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Inglenook Book Club October News

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The Inglenook Book Club met in October at Lakeside Senior Living Center with Jean McKinnie and Elaine Williams as hostesses. Everyone enjoyed delicious apple cobbler made by Lakeside’s kitchen staff, along with vanilla ice cream, Chex Mix, nuts and beverages. Tables were brightly decorated in a Halloween motif.

President Carolyn Moore called the meeting to order and thanked the hostesses. Members recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the club aim and motto.

The Recording Secretary called the roll and read the September meeting minutes, which were approved as read. Acting Treasurer Donna Ward gave the Treasurer’s Report and read a thank-you note from the McKenzie Memorial Library acknowledging our donation in memory of member Juanita Finley who passed away last month.

Members celebrating October birthdays are Gaye Rowan, Shelia Rogers, and Suzanne Russell. Birthday cards were presented and “Happy Birthday” was sung.

In the absence of Membership Chairman Suzanne Howell, President Moore announced that we have a new member, Jean Garrett Hollomon, who was unable to be present at the meeting.

President Moore announced that she delivered 54 sets of earbuds for the schoolteachers last month. This month the item was plastic folders with brads. Next month we have been asked to bring large scissors.

Our program was presented by Peggy Chappell whose subject was Erica Bauermeister, an American author of nonfiction, memoirs, literature, and fiction. She is a New York Times best-selling author of The School of Essential Ingredients, The Lost Art of Mixing, and Joy for Beginners. Peggy’s book contribution in the club this year is The Scent Keeper, published in 2019. The School of Essential Ingredients is a group of interrelated stories about eight students at a cooking school whose owner, chef Lillian, dabbles in a bit of culinary witchcraft to help each one. Blend a bunch of strangers, add a pinch of romance, a dollop of culinary expertise, and see what happens.

The Lost Art of Mixing, published in 2013 is a sequel to Essential Ingredients and picks up the threads of the characters we have already met and adds some new stories to the mix. This book brings to life the adage, “be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.”

Joy for Beginners, 2011, tells of Kate, a woman recovering from cancer. In a party where six of her friends are gathered to celebrate her recovery, Kate challenges them to do one thing that has always terrified them. The reader will be challenged to change the way she thinks. Many of us let the voices in our head prevent us from scaling great heights or doing things we enjoy. The book is a deep and satisfying read focusing on the celebration of life.

The Scent Keeper shows how scents provide some of our most potent memories, a strong sense of time and place. It might be perfume worn by someone you love, a baked treat from childhood, or the smell of the air after a rainstorm—an illustration of a life lived through embracing one of our strongest senses. The story revolves around Emmaline, a young girl who is raised by her father in a cabin on a remote island. She ultimately finds a world far beyond any she had imagined, where she can use her sense of smell professionally, and she finally feels like she belongs. But she confronts on of her father’s most powerful pieces of advice: “People lie, but smells never do.”

Erica Bauermeister was born in Pasadena, California in 1959, and is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. After college she moved to Seattle, married husband Ben, and received a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Washington, where she taught literature and creative writing. She and Ben have two children, a son and a daughter, and other than two years in Italy with her family. She has lived in the Pacific Northwest for four decades.

She credits her father for her gift for writing. She says of him, “…he was a brilliant man, an engineer and musician who loved me but rarely knew how to show it. Dementia made him less able to use his astonishing mind and he began to live more from his heart. I learned a lot about dignity and empathy and forgiveness being with my father as he slid into death, and in the process, it profoundly changed the book I was writing.

In a 2006 novel, the character said “Sometimes our greatest gifts grow from what we are not given.” The novel was published three years after her father’s death, after dementia robbed him of his beautiful brain, even as he watched. During this time she discovered that the gift her father had given her was to be a writer. She says, “I am a writer. It is a gift from my father.” Although he was nowhere in the story, the book was for her father (Essential Ingredients).

President Moore announced the members of the Nominating Committee, who are Victoria Ard, Linda Edge, and Shirley Martin.

Our next meeting is November 10th at Lakeside with Beverly Mueller and Pedie Pedersen as hostesses.

Members present were: Victoria Ard, Peggy Chappell, Linda Edge, Carolyn Goodwin, Geneva Johnson, Shirley Martin, Jean McKinnie, Sandi McMahen, Carolyn Moore, Beverly Mueller, Mary Newman, Pedie Pedersen, Marilynn Putman, Shelia Rogers, Gaye Rowan, Genia Sherwood, Sally Sutton, Donna Ward, and Elaine Williams.