The Holiday Season is Upon Us!
Be sure to visit our full monthly calendar for all our upcoming activities HERE. This month’s calendar is chock full of holiday cheer, tree decorating, Christmas Trivia, games, music and singing, Happy Hours, concerts, movies, and more!
We have many other upcoming dates scheduled that allow us to enjoy this beautiful time of year! Join us!
Friday December 1st we kick of the holiday with a Tree Trimming party from 2:30pm to 4pm. Come help us decorate the tree while listening to live music and enjoying festive treats
Thursday December 7th Outdoor Festival of Lights Celebration at 4pm with the lighting at 5pm
December 9th from 1pm to 5pm-Spirit of Giving Christmas Boutique with photos with Santa from 1:30-3:30pm and great opportunities to do your Christmas shopping! CLICK HERE to learn more, or to become a Boutique Vendor!
Wednesday December 20th is our Holiday Family Brunch
Sunday December 24th at 6pm Candlelight Worship Service
Saturday December 30th at 2:30pm New Year Celebration with Swing Music
Check out the full calendar for more activities HERE!
In celebration of Solheim Senior Community’s 100th Anniversary this year, the Solheim Book Group is continuing to join the celebration.
CLICK HERE to see the list of the ten Bestselling Books of 1923.
At our November meeting, we discussed Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, first published in 1923. Whose Body? was the first of eleven mystery novels written by Sayers to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocrat turned amateur detective, and opens when the body of a man is discovered in the bathtub of a local architect, wearing nothing but a pair of pince nez. Nobody knows anything about the identity of the man, and even less about how he came to be in the bathtub. On the same day the body is discovered, a wealthy financier goes mysteriously missing. Lord Wimsey puts his wits to the test to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The group had an interesting discussion about the book and the mystery genre in general, including the unusual feature of Whose Body? ending with a confession letter by the perpetrator. We learned the origin of the term “red herring” in mystery novels (originating in the world of fox hunting), and enjoyed discussing favorite mystery writers. The most votes went to Louise Penny, particularly the Three Pines books. Other favorites included P.D. James, James Patterson, Sue Grafton, Agatha Christie (with strong preference for the Miss Marple series) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series.
The group was also reminded that Solheim residents can easily visit the local library by boarding the Solheim van on Tuesdays at 1:30 for the local shopping excursion.
The Book Group will continue to read at the close of this Solheim Centennial year books which were published in 1923 or were bestsellers or major award winners in 1923. The readers are excited to be part of this very special Centennial celebration.
The Book Group has selected for its December discussion A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, which tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester, who live in the Western prairie town of Sweet Water, Nebraska, along the Transcontinental Railroad. The novel is described as a portrait of a frontier woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them.
In addition, since A Lost Lady is a relatively short book, the group is also planning to discuss This Freedom by A.S.M. Hutchinson, which tells the story of Rosalie, a woman who wants, above all else, freedom—freedom to live her life the way she sees fit, which is not quite the way women were supposed to be living around the turn of the century and the time of World War I. Rosalie dreams of a self-determined life, and enters a career in business, and eventually marries and has a family. The book explores the difficulty in balancing family and work, and when it was first published was heavily criticized by defenders of women’s rights. However, it proved to be highly successful, and was ranked by the New York Times as the 7th bestselling book in the United States for 1923 and the 6th bestseller for all of 1924.
The Book Group will meet on Saturday, December 16, 2023, at 10:30 a.m. at Solheim Senior Community in the Private Dining Room. All are welcome. Please ask at the front desk for a copy of one or both of the upcoming book. And please join us even if you have not read or finished the selected books. Everyone is welcome!
We look forward to seeing everyone in December as we close out our literary tribute to and celebration of Solheim’s 100 Years. Happy Reading!