2021 My Family: They’re fictional, but you can’t have everything.

I recognize that there is a problem with my noun/pronoun agreement above. I agonized about whether to use “it” or “they” in my modified Woody Allen quote, but landed on “they” because I was thinking of the twelve books we will read, and maybe, because “they” is a pronoun very much in the news. Just pretend the scrapbook says: My Family Members — then it works.

And we are off to 2021 with a new theme of family. Each month we’ll be reading a book with the name of a family member/relationship either directly in the title, the subject of the book or both. I’m thinking that the girls will be opening up about their own family members in our discussions this year. Our mix of books includes four works of literary fiction, one historical fiction, three collections of short stories, one book of essays, one biography and one history.

January: (family) Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

February: (marriage) Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

March: (wife) The Angry Wife by Pearl S. Buck

April: (husband) The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

May: (mom) Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

June: (dad) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

July: (daughter) Stalin’s Daughter by Rosemary Sullivan

August: (son) Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín

September: (sister) My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

October: (brother) The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

November: (grandmother) My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

December: (grandfather) Moonglow by Michael Chabon