Our book club, Readers in the Rough, began meeting in the summer of 2017. We normally meet to discuss the books at The Trails Golf Course in Norman, Oklahoma, consequently, the beautiful view of the golf course prompted our book club title, "Readers in the Rough." We rate our books based on the language of golf and quality of literature. This rating system has been revised and discussed from time to time, as nothing is quite perfect. We absolutely enjoy our lively book discussions and ramblings about life, and like the game of golf we read and discuss for fun and friendship.
In golf, par is the expected score for the best players. A novel or memoir should be the same way.
A Par rating meets the expectation of the elements of fiction: a solid plot, strong and dynamic characters, setting that is defined, a theme we can discuss along with a point of view that lends itself to telling the story, and strength of genre. A Par rating for memoir asks for a compelling story using truth, theme, voice, point of view being I, and an ongoing attempt to arrive at answers.
**All members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and Professional Golf Association regularly play par and below rounds.
At the end of each monthly discussion we talk through the rating briefly giving books thumbs up or down, or sometimes we gently struggle and argue between ratings, based on our perceptions. In the end, the majority wins with the votes. Ironically, our Hole-in-One and Eagle rated books are usually unanimous.
The Hole-in-One rating is reserved for only the best of the best, in our opinion, and one that we would reread, rave about and encourage others to read. It must meet all of the criteria of an eagle, birdie, and par.
**People I consider Hole-in-One Golfers are Annika Sorenstam, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Patty Berg, Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus.
Our only HOLE-IN-ONE novel this year is FOUR WINDS by Kristin Hannah homepage.
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.
In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
An Eagle rating says it is superb, exciting, and well worth reading. It meets all of the requirements for par and birdie, plus it is a book we will long remember for perhaps different reasons. We would highly recommend it to others.
**People I consider Eagle Golfers are Mickey Wright, Se Ri Pak, Karrie Webb, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, and Seve Ballesteros.
Only one book made our Eagle rating this year--The Rose Code by Kate Quinn homepage
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.
1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter–the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger–and their true enemy–closer…
A Birdie rating meets all of the criteria of a Par plus it creates excellent discussion based on a powerful theme, or other elements of fiction.
**People I consider Birdie Golfers are Kathy Whitworth, Nancy Lopez, In Bee Park, Bobby Jones, Roy Mc Illroy, and Phil Mickelson.
This year we read eight books worthy of a Birdie. The most powerful personal discussion took place over STATE OF TERROR by Louise Penny and Hillary
Clinton. Louise Penny homepage
BIRDIE:
Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades.
BIRDIE:
In 1960s Florida, a young Cuban exile will risk her life--and heart--to take back her country in this exhilarating historical novel from the author of Next Year in Havana,
BIRDIE: (Memoir) Recounting both family lore and family secrets, Bobby brings us four generations of indomitable women and the men who loved them. There’s Bobby’s mother, who traveled solo from Belarus to America in the 1880s to escape the pogroms, and Bess’s mother, a 1970s rebel who always fought against convention. But it was Bobby and Bess who always had the most powerful bond: Bobby her granddaughter’s fiercest supporter, giving Bess unequivocal love, even if sometimes of the toughest kind. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me marks the creation of a totally new, virtuosic form of memoir: a reconstruction of a beloved grandmother’s words and wisdom to tell her family’s story with equal parts poignancy and hilarity.
BIRDIE:This collection of stories is a translation from Japanese, which lends to a more authentic voice. All of the stories in Matsuda's collection are based, loosely, on traditional Japanese stories of yōkai, ghosts and monsters that figure prominently in the country's folklore. But Matsuda puts her own clever spin on them, and each of her stories feels original and contemporary. Where the Wild Ladies Are is an audacious book, a collection of ghost stories that's spooky, original and defiantly feminist.
BIRDIE: The three mystery books we read this year each received a birdie for intrigue: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie; The Woman in the Window; and No Shred of Evidence.
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car — strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.
The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. With her trademark historical fiction exploration into the shadows of the past, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such murky historical mysteries.
