Category: Uncategorized

The Only Woman in the Room

kim.harwanko

Who doesn’t want to be the most beautiful woman in a room?  Most of us will only wonder. But to be stunningly beautiful, and an actress with a brilliant mind in the 1950’s was inconceivable to the male-dominated world. Author, Marie Benedict, had to write about Hedy Lamarr after she found out about her invention.

She captivated audiences in the 1940’s and 50’s with her beauty and acting ability. Hiding beneath that striking face was the mind of an innovator.  Hedy Lamarr is credited with inventing the basics for all modern wireless communications: signal hopping along with composer George Antheil.

Wanting to help the plight of the European Jews she undertakes to create something that would help the Allies – a superior radio-guided torpedo system. How she goes about doing this is quite interesting as is her escape from her abusive husband in Vienna right before the start of WWII. Her wily determination helps her flee Austria and the Nazis and make her way to Hollywood. She uses her beauty to her advantage, but she strives to be much more.

Our book club really enjoyed the novel.  Some of us looked up her background and talked about details in her movie career and her marriages.  We are always amazed at how women were ignored and overlooked in the 40’s and 50’s.  How little voice we had as a gender! Still more needs to be done, but we thank all those that came before us who paved the way, including Hedy Lamarr. 

Rating: 7.5

Spain, Franco and Silence

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World War II has been a popular genre for books written in the last few years.  Characters going through war are always a fascinating read.  Ruta Sepetys picked Spain and dictator Francisco Franco. Unlike Hitler, Franco was in power for 36 years and fear and repression became a way of life for the Spaniards.

The author told this rich story through the eyes of different social classes. The beautiful Ana, poor and a maid at a luxury hotel. Daniel Matheson, son of an American oil tycoon. What could possibly go wrong? Think Nazis but without all the noise.

The undercurrents throughout the story are scary. But it is clear that you don’t want to complain. Just keep quiet and ignore what is going on around you. One of the worst atrocities was the ordeal of the parents who had been told their children died during childbirth. These children didn’t die but were put up for adoption – basically sold to rich, socially desirable people. Similar story line to Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Yikes.

Our book club enjoyed this poignant book and had good discussions about it. We knew little about Spain under Franco and we learned a lot about this period and about the Spanish people.  We even enjoyed the love story.

Rating: 8.0

Living Beyond Fear

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Two local authors found after traumatic events that they shared a connection with the afterlife as messengers.  Together they channel from the spiritual realm.

They met at an intuitive training workshop and sensed a familiarity with each other. They wanted to gain a deeper understanding of their own spiritual path and to make sense of the messages they’d been hearing from people who had passed.

Berit and Beth working together expanded their field of awareness.  Berit had received guidance in a dream about messages they’d been receiving and was instructed that these messages were to be called Sacred Letters and that the women were to collect and publish them. They assembled pieces of fragments of information they received and brought them more clearly into view.

At book club none of us knew what to expect.  Visions of séances, mediums and psychics swirled around in our heads. It was nothing like that at all.  Berit and Beth where uplifting and inspirational taking about loving each other. No cloak and daggers here. Just caring and knowing that your love ones who have passed are safe.

Mrs. Everything

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Most of our book club members lived through the 60’s, 70’s and onward so we were all excited to read Jennifer Weiner’s new book, Mrs. Everything.

The two main characters are sisters, Jo and Bethie Kaufman and they grew up in Detroit in the 50’s and 60’s.  Jo never fits into her mother’s image. She’s awkward and a tomboy.  Her father shows her lots of love and tempers her mother’s sharper tones with his kind and gentle way.

Bethie, however, is the apple in her mother’s eye. Just perfect. Beautiful and smart with a lovely singing voice.  What could possibly go wrong?

Life intervenes, and everything goes haywire.  Bethie and Jo almost switch places and become each other.  Numerous secondary characters add lots of color to the book and the story. Some you’ll love and others are just awful. Like our own lives. 

Both sisters are steadfast in their love for each other through the tragedies and traumas they sustained. In the end it’s about finding yourself in a world with expectations and demands.  The pain and successes are better shared.

We enjoyed this read and talked about our memories during this time period – the songs, the hair, the clothes and, our own sisters and, of course our first loves. 

Enjoy.

Rating: 7.0

Lying, cheating, private jets and tons of money – what more could you ask for!

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The Last Mrs. Parrish

As winter begins its climb up north it never seems to leave quietly for its summer home. Instead it kicks and moans leaving snow and rain and wind in its wake. We in New Jersey are weary of winter and want nothing more than warm temperatures and sunny skies. So, we tend to pick saucier reads in March – anything for a little warmth.

