DCOM SAA Book Club

October Book Club Date & Location

2010-10-05T19:46:00.000-07:00

October Book Club
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
October 7 @ 7:00 PM
Lindsey Rosie's apartment
Bring a snack or dessert to share!

Directions:
Turn left at BP on 58
Pass University Inn down into the Gap
Cream building with red trim on right (across from UNC)
Apartment 6 (on top)
Call with questions or if you get lost: 254-733-1281

Come hang out even if you didn't read the book!

October Book Club Book

2010-09-03T20:34:00.000-07:00

We will be reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. We will discuss this book at the October book club. The date and location for the October book club have not yet been finalized, but will be posted here once they have been announced.

December Book Club

2009-11-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright

Get ready for a super easy read, entertaining, pulling at your heart strings kind of book. We will be meeting on December 8th at Maghin Abernathy's house. We will be doing a used book exchange for our Christmas meeting. Please bring a wrapped used book that you may have laying around the house. We will do a greedy santa to exchange books. Directions to Maghin's will be sent via e-mail.

In the wake of his bestselling Christmas Jars comes a sweetly crafted story from Wright, a Virginia businessman. Jack and Laurel Cooper are two hardworking, loving Christian pillars of the community who die in each other's arms one night in the bed-and-breakfast that they own and operate. The event calls their three grown children home for the funeral, including their youngest son, a fugitive from the law who must face an outstanding warrant for his arrest and confront his one true love, now engaged to another man. As events unfold around the funeral, the three children discover a treasure trove of family history in the form of Wednesday letters-notes that Jack wrote to his wife every single week of their married lives. As they read, the children brush across the fabric of a devoted marriage that survived a devastating event kept secret all these years. It's a lovely story: heartening, wholesome, humorous, suspenseful and redemptive. It resonates with the true meaning of family and the life-healing power of forgiveness all wrapped up in a satisfying ending.

September Book Club

2009-08-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

We are very excited for our September book club meeting. It's been too long since our last meeting. We will miss those 3rd year SAA members dearly that added so much entertainment and great conversation, but we hope that you will read the book and definitely add comments on the blog or any other way that we can reach out and disccuss our opinions.

This month we've decided to read Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell.

Julie & Julia, the bestselling memoir that's "irresistible....A kind of Bridget Jones meets The French Chef" (Philadelphia Inquirer), is now a major motion picture. Julie Powell, nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, resolves to reclaim her life by cooking in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers and aspic, but a new life-lived with gusto. Since this book has been turned into a movie we aer going to try and do a movie night at Middlesboro Theater once it comes out to theaters.

This book can be found at the Tazewell Walmart and on Amazon for $5.00(used). Book Club is set for Thursday, September 17th at 7:00 at Amanda Toti's House- 447 Bristol Rd., Harrogate. Bring your favorite appetizer or dessert and we're looking forward to some great conversation. Here are directions to Amanda's house from DCOM. We hope to see you there!

447 Bristol Road, Harrogate

Turn Right onto 25 E from DCOM
Turn Left onto Forge Ridge Road
Turn Left once you see the Shawanee Baptist Church sign onto Brunswick Dr.
At the stop sign turn left onto Shawnee Rd. and then make an immediate Right onto Bristol Road.
About 1 mile down turn left onto Ramsey. Amanda's house is the first house on the left. You can park on the lot on the left by the second house on the left, it's a 2nd years house that lets use the lot.

Summer Book

2009-06-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

We will sadly miss all of the book club members that moved off to their new cities for their significant other's rotations. We will have another summer book club meeting and we will try to see if we can't do a skype book club or something to keep those that have moved still involved. We know that it won't be the same though. For our July book club we will be reading The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. The meeting date and place is to be announced. We hope that people enjoy this book turned to movie starring Kate Winslet.

The Reader

Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?" The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence.

--R. Ellis --This text refers to the Paperback edition. www.brightonplacelibrary.org/Portals/0/the%20...

June Book Club

2009-05-27T10:03:00.001-07:00

We are sad to see some of the second years head off to their rotation sites, they will all be missed dearly. We had a great May meeting at Megan Sumrell's and we are planning to do a book for June. The June book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We will be having book club at Amanda Toti's new house in Harrogate on June 9 at 7:00. Directions will be e-mailed out at a later date. The book can be found on Amazon and someone had said they have it at Walmart and the book store in the Middlesboro mall. We hope to see you there for a nice summer read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

From Publishers Weekly The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers.

May Book Club

2009-05-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

The May Book Club will be next Tuesday, May 19th at Megan Sumrell's house at 7:00. We will be discussing The Great Gatsby and The Last Lecture. Directions will be e-mailed later this week.

Two Short Reads- You Pick

2009-04-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

We are doing two very short reads for May, you may choose to read both and come and discuss both or pick one. The first is a classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby. In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings.
The Last Lecture. By Randy Pausch: "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."--Randy Pausch
A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

The time and date will be posted shortly. Happy Reading!

