The Cover to Cover Girls Book Club will be starting out 2010 with The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt. Don’t be put off by the somewhat underwhelming cover.This book should be a fun and easy read during this busy holiday time.  Another plus: it was written by a local author who teaches English Literature at Calvin College. Read an interview with him here.

Our first meeting of the new year will be at Carolyn’s house on  Thursday, January 14th, 7-9 p.m.

Our book selection for this month’s discussion is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Kris has offered to host book club at her house, so we’ll meet there at 7:00 on Thursday night, November 12.

Wow! Where did summer go? It’s time for book club to begin meeting again – this Thursday, October 10! We’ll meet at church from 7-9 p.m. to discuss Write It When I’m Gone, by Thomas M. DeFrank. Don’t forget to bring along book recommendations from your latest reading, and a snack or drink to share. See you there!

The next book we will be reading and discussing is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Looks like we’ll be revisiting WWII, only from inside Germany this time. Book club will meet on Thursday, June 11 at 7:00 pm.

Author P.D. James has said that traditional detective novels reassure us that we live in a moral universe.

Alexander McCall Smith has written an essay about the ways that fiction stories mingle with reality and influence the real world. I’ve posted the article in its entirety below:

By ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

A few weeks ago, on a book tour of Australia, I found myself signing books in Sydney. As the line of readers moved, two young women presented copies of books for signature. These books were from a Scottish series I write, one featuring a heroine called Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel, who is in her early 40s, has a boyfriend considerably younger than she is — by 14 years, in fact. As I signed their books, one of the women mentioned that she thought that this relationship between Isabel and Jamie, the younger man, was not a good idea at all.

I defended Isabel’s choice. “Why shouldn’t they be together?”

The answer came quickly. “Because it’s not going to go anywhere.”

“But I thought it was going rather well,” I protested.

Again my reader lost no time in replying. “No, it isn’t,” she said emphatically.

That was me put in my place. After all, I was merely the author. As it happens, Isabel’s relationship with Jamie had not been my idea in the first place, but had come about because at an earlier stage in the series I came under attack from a journalist — another woman — for not allowing Isabel to become romantically involved with Jamie. I had originally intended that their friendship be platonic, but had been told in the course of an interview with this journalist that I really had to allow something closer to develop. “Your readers will expect it,” she said. “And it would be so empowering for them.”

Not one to stand between my readers and their empowerment, I had decided to let Isabel develop a romantic liaison, only to be taken to task later by my Sydney critics for exactly this. This, and many other similar experiences, has made me think about the whole issue of the novelist’s freedom — and responsibility. The conclusion that I am increasingly drawn to is that the world of fiction and the world of real flesh-and-blood people are not quite as separate as one might imagine. Writing is a moral act: What you write has a real effect on others, often to a rather surprising extent.

The issue of reader expectations is one with which writers of crime or mystery fiction have long been familiar. The poet W.H. Auden is among many critics who have commented on how novels in this genre follow a classic pattern: First there is peace, then this peace is shattered by the occurrence of a crime, usually a murder. This leads to a search for the wrongdoer, his apprehension and punishment, and finally a return to peace. We need to see the moral balance restored, said Auden — a view also expressed by P.D. James, one of the greatest crime writers of our times. According to James, the traditional detective novel reassures us that we live in a moral universe, one in which the detective is the agent of justice. In this respect, she suggests, the detective novel is really doing the work of the old-fashioned morality play.

Although the vast majority of mystery novels follow this well-established pattern, not all do. In some instances, we know all the way through exactly what the wrongdoer has done — there is no mystery element here — and the real questions are why he acted as he did and whether he is going to get away with it. If he does go unpunished, then the conventional pattern in such books is turned on its head.

Of course we know that it all started with the murder of Dickie Greenleaf, and as we see his life unfold over the series of novels, we may cherish hopes that sooner or later Ripley’s criminal past will catch up with him. But it does not, and after several novels I suspect that many readers are actually unwilling for that to happen. Why? Because we are fond of Ripley? That is hardly likely — Tom Ripley may be charming and urbane, but he is not really very likeable.

Perhaps we merely want his story to continue because we are enjoying it so much. If Ripley had been arrested, or disposed of by somebody he had crossed, then that would have been the end of the series, and that would have been a disappointment. As it happened, Ripley survived his creator, and is still presumably living in Belle Ombre, his house in France, awaiting some author to approach the Highsmith estate with a request to continue to record his dubious doings.

Of course a sociopath who gets away with it is unlikely to be tormented by guilt. For the nonsociopathic wrongdoer who goes unpunished by the law, authors often have an alternative form of punishment up their sleeve. Raskolnikov, the student-turned-murderer in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” initially gets away with his crime but then, tripped up by his conscience, eventually confesses to what he has done.

