Peace River Book Club

Our book club was started in June 1989 by Helmi Bracco Callaghan. The first meeting was held in her backyard and Peek Frean cookies were served but no one can remember which book was discussed. I attended the second meeting in September 1989 at which we discussed The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. Within months after starting the club, Helmi moved away from Peace River. Many members have come and gone over the years but we have three of the original members still involved. At present we are all women but on several occasions some of our husbands have come to the meetings. The discussion often takes a different tone when the men are there.
In June 1994 I started keeping a formal diary of our meetings and we managed to retroactively piece together a record of all the books we have discussed. At present there are about 19 members and usually about 12 show up for each meeting. We find that if we all show up it is harder to keep the discussion going as one large group and smaller groups start talking in their own corners.
Our Book Club has quite a diverse membership including two pharmacists, two physicians, two physiotherapists, one Book Store Clerk, two artists who are also stay-at-home moms, three other stay-at-home moms/community volunteers, one teacher, two Special needs teacher aides, one College teacher, one former teacher who is now in Health Promotions, and one self-employed cleaning lady.
We meet about 6 - 8 times a year and take turns hosting the meeting in our homes. The hostess serves wine and beverages, some finger food and a dessert and coffee. Food is a very important part of the meetings and we keep a record of what has been served. We only have to host a meeting about once every two years.
In the last two years we have allowed the hostess to select the book for the next meeting. Prior to that we decided as a group which books we were to read but found that not everyone was getting a fair voice in the decision.
In the ten years that our book club has been meeting, I have been to every meeting except two - the first one and one earlier this year. Our format is very informal. We try to discuss the book for at least an hour. Luckily some of the members make notes or mark passages. This helps a lot in getting the discussion rolling. We frequently get off on a tangent - religion, sex, men and children usually come up in most meetings! It is my job (self-appointed) to get discussion back to the book. We hold our meetings on a Friday evening starting at 8 pm and they last 3 - 4 hours. We have a lot of laughs and share a lot of wonderful thoughts. We also have gotten to know each other very well and shared our major life events with each other.
Karen Lundgard
Peace River, Alberta
This is a list of the books we have read starting with the most recent:
Christy by Catherine Marshall
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A Good House by Bonnie Burnard
Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Chokehold by Todd Babiak
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ansler
We Were The Mulvaney's by Joyce Carol Oates
Mutant Message from Forever by Marlo Morgan
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
Bald in the Land of Big Hair by Joni Rodgers
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright
Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks
One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
Where the Heart Is by Billie Lett
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Ugly American by William Lederer & Eugene Burdick
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Beloved by Ton Morrison
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
The Piano Man's Daughter by Timothy Findlay
Two Solitudes by Huigh MacLellan
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Away by Jane Urquhart
The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong
The Alineist by Caleb Carr
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Icefields by Thomas Wharton (an author who lived in Peace River for a
time)
Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricco
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
Children of Men by P.D.James
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
Summer People by Marge Piercey
Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findlay
Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Geek Love by Catherine Dunn
A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle
The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
Counterpoint by Marie Moser
Tin Flute by Gabriel Roy
Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood
The Bean Tree by Barbara Kingsolver
The Wars by Timothy Findlay
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
King Rat by James Clavell
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Three Came Home by Agnes Newton Keith
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Y Chromosome by Leona Gom
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercey
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Green City in The Sun by Barbara Wood
Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
Twopence to Cross the Mersey by Helen Forrester
The Shell Seekers by Rosamund Pilcher
Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
The Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler