I might be late coming to the party but was just nosing around on the Internet and found an interesting website - Colorado Virtual Library.

https://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org

I also noticed they have a list of books with links to discussion questions if interested.

https://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/resource-sharing/co-book-clubs/discussion-questions/

I managed to read two books outside of book club – a remarkable feat given that I can barely read two pages without falling asleep.  Both books were at some time recommended by readinggroupguides

#1. Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane –  Lisa See,

 Rich and incredibly well researched look at the tea culture of Yunnan province in China and the Akha people who cultivate this remarkable product.   The story revolves around Li-yan, born into the ritualistic culture of the Akha who is able to use her limited education to move forward into the 20^th century. Along the way she has a baby with a man her parents deem unsuitable. Forced by the mores of the village, Li-yan leaves her baby on the steps of a government orphanage.  Over the years she aches to know what happened to her daughter and, in California, her daughter, adopted by loving and sensitive parents,  yearns to know who her birth mother was and why she was abandoned.

Great read covering the Akha people (I promise you will want to Google them) and the culture of tea, serving as the background for Li-yan’s journey from village to city to the United States and her daughter’s search for her birth mother, both using Pu’er tea as the vehicle of discovery.

 

#2. Girl on the Block – Jessica Wragg

Memoir based on Wragg’s life in the business of butchery.  Her career began as a teen in central England, working weekends and learning the trade sometimes begrudgingly, from butchers, most all of whom were men. Wragg pursues her passion as a butcher, developing skill in the many cuts of beef, lamb and pork that foodies require, while attending college to prepare herself as a writer.  Wragg includes some recipes, especially one for creamed spinach, that sounds wonderful, along with her life story from partying teenager to partying college student, to staff at the “Ginger Pig” one of London’s top butchers.  Very interesting peek into an industry that is tough, messy, sexist and elite.

Wine Women & Books December 2019 Luncheon

Group started in 2002 and still going strong!

OUR DECEMBER LUNCHEON
2018

The Dragon Behind the Glass

Our March meeting was brightened up by the centerpiece Marsha created to go with the book we were discussing, The Dragon Behind the Glass.  The arowana fish was the star of the book and of Marsha's table.

Bill Bryson - 
Newest book - The Road to Little Dribbling
Sunday, March 6, 2016 in Fort Collins at CSU Lory Student Center
Grand Ballrooms
Tickets:  only at CSUtix.com or (970) 491-4849
Limited Tickets:
$55 General Admission, $25 CSU Students, $110 Gold Reserved.
Gold Reserved tickets include one signed copy of The Road to Little Dribbling
and a reception following the public presentation.
Benefitting CSU's Morgan Library

WW and Bers-- Anyone interested in going?



Thursday, Feb 27^th, Lecture: Katherine Boo: "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" — In 25 years as a journalist, Katherine Boo has established herself as a fearless, honest writer dedicated to telling the stories of the poor and disadvantaged on the pages of our most esteemed publications. Writing for The New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper and The Washington Monthly, Boo has profiled marginalized populations in the United States and abroad: from Denver to the Gulf of Mexico to Mumbai. On the purpose of her writing, Boo has written, "Very little journalism is world changing. But if change is to happen, it will be because people with power have a better sense of what's happening to people who have none." Boo continues her quest to give voice to those without one in her New York Times bestselling book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the world's great, unequal cities: Mumbai, India. In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
6 p.m., Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 N. Nevada Ave., free