To be tortured by guilt is perhaps unpleasant enough to satisfy our desire that crimes be paid for, but in some cases the wrongdoer does not appear to suffer even that. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” involves a particularly cruel murder — the immuring of the victim in a cellar — and 50 years later, when the perpetrator tells the story, he does not appear burdened by regret or guilt. That, of course, is how things sometimes are. The guilty and the unpopular get away with it in real life.

Why is the writer of detective fiction put under such pressure to deal out just desserts to wrongdoers? The truth is that for many of us fiction is in some sense real, and that what happens to fictional people is, in a curious way, happening in the real world.

We all remember being told as children: It’s just a story. I recall being exposed as a boy to that most frightening of children’s books, “The Struwwelpeter.” This collection of dark stories includes such delights as the story of the scissor-wielding figure who would bound gleefully into a room and cut off the thumb of any unfortunate child sucking his thumb at the time. Freudians would find little difficulty in seeing this as being all about castration fears, but for me it was a simple matter of what might happen to you if you engaged in thumb-sucking. I really believed in him, and was suitably frightened.

Although we eventually learn to distinguish between the world of make-believe and the real world, I suspect that many of us continue to experience fictional characters and events as being, in some way, real. This is because the imaginative act of following a story involves a suspension of disbelief, as we enter into the world it creates. When Anthony Minghella showed me a moving scene that he had just filmed for the pilot of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” I found myself weeping copiously, right there on the set. I felt rather embarrassed — it was only a story, after all — but he put a hand on my shoulder and said that was exactly what he had done over that particular scene.

For the author, this sense that the reader has of the reality of the story has serious implications for how characters are treated in novels. It is one of the jobs of fiction to report on the sorrows and tragedies of this world. This must be done, though, from a morally acceptable standpoint. A writer who told a story of, say, rape or genocide but did so from a neutral or, worse still, complicit position would be given very short shrift indeed. Readers and critics would be on to him in no time at all; indeed a book like that would be unlikely to be published at all. Why? If it is only a story, where is the harm?

Stories have an effect in this world. They are part of our moral conversation as a society. They weigh in; they change the world because they become part of our cultural history. There never was an Anna Karenina or a Madame Bovary, even if there might have been models, but what happened to these characters has become part of the historical experience of women. When J.K. Rowling revealed in New York that Professor Dumbledore was gay, the announcement was widely welcomed. One would have thought that it would make no earthly difference to anything whether a fictional character had a particular sexual preference, but it did: People applauded and applauded. That must have been because they felt that this announcement had some significance for the real-life issue of accepting gay people fully.

It can be very inhibiting for an author if he or she knows that what happens in fiction is going to be taken so seriously. I write serial novels in newspapers and have learned the hard way that people will readily attribute the views expressed by characters to their authors. In one of my “Scotland Street” novels a character called Bruce, a rather narcissistic young man, made disparaging remarks about his hometown. Although these were not the views I hold about that particular town, I was roundly taken to task, with the local member of the Scottish Parliament suggesting that I should be forced to apologize to the offended citizens. I pointed out that these were the views of a fictional character, who was just the type to make such remarks. That did not help.

In another novel, I had Isabel Dalhousie give up breastfeeding rather too quickly for the liking of the leader of a pro-breastfeeding organization. Again I was told that I should make a public apology to those who believed in persisting with breastfeeding. That sort of thing is quite alarming, and it is such people who need to be told, politely but firmly, that it is just a story.

Mind you, I still have my doubts as to the wisdom of creating scissor-men who cut off children’s thumbs. Perhaps an apology is called for.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of more than 60 books, including the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, one of our past reads (and one of my favorites), has been made into a television series. First aired on BBC, and now picked up by HBO, the series will debut on March 29th at 8:oo pm. Read about it here and here, or visit HBO’s website to learn more, with video clips and interviews, etc.

Christie:

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Terry:

• Dashing Through the Snow by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark
• The Appeal by John Grisham

Carol:

• Laced by Carol Higgins Clark
• Vanish by Tess Gerritsen

Denise:

• Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein

Carolyn:

• Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
• Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult
• The Lighthouse by P.D. James
• “Mrs. Murphy” mystery series by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown

Please feel free to correct this list if I’ve made a mistake, or add to it anything I’ve forgotten. Sorry for the delay in posting.

As promised, Jane wrote a haiku about our book club meeting:

soup bread and molly
conversation and laughter
a good time was had

Thanks Jane, for a perfectly wonderful evening!