Club’s Story is a Real Page-Turner

 

If her memory serves, and Doris Cowart’s mind is quicker than a Google search, Tillie Hathaway merits credit for starting the first book club in Ventura.

 

“Her husband was a lawyer and she was an RN who made house calls on horseback, so this was sometime before World War II,” recalls Doris, who herself enjoyed a long post-buggy nursing career after coming to Ventura in 1951. “The club is still going.”

 

It meets now on the second Thursday each month at rotating homes but always beginning at 1 p.m. with coffee, dessert and small talk about children, grandchildren and great-grandkids, vacation cruises and doctor appointments, before finally turning to page-turners.

 

Doris, who at age 90 swims one-mile four days a week, joined The Thursday Book Club a full half-century ago when the year’s best-sellers included “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by John Le Carre and Ian Fleming’s “You Only Live Twice.”

 

Because nonfiction people only live once, and because of Alzheimer’s, and because of people moving away, membership slowly dwindled. Meanwhile, a second longtime local book club experienced similar losses.

 

So the two groups had a blind date to see if they were compatible. They were. Today’s merged membership consists of Mary Ann Benton, Annette Clark, Mary Jo Coe, Doris Cowart, Rose Adelle Marsh, Billie Radcliffe, Katherine Stone, Suzanne Sheridan, Barbara Swanson and Arlys Tuttle. Three have been members for 50 years while only two for less than a decade.

 

To be sure, E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” won’t have the staying power of this Nine Shades of Gray And One Redhead. Their hairstyles are short and stylish, varying from straight to curls; lipstick and reading glasses seem required while e-reader tablets are optional.

 

“Oh, no. No e-reader for me,” says Arlys Tuttle. “I’ll always love books with pages you can feel and turn.”

 

The problem with e-books, the Nine Shades of Gray And One Redhead agree, is you can’t share one among friends until no one else wants to borrow it, at which time you can donate it to The Friends of the Library to resell for fundraising.

 

Another fundraising effort is the passing of “The Money Bag” – a blue canvas sack with a drawstring that looks like something a pirate would keep booty in – for each member to contribute loose change.

 

“If somebody dies we know their interest and buy a book for the library in their honor,” Mary Ann shared.

 

Added Doris, laughing: “It’s not an honor any of us wants!”

 

Laughs are frequent.

 

One woman concluded her review of a book that a fellow member had also read: “Fascinating, didn’t you think?”

 

“No, I didn’t like it,” came the reply followed by merriment all around.

 

Another lady, after hearing a positive review, asked to borrow the book next only to see her name written inside the cover as the original owner. She teased herself: “I read a book and forget it two weeks later!”

 

To be fair, there are myriad books to try to remember considering each member regularly reads two or six or even more a month. They then take turns giving synopses on a couple, good and bad.

 

A mere sampling of recommended reads on this day included: “And The Mountains Echoed” by Khaled Hosseini; “The Tennis Partner” by Dr. Abraham Verghese; David McCullough’s “Truman” and “John Adams”; “The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild” by Lawrence Anthony; and “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald” by Therese Anne Fowler.

 

Also Elizabeth Stout’s “The Burgess Boys” and “Olive Kitteridge”; “The Snow Child” by Eowyn Ivey; “The Racketeer” by John Grisham; “Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before” by Tony Horwitz; “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich; “Winter of the World: Book Two of the Century Trilogy” by Ken Follett; and “The Lowland” by Jhumpa Lahiri.

 

Oh, yes, and “The Longest Ride” by Nicholas Sparks, of which Doris sheepishly shared: “I hate to admit I bought this in a weak moment, but it was actually one of his better ones.”

 

No one, however, confessed to reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com and Amazon.com.