Book Chatter

Last night my book club met to discuss The Bone People. Overall, it was a good discussion but I was distracted by the mutterings of another member. Yes, I said mutterings.

Here’s the deal, I have been a part of this book club for almost 11 years now. I LOVE it. I love the people and I really enjoy the discussions but recently, we’ve had quite a few new members join and one of them is beginning to be a real problem.

After my unfortunate luck of having to sit next to her last night, I realized that she is not playing with a full deck. Every time someone commented on the book, she would lean over and mutter a negative comment to me. Some of the comments were racist in nature, some had to do with our President. Needless to say, the comments were inappropriate and completely ruined the meeting for me. Someone must have been listening to my prayers because at some point, she said that the meeting was a waste of her time and then just up and left.

Afterward, we discussed the incident a bit. Our group is hosted by the library so we have no control over who shows up. In other words, we are stuck with this person unless she decides to leave the group. Now, she was asked once before not to come since she was pushing religious material into the hands of some of our group members, but after skipping a meeting or two she came back.

How would you handle this? I am not going to put up with her antics at the next meeting but it’s stressful to have to deal with this. I am particularly concerned with the next meeting because we are discussing Obama’s Dreams From My Father and she clearly had a problem with that book being on the list.

Our leader is fantastic but with the group being hosted by the library, she cannot do a thing about this. WE can though. But what? Besides taking her out back and putting her in a pine box of course.

Rebecca posted this fun meme earlier, in which you are assigned a random letter and must name 10 things you love that start with that letter. She assigned me the letter D so here goes:

1. Days off from work. Gotta love ’em.

2. “Damn It!” (something I scream all the time)

3. American Girl Dolls. I want my daughter to like these so we can have tea parties and see the American Girl shows at the store. Right now she is only into stuffed animals and they are no fun :0

4. Diamonds. I mean come on, who DOESN’T like diamonds?

5. Diet Coke. I used to drink it like water but it is SO not good for you so I only indulge in it every now and then.

6. Decisiveness. I like when a person makes a firm decision on something and sticks to it.

7. Ding Dongs in the foil wrapper. Not to be confused with the Ding Dongs wrapped in plastic. I have these like once a year, but oh… what a treat. The ones in plastic are dry! You cannot eat a dry Ding Dong unless you have a Diet Coke to wash it down (see #5).

8. Dramatic performances. The ones that take place on the stage and not in the workplace.

9. D60. This would be a reference to my Nikon D60. I am really loving it and now that I am taking a photography class, it is really beginning to feel like a part of my hand now. It felt so foreign to me at first.

10. Daytimer. My beloved Daytimer that I have lost three times yet somehow managed to find its way back to me each time. My life is in this book. People keep trying to get me to try a Blackberry instead but I like seeing everything spelled out in front of me at once.

If you want to play along, leave a comment here, and I’ll randomly assign you a letter…then you do a post, and people request letters from you, and well, you get the picture.

Chatting with friends about books and life…