Agatha Christie novels have withstood the test of time, due in no small part to Christie's masterful storytelling and clever mind that may never be matched, but Agatha Christie's untold history offers perhaps her greatest mystery of all.BIRDIE:
Anna Fox, once a successful child psychologist, lives alone in her Harlem townhouse spying on her neighbors, mixing psychotropics with red wine, watching old films—Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which this book is loosely based on—and chatting on message boards. Early on we learn that Anna suffers from agoraphobia (fear of crowed spaces), brought on by a traumatic incident, rendering her unable to leave
her home without having a panic attack.
When a new family moves in across the street from her front window, Anna begins watching them through her camera lens. Then, one night, she sees a terrifying crime occur in one of their bedrooms. But here's the twist: Anna, who has been drinking and popping pills all might, can't prove that what she saw really happened. And no one, not even the police or her neighbors, believes her.
The trailer is available on Netflix: Woman in the Window
BIRDIE:
Early Autumn, 1920 – In Cornwall, four young women take out a rowing boat on a fine autumn afternoon—but before the afternoon is over, a man will be dead, and these four young women will be accused of his murder by the only witness to his death. Because their fathers are prominent men, Scotland Yard is called in to find evidence of guilt—or innocence. But the inspector dies shortly afterward, and Rutledge is sent to take his place. His notes are missing, and Rutledge must follow a cold trail that leads nowhere. Complicating matters is the fact that one of the young women accused of murder is the cousin of the woman Rutledge had hoped to marry in 1914, a world lost to war. It appears he can’t save them, because the only evidence he can find points to guilt. Until he discovers that there are the barest hints of something else in the shadows, a tenuous thread that will take him over half of Cornwall before he can tell where it may lead…and whether it will help or damn the accused.
A Par rating meets the expectation of the elements of fiction: a solid plot, strong and dynamic characters, setting that is defined, a theme we can discuss along with a point of view that lends itself to telling the story, and strength of genre. A Par rating for memoir asks for a compelling story using truth, theme, voice, point of view being I, and an ongoing attempt to arrive at answers.
**All members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and Professional Golf Association regularly shoot par and below rounds.
Par: Secrets told in the church ladies room are supposed to stay in the ladies room. But that doesn't mean that what Trudy overhears there during her great-aunt Gertrude's funeral won't change the rest of her life. Because the setting is in Tishomingo, Oklahoma the story prompted fun discussion of small towns and romance we only dream about.
Par:
She (Carrie Fisher) needs an assistant. He needs a hero.
Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list. She's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline.
Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers.
Charlie gets the job, and his three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows Charlie must make a choice.
Par: Curious how secrets can drive a book and a good book discussion.
Meet the picture-perfect Bird family: pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and towheaded twins Rory and Rhys, one an adventurous troublemaker, the other his slighter, more sensitive counterpart. Their father is a sweet, gangly man, but it’s their beautiful, free-spirited mother Lorelei who spins at the center. In those early years, Lorelei tries to freeze time by filling their simple brick house with precious mementos. Easter egg foils are her favorite. Craft supplies, too. She hangs all of the children’s art, to her husband’s chagrin.
Then one Easter weekend, a tragedy so devastating occurs that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass and the children have become adults, while Lorelei has become the county’s worst hoarder. She has alienated her husband and children and has been living as a recluse. But then something happens that beckons the Bird family back to the house they grew up in—to finally understand the events of that long-ago Easter weekend and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.
A Bogey rating means a book may meet some of the elements of fiction, but overall the book is not strong enough to gather our full attention. We would not recommend it for discussion.
For all of the accolades and secrets, we didn't find this novel one we'd recommend.
A Double Bogey rating means don’t waste your time reading it. This year we didn't read any books that fell in that category.
If you like to read please click on the links below for other great reads.Great Books to Read in 2021
Great Books to Read in 2020
***Looking forward to 2022 we will be reading:
January--The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
February, 15--The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
March, 22--The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
April, 19--The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
May 17--The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
June, 21--Meet Me in Bombay by Jenny Ashcroft
July--Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
August--The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
September--A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