This month we picked The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine.

The novel opens in Amber Patterson point of view. As the reader you want to empathize with the protagonist and reading through the first half of the book you simply can’t with this awful person. You continue to read because you know something must be coming.  Well, welcome to this psychological suspense novel, where all is not what it seems.

Amber manipulates her way into Daphne Parrish’s life with the guise of grieving for a dead sister. Daphne lost her sister to a devastating disease and is a board member of a charitable organization tasked to raising money to find a cure.  Amber joins the organization claiming she also lost her sister to the same illness.  Daphne takes her under her wing and the two bond over their shared grief.

Designer clothes, private jets and loads of money attract all sorts of types. Amber’s a long way from her impoverished roots in Missouri but she has learned from her previous mistakes and greedily takes on the privileged class of Long Island Sound.  As Amber gets closer and closer inside the Parrish family, she seems unstoppable.

The second half of the book is in Daphne’s point of view. I was so disgusted with Amber’s character by the time I got to the second half of the book that I almost put the book down. Don’t keep reading. Daphne’s character will keep you vested in the book.  There is another central character that I’ll let the reader discover for themselves.  Note: he made my skin crawl. This is one of those books that you can’t divulge too much without giving away the story.

For the most part, our book club liked this book. Amber got no sympathy from us. We were all rooting for Daphne.  We talked about how women can help other women.  We had a long discussion about about psychological abuse and how it evolves over time and what can be done about it.  

This saucy read certainly warmed up our March.

Last word: Without giving anything away, I would never taunt a sociopath – just sayin.

Rating: 7.5

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

Fiddle de dee

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One of the first movies I ever saw with my family was Gone With the Wind.  My first movie was more age-appropriate by today’s standards – Bambi. But back in the 1960’s we didn’t have Disney Studios and Pixar, etc. pumping out tons of children’s movies per year. So, when the family wanted to see a movie maybe once every six months, my father usually decided. A favorite of his was Gone With the Wind.  I think I was around 10 years old when we first went to the local drive-in theater that showed classic movies from time to time.

As a young girl, Scarlett O’Hara was everything I thought was important at the time. She was beautiful, popular, well-dressed and the boys and men loved her, even fought over her. Her resilience was unstoppable in all the adversity she faced later in the movie.  As I grew older, Scarlett’s shortcomings were more evident. But she remains a compelling character to me.  I’m still drawn to her.

What I had never done was read the book.  Why? I had watched the movie so many times I couldn’t imagine the book keeping my attention.  Well, I was so wrong. Not only did it keep my attention it filled in so many details that the movie couldn’t. I loved it.

We read the book for our February book club.

The movie and book place the reader in the South during the Civil War. It gives us a Southern view of life with all its beauty and then the horror of the war. We view the destruction of the South during the war and the Reconstruction afterward through the eyes of Scarlett O’Hara.  Once a flighty young debutante without a care in the world to a starved young woman fighting for food. Vowing to never go hungry again, she turns herself into a steeled competitor in a man’s world violating her Southern conventions way before Gloria Steinem and the women’s movement in the 1960’s and 70’s.

The book rounds out Scarlett’s character better than the movie does. You empathize with Scarlett more even if you don’t quite agree with her actions.

In book club we talked about how Scarlett reacted to various situations, like stealing her sister’s finance. Her fierce determination and how it changed her. We also talked about how different sides of a situation view things and, of course, would Scarlett and Rhett get back together.

Our book club tries to read a classic book every year. Why – when most of us have read them before? Because we are reading them at an older, more experience stage in our lives and it’s amazing how different we see these now.

Enjoy!

Rating: 9.5

Photo by Ian Wagg on Unsplash 11ae1000

Friends and Books Does it Get Any Better

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Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Here we are in 2019!  We braved frigid temperatures last night for our first book club this year. And what a book club it was! Twelve of us squeezed around an elongated table laughing, eating, drinking and catching up – our usual MO.

By the time we turned our attention to January’s book selection we were jazzed up and ready for discussion. Our pick was “Amanda Wakes Up,” by Alisyn Camerota, the CNN New Day cohost.

Although many news show hosts have written books, Camerota’s “Amanda Wakes Up,” is distinctly different from the pack. It’s a fictional story of a young idealistic journalist landing her dream job very early in her career.

Benji Diggs, the “master of mass media,” hires Amanda as a cohost for his new morning show Wake Up, USA, after she scoops a story by being the first on scene at a hostage situation (without pants).  Diggs’ FAIR News Network intends to “dissolve the left-right paradigm,” and present both sides of every story. Amanda loves the idea of being fair. After all it’s what the journalist’s creed is all about – clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy, fairness and truth.

