Last week on the Star’s Books page and in the blog Tucson.com/bookfest, we discussed book-club trends and what we love about reading groups, and asked readers to tell us what their book groups were reading.
We received several responses, including from two groups reading the same book by a local author and two others reading a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and a return to a classic.
- Bonnie Brunotte
- said the Reading Between the Vines Book Club just finished “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune” by
- Bill Dedman
- and Huguette Clark’s cousin
- Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- (Ballantine Books, 2013).
The group will next read “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” by Edward Kelsey Moore (Vintage, 2013).
Brunotte adds she ends up reading books she never would have chosen without the book club.
- Marie Graninger
- says her club has been meeting for about 15 years with a dozen members, most of them originals. Graninger’s group most often reads historical fiction, nonfiction, memoirs and contemporary selections.
This month the group chose Harper Lee‘s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Lippincott), which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, after discussing “Go Set a Watchman,” which a few members had read.
- Laurie Jurs
- belongs to groups in Tucson and Green Valley. “The Tucson group is reading “H is for Hawk” by
- Helen Macdonald
- (Grove Press; 2015) and the Green Valley club is reading “Burial Rites” by
- Hannah Kent
- (Little, Brown and Company, 2013)”, Jurs says.
- Susan Mears’
- book group, which has been ongoing for 10 years, is reading “My Name is Resolute” by
- Nancy E. Turner
- (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), a favorite at the Tucson Festival of Books.
“We select our books a year ahead and read from all genres,” Mears says from the Tucson-area’s northwest side. “We do love historical fiction.”
- Joan Scurran
- ’s
- book group has been meeting since about 1990 with several original members. “We choose books in the spring for the rest of the year, along
- with meeting dates, hosts, presenters and who will provide food and drinks, including wine, of course,” Scurran says.
The group is reading “Empty Mansions” by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Dedman and collaborator Newell this month. Next month the club will read Turner’s “My Name is Resolute.”
Nominees for the Great Arizona Novel
Last Sunday’s Star Home + Life section featured an excerpt from an essay by author Tom Zoellner, who proposed the need for the Great Arizona Novel that explains the state “to itself and splits open its elusive soul, a novel with broad social contexts and a moral conscience.” (Read the entire essay in the Phoenix New Times at tucne.ws/1gNDdVd.)
- Karen Wiley
- of Marana suggests adding to the list of candidates for The Great Arizona Novel the recently published work by
- Paolo Bacigalupi,
- “The Water Knife” (Knopf, 2015).
“Set in a Las Vegas-Phoenix water war in the drought-ravaged not-too-distant future, it captures the mix of personalities and problems that make up the character of this state,” Wiley says. “One reviewer described it as ‘Chinatown meets Mad Max.’ Fascinating read!”
- Mears, whose book group is reading “My Name is Resolute,” suggests Turner’s “These is My Words” (ReganBooks, first published in 1998) for The Great Arizona Novel.
Another S0. AZ read
Earlier this summer we asked what titles people should read in order to be considered “well-read” from a Southern Arizona perspective, and presented 18 books that capture and enhance readers’ understanding of the area’s heart and soul. We followed with favorites that readers shared, books they found to be exceptionally informative with a distinct regional emphasis.
Here’s another reader suggestion:
- “Every Sunday I look to see if anyone has suggested one of my very favorite authors …
- Byrd Baylor
- ,” writes
- Stephanie Keenan
- from the east side.
“When I was a young primary teacher in California, I read her books to my students. I remember when a concerned first-grader asked me why I had tears in my eyes,” she says.
“I don’t remember how I replied, but I’m old and retired now, and her books still affect me that way.” She continued, “They are so simple and beautiful and told with the clear conciseness of a very observant and loving desert dweller. My favorite is ‘The Table Where Rich People Sit,’ (Aladdin; Reprint edition, 1998) where a young girl realizes the true value of her family’s life in the desert.”
Also, Byrd wrote a book specifically for adults called “Yes is Better than No” (Treasure Chest Publications, 1990). She got some flack recently for its lack of political correctness, says Keenan. But, “to quote from the back cover of the book, ‘Love of the gentle Papagos and acceptance of their lifestyle is apparent in every word of this novel.’ It is wonderfully funny!”
