Golf, tennis and swimming aren’t the only activities at Old Warson Country Club—every six weeks for a decade, it’s been the place where the Book Babes meet. “We played golf together and began talking about which books we read and discovered we had a lot in common,” member Marion Corrigan says.
The women enjoy lunch together before delving into literary topics, and the country club provides the perfect stress-free setting. “It doesn’t put any pressure on any one member to put a spread out for everybody, and no one has to work all day cleaning and preparing a meal,” Corrigan says.
Although the Book Babes enjoy a wide variety of literary genres, they favor books that transport them to other locations and other eras. “When you read books set in another time, everyone has a different viewpoint,” Corrigan says. She recalls a particularly fascinating discussion on Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. “We come from a variety of backgrounds and not all of us are from St. Louis, so it was interesting to hear everyone tell about the kind of families they come from,” she says.
[about the book]
And the Mountains Echoed, from best-selling author Khaled Hosseini, begins with a father telling a folktale to his young children in Afghanistan, and spirals outward as choices the characters made echo across generations and around the world. Spanning Kabul, Paris, San Francisco and the Greek islands, it’s an exploration of what it means to be a family, and the complex ways we love, harm and save one another.
[opinions]
>>“I got very involved in each story, and I liked the way everything tied together.” —Sally McCarthy
>>“I loved the book. He’s a wonderful storyteller. So many of the characters survived horrible events, and the author showed us that there often are no right or wrong choices.” —Marion Corrigan
“There were so many tragic stories that affected me in a very emotional way while I was reading them. Even the ending, where Pari and Abdullah meet again, was sad—he does not remember her because he has dementia.” —Dorothy Brennan
[former favorite]
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
[up next]
Me Before You, by JoJo Moyes
By Stephanie Zeilenga
Photo by Bill Barrett
Pictured: Front: Ingrid Dorton, Laurie Franz, Mimi Murphy, Dorothy Brennan, Betty Bush, Gay Noonan; Back: Kenny Maull, Judy Shelton, Mary Ann Shanahan, Marion Corrigan, Gloria Strauss, Sally McCarthy, Sherri Dunaway, Marsha O’Hara; Not Pictured: Ruth Stroble, Betty Vogt
