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Book Club Rhymes - 2008 edition

Beginning with the December 2001 Special Christmas Gathering, members were encouraged to put pen to paper and compose either a limerick or haiku about any of the books that we'd read and discussed in the previous year (although members have taken great liberties with these guidelines, as they have with the traditional scansion of the classic limerick...) With the 2002 Christmas gathering this became an annual tradition.

These "luminous works" (New York Times Book Review) are recorded here in the interests of Posterity (which is undoubtedly clamoring for them...)

That the 2008 edition exists at all is due almost entirely to the efforts of Heuft-Michael household; other Book Club members offered the usual weak excuses of seasonal busy-ness, a lack of time and inspiration. They vow to do better next year.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
 

There was a young lassie named Tess
Whos relations with men were a mess.
But away and anon
The blood of d'Urbe did run,
'twas no need for her to confess! - Fred

Hardy's Tess held a lesson most grim,
For ladies who fall for their "Jim".
You resist their pleas and they bait you,
You show them their soul and they hate you,
Run away or fight, you can't win! - Fred
On the determination of certain Club members to attend the event
 

A couple today came by car and by ferry,
From a wintery Thetis they dared not tarry,
But they are key to our group,
And would come if we served soup,
But hoped that as usual, we would eat, drink & be merry. - Joette

The same sentiment, in haiku form
 

Good friends, good readers,
Undeterred buy slush & ice
Gather, big hearts, deep snow. - Joette

Maximum City (Suketu Mehta)
 

Maximum City is a place without peer.
One is shocked and amused as you stare
At the people of this place
Who conduct in ways most base,
Methinks the book is enough for my share. - Fred
Another haiku (from a poetic non-member)
 

Frozen fields of white –
Suddenly the sun reveals
Blanket of diamonds - Evelyn

This page last updated December 30, 2008