Review: The Blessings of Friendship

Well I've finished Thursdays at Eight by Debbie Macomber. It was pretty good. It read like a Hallmark movie (I LOVE Hallmark movies). It's a lovely story of women and friendship. I especially like the lack of gratuitous filth. Don't get me wrong, there were tender moments and love. But...you get the point. 
 
Here's the synopsis in case you're interested:

Thursday, 8:00 a.m. Breakfast Club!

Every week, these words appear in the calendars of four women. Every week, they meet for breakfast--and to talk. 

Clare has just been through a devastating divorce. She's driven by anger and revenge--until she learns something about her ex that forces her to question her own actions and to look deep inside for forgiveness...and the person she used to be. 

Elizabeth is a widow, in her fifties, a successful professional. A woman determined not to waste another second of her life. And if that should include romantic possibilities--why not?

Karen is in her twenties and believes these should be the years for taking risks, reaching for dreams. Her dream is to act. Except that her parents think she should be more like her conventional sister!

Julia is turning forty. Her husband's career is established, her kids are finally teens and she's just started her own business. Everything's going according to schedule--until she discovers she's pregnant.

In the introduction, Ms. Macomber tells that the inspiration for the book was based on a bit of her own experience. When beginning her business, she invited five women business owners/entrepreneurs over for tea. They decided to meet every...you guessed it - Thursdays.

I really love the quotes at the beginning of each chapter as I wrote a little bit about here.

Chapter 1 - "Its the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time." - Tallulah Bankhead

Chapter 2 - "The teeth are smiling, but is the heart?" - Congolese proverb

Chapter 3 - "The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely." - Lorraine Hansberry

Chapter 4 - "Parenthood: that state of being better chaperoned than you were before marriage." - Madeline Cox

Chapter 5 - "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong

Chapter 6 - "You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." - Beverly Sills

Chapter 7 - "If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." - Mary Kay Ash

Chapter 8 - "The worst part of success is to try finding someone who is happy for you." - Bette Midler

Chapter 9 - "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner." - Colette


Chapter 10 - "Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much the heart can hold." - Zelda Fitzgerald


Chapter 11 - "The only thing that seems eternal and natural in motherhood is ambivalence." - Jane Lazarre


Chapter 12 - "Unbosom yourself," said Wimsey. "Trouble shared is trouble halved." - Dorothy Sayers


Chapter 13 - "Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect." - Margaret Mitchell


Chapter 14 - "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." - Dolly Parton


Chapter 15 - "It goes without saying that you should never have more children that you have car windows." - Erma Bombeck


Chapter 16 - "Let me listen to me and not to them." - Gertrude Stein


Chapter 17 - "Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good personis like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian." - Shari R. Barr


Chapter 18 - "We're all in this alone." - Lily Tomlin 


Chapter 19 - "See into life - don't just look at it." - Anne Baxter


Chapter 20 - "The entry of a child into any situation changes the whole situation." - Iris Murdoch


Chapter 21 - "Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make...your life bearable." - Francine du Plessix Gray


Chapter 22 - "It's not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is impossible to find it elsewhere." - Agnes Repplier


Chapter 23 - "It is never too late to be what you might have been." - George Eliot


Chapter 24 - "You don't have to know how to sing. It's feeling as though you want to that makes the day worthwhile." - Coleman Cox


Chapter 25 - "You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now." - Joan Baez


Chapter 26 - "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances." - Martha Washington


Chapter 27 - "Make no judgments where you have no compassion." - Anne McCaffrey


Chapter 28 - "Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third." - Marge Piercy


Chapter 29 - "Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than break." - Jane Wells


Chapter 30 - "The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart." - Annie Dillard


Chapter 31 - "Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations." - Faith Baldwin


Chapter 32 - "The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well." - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross


Chapter 33 - "The idea of strictly minding our own business is rubbish. Who could be so selfish?" - Myrtie Barker


Chapter 34 - "Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." - Amelia Earhart


Chapter 35 - "It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned." - Leslie Jeanne Sahler


Chapter 36 - "Vitality! That's the pursuit of life, isn't it?" - Katherine Hepburn


Chapter 37 - "People change and forget to tell each other." - Lillian Hellman


Chapter 38 - " May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back." - Irish toast


Chapter 39 - "The excursion is the same when you looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy." - Eudora Welty


Chapter 40 - "May the hinges of friendship never grow rusty." - Unknown

This was the first book I read by Debbie Macomber. Any suggestions on which of hers I should read next?

Happy reading,
Angela