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