Voting time

Our October bookclub meeting Sunday at Robin's Bartlett Arboretum was even more Octoberiffic than it usually is. The wind was pretty violent when we first arrived, but Robin -- channeling Frida Kahlo -- managed to build a fire anyhow, and by the time the first dogs were charred, the wind was dying down.

That left us all bathed in gorgeous, glowing amber Autumn light, and we all looked spectacular as we downed our 'dogs, s'mores, cider and various veggie salads. The Arb didn't look too bad, either.

No one was very impressed with "Twilight," though very few of us had actually finished it. The author could have used an editor, the group concurred, or at the very least a remedial course in descriptive writing.

After three bottles of wine, a few cups of rum, a scandalous game of "I Never" and the sharing of a few highs and lows, we caravaned back to Wichita, dreaming of our Christmas book club meeting at Bonnie's, scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 11.

Below are three nominees for next time. Two are Christmas-themed. The other, "Anna Karenina," is cold-weather themed, and we've talked for years about reading it at Christmastime.

Send me you vote a.s.a.p. at dneil@wichitaeagle.com.

I hope you like this blog. I've got a few things I'm still planning to add to it, including a list of all the books we've ever read and a section to log the titles of books we'd like to read in the future. Let me know if you have any other ideas for it.

And the nominees are:

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War. It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with “woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the “girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens

In his "Ghostly little book," Charles Dickens invents the modern concept of Christmas Spirit and offers one of the world’s most adapted and imitated stories. We know Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, not only as fictional characters, but also as icons of the true meaning of Christmas in a world still plagued with avarice and cynicism.