couple of things, though...

First, if you're relying on your local library to furnish you a copy it might be tricky getting one very soon. Beg, borrow or steal if you must. Or purchase? Yeah, I guess you could just buy it.

Second, this book is an easy read. I only mention this because I'm going to reference this fact in the future when you're reading Atlas Shrugged and plotting my death. I'll be all like, "Yeah, but remember when I let you read The Help? Get back to work."

To which you reply, "You're not the boss of me."

It's an awkward exchange but then I remind you that questions will be posted for The Help on March 22nd and we move on.

Happy reading!

A banner that hangs in my library taunts, "So many books, so little time," and I think we've been stymied by just that. So, so many choices and oh so little time to even choose. But we've come up with a few that we think are worthy of a bookish girl's precious time and discriminating taste. Rock the vote, girls (and Dad maybe).
-Kelly


The Tender Bar, a memoir by J.R. Moeringer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.

At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. Cops and poets, bookies and soldiers, movie stars and stumblebums, all sorts of men gathered in the bar to tell their stories and forget their cares. The alphas along the bar - including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler - took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood-by-committee.

Book summary excerpt taken from http://www.tenderbar.com/book.html

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

This absorbing novel takes place in 19th century China when girls had their feet bound, then spend the rest of their lives in seclusion with only a single window from which to see. Illiterate and isolated, they were not expected to think, be creative or have emotions. But in one remote country, women developed their own secret code, nu shu - "women's writing" - the only gender-based written language to have been found in the world. Some girls were paired as "old-sames" in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on hankerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their windows to share their hopes, dreams and accomplishments.

An old woman tells of her relationship with her "old-same", their arranged marriages, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood - until a terrible misunderstanding written on their secret fan threatens to tear them apart.

Book summary excerpt taken from http://www.lisasee.com/snowflower.htm

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduation from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted insider her after the loss of her own son. Minny is short, fat and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be broken.

Book summary excerpt taken from http://www.kathrynstockett.com/



Good afternoon, girls. So I wanted to say a quick word about the choices we've made this month. Of the three books, I have read only one, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. A friend of mine lent me her copy and asked me to read it. She had just finished it and she really wanted to talk about it. So I read it... and the novel had them same effect on me; that is, I really wanted to talk about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it's certainly good enough... and, by golly, there are some things I wouldn't mind talking about, especially with all of you. The Tender Bar is new to me... but it definitely piques my curiosity and is well-reviewed. The Help... well, heavens you've all heard of The Help! Every reader and her dog's book club is reading The Help. And what do you know, it turns out that every reader loves it (and their dogs, too). The Help is on my nightstand right now... and I only had to wait behind 217 readers to nab a copy from my local library. Happy voting!
-Melissa

A Bookish Breather

Next month we'll gather 'round to vote on something new to read...

But I'm giving fair warning that a little later this year Kelly and I will become dictators for a selection that guarantees to turn us all into bookish women.

OK, wait... that makes it sounds a little like we're going to become call girls in horn-rimmed glasses.

I mean more that it will be a challenging read. And by challenging I mean lengthy and written by this woman right here:

And does this woman look like she fools around?

OK, again. That sounded a little suggestive. I mean more that she's serious.

But cool.

Look at that hat. How can you not want to read a long novel written by a Russian-American woman wearing that hat?

You do. Trust me.