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Monday, August 22, 2011

August Book Club: The Help

This past Saturday was our first book club meeting. My friends Michelle and Allison spear-headed pulling together this group of ladies from college, church and the neighborhood. We vary in age and interests which makes me even more excited to be part of this group. The book we all read for our meeting in August was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.


We ate caramel cake made by Michelle, in honor of Minny's famous, best-in-Mississippi, Southern favorite dessert.


We had a great discussion, guided by the questions in the back of the book by the author.  If you have yet to read The Help, I would highly recommend it. It is one of my favorite books and I will be reading it again at some point. The characters are incredible; it is not a bird's eye, gloss-over of civil rights' movement issues, but one which exposes such real-life emotions of both African-Americans and whites in the 1960's.

Allison made cute bookmarks for everyone with a quote I just love. On the flip side are all the dates for our future meetings printed on one side, which will be very helpful.
 




I went to see the movie with my mom and Grammy. It was awesome to see the characters come alive, but at the same time, almost harder listening and watching people discriminate one another than reading it. Overall, it was a pretty darn good adaptation of the book and the actresses were great. If you don't read the book, at least go see the movie or rent it because it is so relevant and important to think about the issues in the story.

3 comments:

  1. Haven't read it yet, but would like to before I see the movie (if I ever see the movie--we don't get out much, ha). Good to know it's a good adaptation--I hate when movies change the books drastically! :)

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  2. I'm reading the last 100 pages today for my book club!
    We met for the first time a month ago, chose 'The Help' and tonight (weather permitting, I live in NC and we have Hurricane Irene's windy weather here) we are all going to see the movie and then discuss it over coffee!
    I love that someone made a caramel cake for your meeting!

    Biz

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  3. Those are such good ideas!
    I do a virtual book club. It's so much fun, but I would love to do a real one with food and friends!

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