Musing, blogging, reflecting, affirming, complaining, documenting
Our Mostly Social Book Club, which has been meeting for 33 years, read 14 books this year, which isn’t bad for being mostly social. 😊
I sent a homemade greeting card incorporating our reading list this year, which was:
Outside cover of the cards:
Inside of one member’s card:
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| 📕10-word summary: Uncovered family history, a century apart, rocks the family’s world. 🖌6-word review: Well-done, dual-timeline epic family secrets story. |
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| 💭Amusing quote: Melinda: “Did you make any friends in rehab?” Bailey: “No. Not my type. Bunch of drunks and addicts.” | |||||||||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: bedsit, shantung, dupioni, aquiline, trompe l’oeil, cur, bombazine, Birkin, truncheon | |||||||||
| Description:* A century apart, Sara and Bailey are both tempted by and struggle against the golden excess of their respective ages — for Sara, the opulence of a world ruled by the Astors and Vanderbilts; for Bailey, the nightlife’s free-flowing drinks and cocaine — and take refuge in the Upper West Side’s gilded fortress, the Dakota. But a building with a history as rich, and often as tragic, can’t hold its secrets forever, and what Bailey discovers inside could turn everything she thought she knew about the building’s architect, Theodore Camden, and Sara and Bailey’s ancestor — and the woman who killed him — on its head.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||||||||
| Thoughts: This was a Mostly Social Book Club book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was one of those dual-timeline stories, where I preferred one storyline over the other — in this case, the past (1880s) over the more recent (1980s). It was an epic family secrets saga, which at times reminded me of one of my all-time favorite classics, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. The title of the book is an allusion to when this actual apartment building in NYC was first built and its location was considered “way out there” from “the city,” but the promise/prediction was that one day it would become the address to have. And indeed it did, with the area now known as the “Upper West Side” area of Manhattan. The building still exists, and according to AI, the maintenance fee for an apartment in the building can range from $11,057 to $13,000 per month. As of this writing, there are 2 units for sale — one for $6.2M with 8 rooms, 4 bedrooms, and 2½ bathrooms, and one for $19M with 6000 sq.ft. 15 rooms, 5 bedrooms, and 9 bathrooms. If the name of the apartment building sounds familiar, it might be because it’s where John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980. | |||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