Reviews copyright of amazon.com review

Book Club This Tuesday!

2009-04-08T18:32:00.001-07:00

Book club will be this Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. The book for discussion is American Wife. Book club will be hosted by Angela Goins, check your email for directions!

April 14: An American Wife

2009-03-12T14:02:00.001-07:00

Our next book club selection is American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. After reading the book description, I think we are going to have plenty to debate and talk about! This book is based loosely on the life of Laura Bush, former First Lady of the United States.

Plot Summary

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

We will meet on Tuesday, April 14 at 7:00 p.m. Location to be announced. See you there!

Book Club This Tuesday!

2009-03-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

Don't forget, book club is this Tuesday, March 10 at 7:00 p.m. at Maghin Abernathy's! Check your email for directions. If you don't receive them, email angela.goins@gmail.com and I'll get them to you.

Can't wait to see everyone!

A True Classic, Pride and Prejudice

2009-02-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Our book club selection for the month of March is the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. We hope you will join us in getting wrapped up in the stubborn romance of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Maghin Abernathy will host the next meeting on Tuesday, March 10 at 7:00 p.m.

Savannah said there are several "like new" copies of P & P available at McKay's in Knoxville for around $5 if you are in the area.

See you in March!

We're pushing the evelope with new choice...Lolita

2009-01-14T19:26:00.000-08:00

We are really pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone with our next selection! We felt it was time to shake things up a bit, and so the next selection is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. If you know anything about this book, you know it is extremely controversial. The following is from Wikipedia:

"After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl. The novel has been adapted to film twice, once in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert, with Sue Lyon as Lolita, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, and Dominique Swain as Lolita. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."

Although it is controversial, the book is also well known for it's unique literary style. This book is sure to invoke many emotions and strong opinions, and will fuel great discussion at our next meeting.

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, February 10 at 7:00 p.m. Amanda Toti has graciously agreed to host at her house! Directions will follow at a later date.

Happy reading!

Book Club Location Moving!!

2009-01-13T08:36:00.000-08:00

Book club is being moved from Heather Scott's house to Cat Wiley's house tonight! Heather's poor son is sick :(. Check emails after 1:00 p.m. today for directions, and please call any book club members you know to make sure they know about the change!

Let's see what all the buzz is about...it's time to read Twilight!

2008-12-28T18:27:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!! Sorry this post is just now going up, I've had limited computer access during Christmas break. Anyway, I'm excited about our next book...Twilight!! We decided we wanted to see what this ultra popular pop culture phenomenon is all about. We will meet Tuesday, January 13 at 7:00 p.m. at Heather Scott's house. I can't wait to get everyone together again and catch up!

Good-bye to Rebel

2008-12-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sharing this since our meeting tonight was on loving and losing a pet (Marley and Me). Tonight my dad's cat Rebel of 13 years passed away. He laid between my dad and step-mom while they petted him until he fell asleep. We are all very upset, needless to say. Rebel was a very good cat. My husband actually hated cats until he met Rebel, who he decided was pretty cool. Rebel was a gray tabby with a red belly like my cats Maggie and Nelly, so I hugged them extra tight tonight. Maggie was a little annoyed, but when she saw my tears she decided to humor me. My dad and I were discussing how silly we felt because we know it is just a cat, but I thought you all might understand! Those little guys work their way into your heart. I told him I thought it was really strange that I had just gotten home from a book club meeting discussing losing a pet the night this happened, don't you think? Hope you guys don't mind me sharing. Hug your pets today.

Reminder...Book Club Meets Tomorrow!

2008-12-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that book club meets tomorrow December 9 to discuss Marley and Me. We will meet at Shades of Brown in Middlesboro at 7:00 p.m. The large conference room is reserved under DCOM SAA Book Club. They close at 9:00 p.m., so please be prompt so we have enough time to do our book discussion and gift exchange! The gift exchange will be a Greedy Santa. Participation is optional. Just bring a used book that you already own and are willing to let someone else have and love! Just bring the book wrapped, and the emphasis is on USED! Don't spend money, goodness knows none of us have any! See you then!

Marley and Me...December 9th at 7:00 p.m.

2008-11-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

Our next book club meeting may be the most fun yet! At the suggestion of Savannah (actually her husband Tom) we will be meeting in one of the private rooms at Shades of Brown in Middlesboro, KY. December is such a busy time, and this will save someone the hassle of having to host! We chose a light read for December, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan! This is also a movie that will be coming out soon with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.

In addition, we will be also be doing a Greedy Santa gift exchange! If you would like to participate, just bring in a wrapped book that you own and are done reading or don't want anymore (the idea is to not spend any money) and we'll explain the rules when you get there. If you've never done Greedy Santa, it's super fun!

So come curl up on a cozy couch with some coffee, a decadent dessert, and friends! What could be better?

