Thursday, January 24, 2013

New Year, New Book Choice

Hello Ladies,

Look at how good I am doing at blogging...are you proud?  I had such a great time at our last book club meeting.  Life is stressing me out lately and book club is always a fabulous distraction.  I love talking to all of you girls and hearing the great things that are happening for everyone.

So last month we read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  Surprisingly most of us had finished the book this time.  I'm not sure if that happened because the book was relatively short or because it felt like a book that you just have to read.  Either way,  I was happy to see that we had actually read this time!  Many of us didn't actually love this book.  At points I struggled following the story.  I ended up wondering if what Montag was describing was real or his imagination.  That seems about par for the course with me though.  I've read many dystopian novels and books dealing with totalitarian governments.  We've even read a few already in book club.  But I never really enjoy those novels.  It may be irrational but they always seem to make me a little nervous.  I wonder about what it would take for that to happen in our world.  Maybe that is the purpose behind books like 1984 and Brave New World.  Overall we rated the book around 3.

For our January book choice we ended up going with In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.



 It is the story of the Dobbs family that gets sent to Germany in 1933 to be the US Ambassador.  The book jackets says that it "lends a stunning eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity."  I began reading this book last night and was surprised to find out that it is a non-fiction book.  I should have guessed but I wasn't expecting that.  Hopefully the rest of the girls still enjoy it.  I am hooked already but I also am in love with all things history related.  Can't wait!

Our next meeting is going to be at Marie's house on Feb 19th at 7:00.  See you then!

Happy Reading!


Thursday, January 3, 2013

And We're Back!

So I’m horribly bad at blogging.  Who cares…big whoop…deal with it!  I kid. I kid.  But really, I have a problem and have to apologize for the 6 month absence.  I missed our book club meeting in June and it totally threw me off my game.  Our July meeting came around and none of the ladies who made it to that meeting had actually read Playing Dead yet so we kept it for our July book choice as well.  A poor excuse to not blog in July but I ran with it.  And then I just kept on running.  Time to play catch up.  I’ll start with the different books that we have read during the second half of this year.

In August we selected Heather’s choice of The Book of 1000 Days by Shannon Hale


It was a very interesting story.  Definitely not a tough read but it kept us entertained.  It tells the story of a servant girl that is locked in a tower with her princess master for what is supposed to be three years.  They escape, find out the country has been destroyed, and head off to find the supposed love of the princess.  Good story.  If I remember it correctly we rated it around a 3 out of 5 for the enjoyment factor.

Our September choice was another light read.  We chose The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks.


Personally, I struggled with this book.  I wasn't able to finish it.  I got bored with the characters and the story line didn't really interest me.  Overall, no one really loved it.  The ladies that did finish told me that it did have some amusing parts and the story got better the further into the book they read.  2.5 out of 5 stars.

The October book was probably my favorite of the last few months.  We read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.


Many of you might have seen the movie for this book.  It is about a boy whose father was killed in the 9-11 attacks in New York City.  A while after the death of his father, Oscar, finds a small envelope that leads him on a search across NYC to learn more about the man.  I would probably rate this book at a 4.  The only drawback was that it jumped between characters without any explanation and was, at times, hard to follow.

Phew…almost caught up.

November book choice!  This was actually kind of a scramble.  The book choices never arrived so we all just threw out books that we had been wanting to read.  We ended up with Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn


I can’t really do an accurate review of this book as I didn't finish reading.  Heck, I barely started reading it.  The holidays definitely got in the way.  I did enjoy the parts that I did read and am looking forward to finishing it.  The reviews say that it is intriguing and has a lot of plot twists that keep a person interested.  Hopefully that’s true.  I’ll keep you posted if I actually get back to reading it.  Eric got me quite a few books for Christmas so I am over-loaded with reading options at the moment.

And finally…December’s book choice!  I am crazy excited about this one.  We chose Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.


Amazon says that “Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.  Sounds great, right?  For some reason I never read this while I was in middle or high school.  You’d think it would have been required in most English Lit classes or something.  I’m excited to read it now.  I want to see what all of the fuss is about.

Along with book choice updates I’m going to include some book club member updates as well.  First a big congrats to Amy Jo who got engaged and will be getting married next week!  Wade is a lucky guy! Second, a round of applause goes to Marie for graduating from college.  I big achievement!  Next, we have baby-related congratulations to Heather for the birth of her gorgeous little girl and to Ashlee on the up-coming birth of her second adorable baby.  Lastly, I need to welcome our newest book club member, Ashley.  We love having you come!  As for the rest of us…life is pretty much status quo as far as I know.

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 7:00 pm.  We will be holding it at my house again.
Hope to see you there.

Happy Reading,
Carly