Huckleberries: We host an equal opportunity book club

At Huckleberries Online, the commenters, bloggers and blurkers are reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Eat, Pray, Love” in preparation for our book-of-the-month club online discussion. Librarian Bette Ammon will lead the discussion, which begins Nov. 1. But first I need to introduce you to Parley Melvin Anglen, my old English teacher at Gridley (Calif.) Union High School. Parley Mel had three characteristics that I recall. He was arrogant, he was a bully, and he didn’t like me. I was his personal pincushion from the time I fractured my first diagram of a complicated sentence during my freshman year until I turned in my final assignment in his yearbook class in my senior year. He so belittled me that I wouldn’t have gone into journalism if I hadn’t been encouraged to write by junior English teacher Jim Roulsten. Parley Mel deserves credit for introducing me to author Bernard Malamud and “The Natural.” It was time, he said, for me to quit reading boilerplate sports stories with happy endings, like “The Kid Who Batted 1.000.” OK, he also forced me to read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” and “The Wall.” Maybe he was frustrated because he saw potential in me but couldn’t access it. One day, Parley Mel made a statement that I haven’t forgotten. He didn’t read books by women, he said, because “women can’t write.” The guy was so in my head by that time that I believed him. I didn’t read a book written by a woman for years, unless assigned to do so in a high school or college class. Now, I know better. Maybe it’s Freudian that the first three Huckleberries Online Book Club selections have been written by women: “Water for Elephants,” by Sara Gruen, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by J.K. Rowling, and now “Eat, Pray, Love.” You’re welcome to join the discussion. Extra copies are available at the library. Eatcher heart out, Parley Mel.