The March meeting of Wine and Words Book Club was held at Ann’s. Sandie, Linda, Jan, and Cindy joined Ann for a lovely dinner of green salad and prawns Provencal over pasta. Anne served raspberry sauce over ice cream in her recently acquired ice cream sundae dishes and made us lovely book marks. We finished off a bottle of red wine, a white Vignette and  Amoretto after dessert. Tonight we really lived up to our club’s name, “Wine and Words.”

We discussed the book, Last Bus to Wisdom, by Ivan Doig, and everyone enjoyed the book, although Jan liked his previous two books more than this one, and she has read them all. Sandie enjoyed it, due to the wonderful characters, and the amazing situations the 11 year-old Donal experienced and also because it was Ivan Doig’s last novel, and she also has read most of his books. One online reviewer mentioned that Ivan Doig was also a red-headed kid who was raised by his grandmother, and he wanted to “leave a bit of himself with his readers.”

Cindy recommended The Cruelest Miles  by Gay and Laney Salisbury, about the heroic story of dogs and men in a race against the diphtheria epidemic in 1925. This is our book for April.

Cindy is also reading several other books…(Cindy, please let us know the titles, because they didn’t make it into these notes).

Jan read The Invention of Nature about Alexander Von Humboldt, about the “…forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.” Jan said it is a long book, and doesn’t recommend it for book club, but she is enjoying it.

Our book for May will be, A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson, which none of the book club members have read. However, it was recommended by Dee Robinson, former owner of Village Books, as the, “…best book I’ve ever read,” when Jan asked her for book recommendations last year. Several members have really wanted to read the book, so it was chosen as our book for May.

The rest of our meeting was an interesting discussion about local and national politics, which was too colorful to include in these notes. Sandie mentioned a great video The Netherlands Welcomes Trump.

Cindy and Sandie are interested in seeing 1984 at the Pickford Cinema on April 4, if anyone else is interested in attending.

Cindy has a ticket available for the Tax March Seattle on April 15th, if anyone wants to go in her place.

The next meeting will be at Sandie’s Neptune Beach home on April 25 at 5:30 PM.

Added after the meeting from Jan: Also highly recommended, which I have, is Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.  Another book most book clubs have read, at least in Bellingham, is Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance.  It has been on the best seller list for at least a year or more.  Just thought I’d mention all this after the book club has gone home.