Mom’s Book Nook – A Virtual Book Club

by Meghan

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How many of you have participated in a book club before?  Weren’t they the best?!?  Get together with your girlfriends on a Sunday afternoon for wine, cheese, yummy snacks… and of course some discussion of the book, and at the very least, selection of another great book to read.  Post kids, my book club sadly seems to have gone the way of happy hours, evening yoga classes and designer shoes and hand bags… extinct.  When my girlfriends and I do manage to get together, for kids’ birthday parties, trips to the playground, or the all too infrequent girls’ night out, we usually swap titles of our latest reads in passing conversation, but nothing formal.  Well, I’m here to revive your book club, at least virtually.  Welcome to the PGPB Guru Mom’s Book Nook – A Virtual Book Club for busy moms, who still crave great reads, friendly book banter, and if you name the day and time, I’ll even join you with a glass of wine for a virtual toast!

Mom's Book Club


Mom’s Book Nook – A Virtual Book Club

The first Monday of every month, we will post the Book Club book.  I view books as one of my last remaining guilty pleasures – so while I read plenty of parenting books, blogs and commentary, I plan to keep this Book Club an outlet for Mommy Sanity Saving, and therefore, parenting-book free!  We review and recommend plenty of those among our posts already.  Book club books will include the gamut of fiction, non-fiction, well-known classic literature,  or the latest pop culture, young adult fiction.

The comments section will serve as open forum for any and all discussion of that month’s book (reader beware: commenters may leave spoilers, so don’t read comments until you are ready to discuss!).  We will also take suggestions and recommendations for next month’s book – you can leave those in the comments as well, or email me.

Anyone can join – all you have to do is read the book and contribute to the conversation!  So, without further ado… the first book for Mom’s Book Nook is…

The Condition: A Novel, by Jennifer Haigh

I’m a big Jennifer Haigh fan.  She is an American novelist and short story writer.  She was born in Western Pennsylvania in a coal mining town, and now resides in Boston.  Both locales have been prominently featured in two of her other novels, Baker Towers and Faith, respectively.  I enjoyed both those novels, as they paint very real characters, address somewhat dark and controversial topics, and have a generational saga component to them as well.  The Condition is one of her earlier novels that I have not read yet, and has been on my Goodreads list, so using this as the opportunity to read it and share it with all of you!

About the Book

In the summer of 1976, during their annual retreat on Cape Cod, the McKotch family came apart. Now, twenty years after daughter Gwen was diagnosed with Turner’s syndrome—a rare genetic condition that keeps her trapped forever in the body of a child—eminent scientist Frank McKotch is divorced from his pedigreed wife, Paulette. Eldest son Billy, a successful cardiologist, lives a life built on secrets and compromise. His brother Scott awakened from a pot-addled adolescence to a soul-killing job and a regrettable marriage. And Gwen—bright and accomplished but hermetic and emotionally aloof—spurns all social interaction until, well into her thirties, she falls in love for the first time. With compassion and almost painful astuteness, The Condition explores the power of family mythologies—the self-delusions, denials, and inescapable truths that forever bind fathers and mothers and siblings.

About the Author

Jennifer Haigh is the author of four critically-acclaimed novels: FAITH, THE CONDITION, BAKER TOWERS and MRS. KIMBLE. Her books have won both the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and the PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author, and have been published in sixteen languages. Haigh’s short stories have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, One Story, The Saturday Evening Post and many other places, including THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2012. Her latest book, the short story collection NEWS FROM HEAVEN, returns to the coal mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, the setting of her second book, BAKER TOWERS. Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award and the 2014 PEN/New England Award, NEWS FROM HEAVEN is now available in paperback.

Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Jennifer now lives in Boston.


Welcome to Mom’s Book Nook – we hope you enjoy the first read, and can’t wait to hear what all of you have to say!  Don’t forget to leave recommendations for next month’s book too…

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1 comment

Mom's Book Nook - A Virtual Book Club - Playground Parkbench February 28, 2015 - 2:19 pm

[…] month, we launched our virtual book club, Mom’s Book Nook.  While we all still love to read, as most moms will identify, post kids, those lazy Sunday […]

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