As the story progresses and the stakes rise for Amanda, she is forced to take stock of what is important to her and what she believes in. The tension rises when pressure mounts from Diggs, her boyfriend, and her friends and family that she conform to their way of thinking. She does the best she can to adapt until…one person makes her look deep within. What path will she take – will her integrity bloom or will ambition win?

(more…)

Christmas 2018

kim.harwanko

The holidays are a wonderful time to get together. We don’t assign a book in December, everyone is too busy. But we make time to get together. We had a lot to be grateful for this year with the release of our book Novel Women.  And our appearance on CNN! I wanted to thank those special women with a little token of my appreciation.

Try to join a book club if you don’t belong to one. It’s so rewarding and you meet some amazing women along the way.

One of the authors, Denise Panyik-Dale, has many talents, not only does she write but she’s a wonderful photographer. You can get some of the following pictures at Getty.

Happy New Year to all!

Fran and I enjoying a moment!

A touch of Heaven before the holidays

kim.harwanko

Our last book of the year was Mitch Albom’s The Next Person You Meet in Heaven.

Most of us had read Albom’s first book The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and we thought it would be a great book to finish the year on. The sequel picks up with Annie, the young girl who Eddie saved with his own life at the amusement park where he worked.

Annie’s life story isn’t pretty. And her hardships and her desire to find love and acceptance are sad. She’s bullied about her mangled hand, and at every corner she faces another challenge that she steadfastly deals with. But she does find love and is very happy until…

Ron Charles, Critic for Book World wrote in his critique for The Washington Post, “That this sportswriter should become our national correspondent on the afterlife is perhaps the best proof we have that God works in mysterious ways. But America has always been thirsty for sugary elixirs of spirituality diluted in platitudes. We are truly people touched by an angel — or at least by its dust.” Charles isn’t a fan.

Our book club saw the sentimentality in the book, but the book gave us a chance to talk about religion. One of the three no’s for polite conversation. After our book club appeared on CNN on their voter panels before the midterm election, religion didn’t scare us so much anymore.

Politics was definitely a strained conversation in comparison to religion. We talked about our beliefs. Whether we believe in heaven, hell and the afterlife. The majority of book club is Christian with one Atheist and one Agnostic thrown in to make it a little more interesting. You would think that everyone’s viewpoint would be similar, but that wasn’t the case. Some of the ladies read bibles daily, go to church a few times a week, and even go to religious retreats. Some only attend church on the holidays, but they do believe in a higher power. There were a few raised eyes and a few “are you kidding,” but for the most part we have it enlightening.

Albom believes every life matters and so do we. The book will create some good discussions in book club, as long as you listen without judging another’s belief because you may learn something new or a different take on something. I’d say it open my eyes a bit in a surprising and wonderful way.


Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash

Brutal Heat Wave Scorched More than the Land

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Photo by Parsing Eye on Unsplash

Punishing heat and murder teamed up for this wonder down under.  “The Dry,” by Jane Harper was our selection for our March’s book club.  With three nor’easters under our belt in the last two weeks, blistering heat and parched land almost sounded inviting.

The novel opens at the funeral of the Handler family. The protagonist, Aaron Falk, has come back to the town he was forced to leave as a teenager during the funeral of his childhood friend and his family. What makes this tragedy even worse is the belief that Luke Handler apparently killed his young son and wife before taking his own life.

Falk was summoned back home to Kiewarra by a cryptic message from Luke’s father – You lied. Luke lied. Be at the funeral. Falk is haunted by this place and what happened to him and his almost girlfriend Ellie Deacon during his teenage years.

Luke’s father wants Falk to investigate the deaths of his son and his family. Falk is a federal agent in white collar crime in Melbourne, the closest big city to Kiewarra. He told him that his expertise is not in murder and he should get someone else. Luke’s father didn’t care and threatened Falk who finally agreed to stay on for 18 hours to help the local cop, Raco with the investigation.

The townspeople tend to roll along believing the worse in people without looking at their own shortcomings. The dry desolation of the land seems to have crept into them with few exceptions. I’m glad I don’t live there.

The author planted tidbits along the way that will turn out to be of importance so keep your antenna honed.  The story traveled down a winding dusty road with twists and turns you’d expect in a good thriller.

We all liked this book a lot.  The author did a great job keeping us guessing. We talked about how group mentality influenced the townspeople and charged them up on an emotional level without any rational basis. We also talked about Ellie Deacon. We don’t want to ruin the story, but some of us still think about her.

Rating: 8.5

Credit Photo by Parsing Eye on Unsplash