TexPat Book Group discussion

Well, didn't we just have a lovely group on Thursday? And what a treat to have Nancy in town to join us! It was absolutely wonderful to see her and meet some new faces too! Kathy found us Jacqui at her gym and Emma joined us from my Expat Spouses inside the 610 Loop coffee MeetUp group. All in all, we were 9 for our discussion of Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman. Most of us had finished it and not found it a difficult read. A few of us were surprised at the ending -- I didn't see her mother's status coming. There was some discussion of how slowly the oddities of Eleanor were revealed and how it was so lucky that Raymond was a new employee when he met her and they were thrown together to manage a crisis. And what a kind person Raymond is. The book A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman was compared to this one, in that both are tragic while also being laugh out loud funny. Other books that came up were The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (those of us who had read it disliked it and don't recommend it), The Rosie Project by Don Tillman, Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. We also touched on Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, The MaddAddam trilogy, The Robber Bride etc.) who is coming to the Society for the Performing Arts on April 5th if anyone is interested. Shea and I are going and would love to have anyone interested join us for dinner beforehand.

Nancy also showed us her Bitmoji app which created a personalized emoji of her. Very cute, naturally I had to get it (free in the app store!).