The Cherry Cola Book Club - By Ashton Lee Page 0,8
big time. We’d meet quarterly, allowing six or seven weeks for all the members to read the selection for that particular quarter. So we ended up reviewing four books a year.”
Maura Beth nodded approvingly. “Southern writers—I like that. I think that would work here. Faulkner, Richard Wright, Winston Groom, Willie Morris, Larry Brown—”
“Oh, we eventually got around to most of those men you mentioned and many more, of course,” Connie interrupted. “But, oddly enough, we started out with Southern female writers like Margaret Mitchell, Eudora Welty, and Harper Lee—icons like that. I know our core of women really appreciated it, from the way they dug deep into the discussions. I like to say that it was probably all about heeding voices with estrogen in those early days.”
“I’ve never heard it put quite like that,” Maura Beth said, her laughter reflecting her surprise. “But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go with that approach here. We could even call ourselves The Cherico Page Turners.”
“Sounds good. It’s not like we had a copyright on the page-turning concept.”
“So, anything else I need to know about your club?”
Connie thought for a while, then perked up. “Well, I kept the books when we got big enough. I was always good with figures. Oh, and I almost forgot. We eventually brought our favorite dishes to these affairs—casseroles, layered salads, lemon and chocolate cake squares, just to name a few—and we learned to do our reviews fully sated after a few mishaps. When there were only seven of us starting out, we sat together in fairly close quarters. That’s when we discovered that it’s pretty distracting having someone’s stomach growling loudly just when you’re trying to make a serious literary point. You feel like you’re being criticized right that instant.”
“That’s too funny!” Maura Beth exclaimed. “But it sounds like you ladies got past all that and literally made a delicious time of it.”
“Not only that, but hardly anyone ever missed a meeting. Why, you practically had to be hospitalized with the swine flu or recovering from an auto accident not to show up.”
A look of determination gripped Maura Beth’s face as she set her jaw firmly. “And that sort of loyalty is exactly what we need to jump-start this library again. Only I was thinking that since we have just about five months to work with, we ought to shorten the reading time for our selections. We need to try to squeeze at least two meetings into our agenda before the deadline. I don’t think one would be enough to gather any momentum and impress anybody, much less that bunch running City Hall. But once we’re good and established, we can try a more leisurely pace the way you did in Nashville.” She brought herself up short, flashing a grin. “Listen to me, going on as if we’ve got this thing in the bag.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. You should definitely act like it’s a done deal.”
Maura Beth nodded enthusiastically and busied herself making notes, leaving Connie to mull things over during the ensuing silence. “Have you thought about how you’re going to advertise the club, Maura Beth?” she finally said. “We printed up tons of flyers for our meetings and distributed them to all the branches in Davidson County, plus we found lots of restaurants downtown that let us tack them up for their lunch crowds.”
“Flyers would absolutely work,” Maura Beth answered, looking up and momentarily putting down her pen. “I know how to do that, and I could get Periwinkle to hand them out to all her customers at The Twinkle. I could also put a sign-up sheet on our bulletin board here for people who might be interested. Maybe we should have an organizational meeting first to see if we can even get this thing off the ground. I wish there were some way I could get the rest of those Music City Page Turners to follow you down here.”
Connie smiled warmly. “I’d love the familiar company, but I’m afraid I have no following to speak of. Actually, Douglas and I weren’t planning to move into our lake house for five more years, when we’ll both turn sixty-five. We still feel like newcomers to Cherico. So even I shouldn’t be here. But we sat down one night by the fire over a good bottle of Chianti, and Douglas told me he’d finally had his fill of trial lawyering for one lifetime. All the legal loopholes and angles were just wearing him down. He said