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Philly Girl 81

A Genial, Genuine Book Club

I have been part of a book club since 1990. Members have
come and gone over the decades but there are always six to
eight of us—a group of genial women who genuinely love to
read. Once in a while, a new member joins us—sometimes
they stay, or sometimes they turn out to be bossy, insisting
on a change to our agreeably successful format, and eventu-
ally the outlier leaves. It’s like a blind date—sometimes it
just doesn’t work out.
We are an eclectic bunch, and we’ve been through a lot
together. Three members have lost their husbands, four have
had (or have) cancer, one has had a stroke, one lost a grand-
child, one completed a doctoral program while continuing
to be part of the group each month. We are, by profession,
therapists, attorneys, archivists, artists, and one restaurant
owner. Our adult children have become nurse practitioners,
realtors, government techies, art gallery curators, architects,
and teachers. Many of us have traveled all over the world.
We have brought cakes, soup, and full meals to each other in
times of illness and grief. Our members hail from Morocco,
Spain, Colombia, and Yankton, South Dakota! We are
conflict-avoidant, in a good way, and we never ever have
arguments, even about books. We may, of course, disagree.
We are resourceful. One year, we tried to find the defi-
nition of a Latin word used by Michael Ondaatje in The
English Patient. We were at Jane’s house—she was one of our
most brilliant readers, but she had to leave about 10 years
ago. (I miss her.) Jane looked in every dictionary that she