Who knew reading could be so much fun?

2008-11-12T19:18:00.001-08:00

Well, we had an AMAZING time at book club last night! Sheila hosted us in her lovely home and shared some very exciting news (congrats!!). We had lots of food, piping hot apple cider, and wonderful friends! And just to prove we're not uptight, only three people there had finished the book. When we say everyone is welcome, we mean it! If you weren't able to come this time, we hope you can join us in December!

Meeting TONIGHT! 7:00 p.m. Come if you haven't finished!

2008-11-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hi friends! Hopefully everyone has directions by now, if not email me at angela.goins@gmail.com until 4:30 p.m. After that time, call me at 770.712.1220. This book was really long, so please come even if you haven't finished! In the future, we should probably pay closer attention to the length of a book, and perhaps spread it out over a couple of meetings if it's too long. I apologize for that. So come on, finished or not, and just have a great time with everyone!

See you tonight!

Next Meeting this Tuesday, November 11!

2008-11-05T06:07:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be this Tuesday, November 11, at 7:00 p.m. and we will be discussing A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Sheila Marti will be hosting this meeting, and she's promised it's going to be extra special, so you don't want to miss it! Just bring some food to share. I have had so much fun with this group, just talking and getting to know new people and reconnecting with old friends has made this a priceless experience. If you haven't joined us yet, please do so on Tuesday. I'm confident you'll have a wonderful time. Check your email for directions to Sheila's. If you did not receive them, email angela.goins@gmail.com with the subject Need Bookclub Directions and I'll send them to you. See you Tuesday!

Next Book...A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2008-10-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

At our next meeting on November 11 we will discuss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. This book was selected as one of the Books of the Century by The New York Public Library. Here's a little background from Borders.com to peak your interest...

Description: A true American classic first published in 1943, this is the tale of a little girl living in the slums of Brooklyn, who dreamily watches out her window as a tree struggles to reach the sky.

Description: The American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century.

About the Author: Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner on December 15, 1896, the same date as, although five years earlier than, her fictional heroine Francie Nolan. The daughter of German immigrants, she grew up poor in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the very world she recreates with such meticulous detail in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith also wrote other novels and had a long career as a dramatist, writing one-act and full-length plays for which she received both the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship. She died in 1972.

Friday Night Knitting Club Meeting

2008-10-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much to Savannah Edwards for hosting us in her home this past Tuesday where we ate, drank, and discussed The Friday Night Knitting Club. Book club is proving to be very beneficial to me, because not only do we discuss the text but we relate it back to our everyday lives which not only to helps me get to know everyone else better, but it also serves as a cheap therapy session! There was a lot of talking and a lot of laughter!
Sheila Marti has graciously agreed to host the next meeting on Tuesday, November 11, 7:00 p.m. The book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and is available on Amazon at a very reasonable price http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Grows-Brooklyn-Betty-Smith/dp/006092988X. Hope to see you there!

Knit Two, Sequel to the Friday Night Knitting Club, on sale November 25th!

2008-10-08T06:08:00.001-07:00

If you enjoyed The Friday Night Knitting Club, Kate Jacobs' sequel Knit Two will be available in hardback on November 25. Right now Amazon is pre-selling them for around $16. Anyone interested in pre-ordering in bulk and saving on shipping? Thanks to member Cat Wiley for the information regarding the book!

Next Book Club Meeting to be Held on Tuesday, October 14th at 7:00 p.m.

2008-10-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

This month's book is The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. The bookstore in the Middlesboro Mall does have several copies available. For more information on this book, visit the website at http://www.fridaynightknittingclub.com/. Savannah Edwards is hosting October's meeting and we will be getting directions out soon. Please bring an appetizer to share, and if you would like anything to drink, please bring that as well (BYOB, BYOW). We hope you'll pick up this book and join us this month for another fun meeting!

Book Club Inagural Meeting Held in September

2008-10-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

The First Official Book Club Meeting

Welcome to our book club blog! My name is Angela Goins, and I'm currently serving as the Book Club leader for the Student Advocate Association for the DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (DCOM SAA). I would like to use this as a forum to announce upcoming book club events as well as a place to discuss books we've read and suggest new books, whether for book club or for our own personal reading. There were many members who were interested in the book club, but because of scheduling issues cannot attend meetings. I hope this will serve as a way for you to feel involved. We held our first book club meeting at my home in September. We shared food, drinks, and fun as we discussed the first book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni. I would like to invite readers to add comments on this post to offer their opinion on the book and encourage additional discussion. If you are interested in more information on this book, or on Khaled Hosseini's new book A Thousand Splendid Suns, the author's website is http://www.khaledhosseini.com/. We hope even more people can join us for our October meeting. We are very laid back and spend as much time chatting and catching up as we do talking about the book! Hope you can come and Happy Reading!

Welcome to the DCOM SAA Book Club Blog!

2008-10-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

Let's start reading!