Sometimes I feel like I'm a celebrity. If people don't recognize my face from book club meetings, they recognize my name from book club e-mails or the articles that I write about our book club for a monthly local newspaper. There are surely worse ways to be known.
The best part is that every time I'm recognized as "the woman from the book club," I get to talk about books. It happened twice last week.
I was at the pool last Tuesday, minding my own business, working really hard in water aerobics class when I sensed that people were talking about me. I wasn't being egotistical or crazy. When class ended, a new friend of mine came up to me and said that she'd been talking to another woman in the pool (who wasn't in the class) about the book club. She thought this other woman might be interested in joining the book club. Once we were all out of the pool and drying off before heading off to the remainder of our days, we talked. About book club. And about books. They shared titles of books they'd recently read and enjoyed (wish I'd had my phone - or a pad and paper to jot down the titles - I always think I'll remember but I rarely do). I told them that our community book club is reading Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple for our May book club meeting. I also mentioned that I was reading Persuasion by Jane Austen for Books and Beer Club. We then talked about how with all the books we've read, we've read so few of the classics. My new friend and I attended the same high school at different times. (Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York in case you're curious.) We wondered why our curriculum included so few classics. "But then again, aren't you enjoying them more as a adult than you might have as a kid in high school?" Woman in the pool said she'd email me to get more information about the community book club. It hasn't happened yet, but maybe she forgotten my "easy enough to remember" book club email address. We're not as young as we used to be!
Thursday I was at a well-attended luncheon when a woman named Sue came up to me and said, "You're Sue. From the book club, right?" When I said that was me, she said that I was missed at the last community book club meeting where Cross Creek, a memoir by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was discussed. As I was admitting that I haven't yet finished the book, a neighbor who is also a member of our community book club walked up to us and said that once she realized she wasn't free on the day of the book club, she dropped the book. I still plan to finish Cross Creek. I purchased the e-book and so I shared that I don't feel pressured to finish the book at any particular time. We're talking about taking a day trip up to Cross Creek (yes, it's an actual place in Florida, not too far from where we live) and I also shared that I need (yes, need) to have the book finished by then. Neighbor asked if it was worth finishing. Sue said that it was.
I'll give a more complete review of Cross Creek once I've actually finished the book. But I was quick to share my thoughts on what I've read so far with Sue and neighbor. What I don't like about Cross Creek and what Sue shared that many at the book club meeting agreed with is that it's written anecdotally, almost short stories, but not quite, that aren't in chronological order or written in a way that you can really make sense of who the other characters in Rawlings story are. I would have loved a true narrative. This is why I moved to Cross Creek. This is when I moved to Cross Creek. This happened first, this happened next. Here's the conflict. Let's wrap up with the resolution. 42% of my way through the book and it's not like that at all. That's what I wish it was.
What I'm really enjoying about Cross Creek is allowing my mind to wander, to get a better sense of Florida in the 1940s, to get a truer sense of how Florida really was one of the final frontiers in the United States. For example, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. When I try to imagine what Brooklyn was like 60 years ago - or 100 years ago - or when my parents were growing up - in my mind the buildings are still in place. They're only older looking (which I realize makes no sense since the buildings I'm talking about were much newer back then and seriously older now). Maybe they're really more old-fashioned looking? The point is that I have a visualization going on that is probably not too far from the truth. When I try to imagine what things were like even 30 years ago in this part of Florida, I can't imagine. That means it's even more difficult to imagine what it was like 70 or 80 years ago. Just how wild and untamed was Central Florida in the middle of the 20th Century?
Shouldn't anyone who has decided to call this part of the state his or her home have a better picture of what things were like way back when?
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