Two Book groups!

I have been meaning to report on how the book groups I just started. I just wrote this to The Well-Read Mom founder Marcie Stockman, whom I know personally, and will transcribe it here, if slightly edited so it is blog-post worthy.

We just moved, and I don't know exactly how it happened--God's hands undoubtedly -but in a town where I am brand new and know very few people, I started the book club--and it is a hit! Everyone is excited, it was so well-received... I knew only two women around the table of eight--and not very well at that. Then the friends from Sioux Falls learned about it from Facebook and two were thinking of coming here for the meeting (one hour away) but then I said I'd start one there... and voila: later the same week we had another group of eight, this time all good friends, all eager and exited! Nancy G. especially since she, like you, and so many others, had read Flannery O'Connor just to be so flabbergasted by it. :-) Isn't that the way reading Flannery goes? 

One thing I added--in looking for Flannery at my brand-new library here, I grabbed a book on women writers by cream-of-the-crop Princeton professor emerita Elaine Showalter, and without even having to open it, I knew it would give us exactly the secular-culture view on O'Connor that reigns out there. So I read that passage during the meeting, full of phrases such as "arcane religious beliefs" and "didn't live out her sexuality" etc, as a glimpse into how we Catholics, or Christians (not all ladies are Catholic) are so so much better able to be enriched by the true enjoyment of O'Connor's literature.

I am just so ecstatic that this is all going so well. Moving wasn't easy, and this was a God-given shot in the arm for me in so many ways! Being called to lead is something I have grown up with, and using it for God's glory--while enjoying the side-effects--is huge for me. I am so so thankful for your work, it makes leading the meetings such a delight! -

Much love and gratitude,
Ana