The Life List

The Life List, was this month’s book club discussion book. We gathered, as we do every month here at Wildflower. There were snacks and lively discussion and debate. Some agreement, some disagreement. But in the end, there were a group of women devoted to each other and to the act that brings us together, reading.

We tried a fun new method of discussion this month. I thought it was wonderful and very helpful for keeping us on subject and track. A hat full of questions about the book. Everyone takes one or several depending on the number of questions. Then we discuss each question. It was a very good idea. It really was helpful. I recommend other book clubs try it if they haven’t already.

Next month, the book club will be 4 years old. Some of us have been part of it from the beginning. Some are old members but not at the first meeting. And some are newer. I can’t believe how well this little book club has survived so many absolutely incredible events…. 4 years worth. We got through the pandemic together, lived through over priced eggs… Talked about books when the war in Ukraine started, When the Pope died and the new one was chosen. When Biden, chose to stop running and the first woman of color ran for president…. We were gathering when, Trump took office, when the stock market went crashy crashy, when the measles invaded the nation. I suppose this is where I look at things and make a snarky comment about how it feels like we have gone full circle from the Covid pandemic all the way to another pandemic, measles….. Geez…. June 5th we will be 4 years old.

We just finished a book called The Life List, by Lori Nelson Spielman. It was alright. My favorite thing about it, was that it was uplifting rather than heavy. We seem to often read rather heavy material. Nothing wrong with that. But sometimes something a little lighter is lovely tossed into the mix. There were things about this book I liked very much and things that kind of annoyed me. But everyone in our club experienced it differently and had views on it. Most of us found it reasonably enjoyable.

The Life List, was about a woman named Brett, who has lost her mother to cancer. Brett, has it all a cushy nepotism job working for her mom, a mom who loves her and a great relationship with her mom, 2 great brothers and their wives, some friends, and a boyfriend she thinks she is in love with. Life is perfect. Except for one thing. None of it, is the life she had planned to have back in her wide eyed youth before she knew that anything worth having takes effort. Long ago, she wrote a list of things she wanted to do in life and with her life. She wrote a life list. Her mother found it while making preparations for her untimely death. Elizabeth, then compared it as she herself was gradually dying to the life her daughter was living…. She decided to make Brett’s inheritance attached to the list. She left a letter for Brett as she did each thing on the list. Including fall in love and have a baby. Brett, was given a year by her mother, to get her life back on track. The Life List, is a chronicling of Brett’s earning her inheritance by doing the many things on the life list she wrote in her early teens. Through this effort, Brett, will discover and come to grips with long kept family secrets…. She will learn to see people differently and learn to be in the world as an independent person. She will get in touch with the woman she was supposed to be and embrace her to the fullest. She will build a life she can love and be proud of. She will search for love in a number of places… But by the end of the long road to her inheritance, somewhere along the way…. It stops being about the money. Mother knows best, and it is about so very much more than the money. I don’t want to ruin this book, so I am going to stop there.

Initially I felt the character felt kind of empty. But gradually the character developed and Brett grew on me. By the end of the book, I liked her. This book offers many life lessons and ideas for how to navigate finding love and choosing a partner. By the end there is also a whole bunch of praying going on. Almost as if there is a message that if you just pray hard enough even when it seems like a higher power isn’t there, It actually is and you will get what you are praying for. This is the part that annoyed me. But I have to admit, the way even this bit was done was done well and with some class. I have seen similar done in other books and it really didn’t come off as classy because it got too specific in who that prayer was aimed at.

The book club, talked about many things related to this book, we passed through feminism briefly, and discussed weather or not we are changed by time or weather we are still the same people we were at 14 years old. I like to think my judgement is better. We talked about writing our own life lists. We talked about our dreams and ambitions as children compared to where we ended up. We discussed weather we had ever made such a list when we were young. One of us had. Many of us had in their heads but never wrote it down officially. I however never did those things. Instead one year at summer camp, I wrote myselkf a letter discussing my life at around age 12. My councilor mailed it to me when I was 16. It was incredibly interesting to read a letter from my 12 year old self. It was interesting to see where I was at 12 compared to who I had become at 16. That was the closest I ever came to writing a life list.

I don’t think this book blew my mind, but it was a warm lighter place to spend the month. It was alright. Not my favorite but not at all bad. The writing was pretty good for what the book was. The story which could have been amazingly predictable did not end as I thought it would. I got played! Which is hard to do via a book. I often find books predictable especially when trying not to be predictable. This one got me. I did not expect that ending. It worked. Other endings could have worked also. But isn’t that just life? An endless supply of possibilities and we all walk the road we choose to the end point we come to? It was fun, easy to read, went relatively quickly. Played with family relationships, societal biases, and searching for who we are under the adult lives we live. I am not sorry I read it.

Thank you for reading
Amanda Of Wildflower Farm