Book Club

Name: T and Cheri Book Club

City: Spokane.

Group history: Group of 15, has been together for four years. Meets monthly, alternating between individual members’ houses. Host both provides snacks and, this year, acts as discussion facilitator (but not necessarily the resident expert). Group chooses books for the year during December meeting, and tries to include classics, biographies and popular fiction/non-fiction.

Book reviewed: “The Liar’s Club: A Memoir” (Penguin USA, $12.95 paper) by Mary Karr.

Group representative: Robbie Newell.

The review: Karr, a poet and critic, has written about her childhood growing up in East Texas in a family of eccentrics (her mother was married seven times, her father was a fist-swinging raconteur who belonged to a group called The Liar’s Club, and Karr herself was raped at age 8). The group reaction was mixed. Was seen as similar to Rebecca Wells’ “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” but, Newell says, “there wasn’t as much humor.” The child abuse was particularly hard to take. Some members, though, “just loved it from beginning to end. The author is portrayed as a real tough cookie.”