November Book Pick

October marked the end of our Lit Chick quarter which meant that we got to pick books again.  Member Alison is hosting our meeting in November and she nominated the following 3 books for voting:

• "Glitter and Glue" by Kelly Corrigan
• "A House in the Sky: A Memoir" by Amanda Lindhout
• "An Ordinary Grace" by William Kent Krueger

The club voted to read the book "Glitter and Glue"

"Glitter and  Glue" is author Kelly Corrigan's third book.  Her first book "The Middle Place" was all about her father and her second book "Lift" is about life with her children.  Corrigan has said this third book is her chance to give her mother her due.

While I haven't started the book yet, I think this will be an interesting read.  Look for a summary of our discussion of this book after we meet in November.


Book summary from Amazon.com

From the author of The Middle Place comes a new memoir that examines the bond—sometimes nourishing, sometimes exasperating, occasionally divine—between mothers and daughters.
 
When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.
 
But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral.
 
This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time.