First time in 30 years.

I have been part of a monthly Book Club for 30 years now and have some great Book Club friends that are a part of my life. Along with me, the Book Club includes Susan Neumann, C.K. Coles, Diane Foreman, Jan Rogers, Joyce McCallum, Pam Kaiser, Sherryl Wilson, Jolie Roze, Jacqueline Witter, Kathy Haggart, Denise Nielsen and Diane Kuenster.  We take turns choosing and reviewing a book and take turns hosting one Book Club lunch each year.  Pam has been voted as our “Book Club President for Life” and manages to keep us updated on what we should be reading and who is hosting each month.  Pam does a great job and we are all very grateful to her!

This month, the club read a biography about Gertrude Bell, who lived in the early 1900’s and was known as a major figure in the creation of modern-day Iraq.  She was an ally of Lawrence of Arabia, spoke 6 languages and was considered “Iraq’s Uncrowned Queen”.  She was a fascinating woman who was successful in what was definitely considered a man’s world during her lifetime.  The name of the book we read was “Desert Queen” by Janet Wallach and though Gertrude Bell was an amazing woman that lived an incredible life travelling unchaperoned throughout present-day Iraq from nomadic group to group, being entertained by various sheiks, mapping their lands and speaking their language, the book is almost a textbook in style and one that club members admitted to forcing themselves to read.  “Very dry,” commented a few.  When Joyce, our designated book chooser and reviewer of the month arrived, she was carrying and had intended that we read an entirely different book titled “Queen of the Desert,”  still about Gertrude Bell, but written in a much lighter vein 10 years after the book that the rest of the Book Club had read.

So after 30 years of reading and reviewing 12 books per year with Book Club (impressively over 360 books), this was the first time that the reviewer reviewed a book that no one had read.  However, all was not lost because Joyce is an incredible reviewer and over lunch was able to share enough from the “correct “ book that we all feel we know a lot about Gertrude Bell.  We were also quite relieved to be eating off the delicious menu at the Harbor Club and not obligated to eat a lamb’s eyeball, which was the delicacy frequently offered to Gertrude, the honored desert guest.