Another lovely book event last night. We had our annual Queen Event which is always a blast. Every July we have a “free read” month. We do not have a book we all discuss, instead we potluck together and share what we read and what we recommend.
Oh…
and did I mention we dress up in fun dresses and choose a Bookies Queen?
Huh…. you think I would have mentioned that. 😛
Five years ago we read a book by Cassandra King called Same Sweet Girls and picked up a little idea from that book to do this event. We thought it would be a fun one time thing…. dress up and choose a Queen…. instead it became an annual event.
So what does one do to be Queen? We give little speeches, or sing, or read a poem, any thing to encourage others to vote for us. It’s really all in fun. And the things we come up with…. well…. hilarious.
What does the Queen do? The “Queen” breaks all book nomination ties. If we vote on a book to read and come up with a tie, the Queen chooses the book. Same with where to meet or special meetings. She also becomes the proud owner of the crown, the scepter, and uh…. the royal throne ( a gold spray painted toilet). 😛
So last night we had a wonderful get together with food, and dresses…. we discussed what we have been reading and then we voted on our August book club read which will be: The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson. We also chose our classic read for October Classic month and the book that won is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (yup – never read it).
We ended our evening with the vote and…. our past Queen Lori, called up the Queen and runner up…. Sharon and Amy…
Who will it be......Congratulations Amy! Sharon is the runner-up and will fulfill the Queen duties when Amy is not available to do so.The Bookies Queen, and Court 2011 -2012
Randy Pausch was young, an inspiration, hard-working, family man. He was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon… and he had terminal cancer.
When asked to give a lecture about life and act like it is your last lecture… Randy did not have to pretend. He knew very well this would be his last lecture. Yet instead of lecturing about dying, he chose to talk about LIVING. Randy’s lecture included dreams from his childhood, over coming obstacles, not taking no for an answer when you really want something, enabling others to dream, and seizing each moment as none of us know which will be our last.
With humor, brutal honesty, and a sprinkle of intelligence, Randy pours his heart into a lecture he hopes will be a life lesson for his small children who would grown up without him, but not without what he stood for and believed in. Randy’s lecture, is a love letter to his family – and a message of hope and strength to the world.
What I love about my book club, response #2049. 😛 I jest, but you all know I love my book club. Smart, incredible women who gather once a month to talk on one of my favorite subjects…. books.
In May, this was the book that was chosen for our June read. What I love about this is that a few years ago… this group of
Part of the Bookies Book Club (14 of us total)
women would not have touched this book. It would have never won the vote. Why? One its non fiction and we do not do a whole lot of that as a group. Two, it is a pretty serious and the potential to be a sad read and my book club – at least a few years back, would have avoided that for something lighter.
By review time – I did not have this book read. Since they picked it I had been to New York for a week for BEA, two large bike rides on the weekends, and a nasty injury that threw me off my game. I also could not find it in my library and really did not want to order it, not knowing much about it. When it did come in for me at the library it was in audio and it was also the day of the review.
There is always food at Book Club 🙂
Their discussion… made me want to read it all the more.
So finally – after a crazy trip to Chicago, I had time to tune in and catch up and here is what I thought of The Last Lecture.
My thoughts…
Randy Pausch has a gift of words. I entered into this read knowing very little about Randy, or this lecture which apparently is now quite famous. What I learned quickly is that Randy did not lack for self-esteem. He saw what he wanted and went after it. End of story. He speaks of this in The Last lecture as “brick walls”, advising that when we come up against a brick wall we are to keep on trying to get over it, be it a personal opportunity, a job deeply wanted, or, as in Randy’s case – a death sentence.
Yes, I can see where Randy may come off as arrogant, but as I ended this reading…. I didn’t think so. It’s probably a fine line between arrogance and drive and Randy rode it right down the middle. Where most of us would probably wilt under the weight of Randy’s diagnosis, Randy seemed to be energized. In the 18 months from diagnosis to passing, Randy used this time to prepare his family for life without him, including moving the family to a home closer to his wife Jai’s family so she would have help with the kids after he was gone.
This book was a firm reminder that life is what we make of it, we choose our responses in every situation… Randy lived life to the fullest as long as he was able. With a quick wit and sharp mind he reminds us to never give up on our dreams, seize the moments, overcome all obstacles.
I laughed a little, I cried a little and am glad to now know a little of who Randy was.
Pausch died from pancreatic cancer at his family’s home in Chesapeake, Virginia on July 25, 2008, at the age of 47. He is survived by his wife, Jai, and their three children, Dylan, Logan, and Chloe
Seventeen year old Mia has many things to be thankful for. She has an adoring and sweet boyfriend, a pretty exciting career in music and a possible scholarship to Julliard. She was a loving family – one that she actually likes to spend time with… and a snow day, where everyone is at home and a road trip is in the making – well that’s just icing on the cake.
And then in an instant…
it is all gone.
A tragic accident leaves Mia in a state of in between…. as she sees the devastation before her and an unsure future, Mia has really, only one decision to make….
should she stay?
If I Stay is out Bookies book club read for February. I was fascinated by the synopsis I detail above, and had a twinge of that Before I Fall feeling, which was so so so so sooooooo good. Can book lightning strike twice?
If I stay is a book about relationships. It’s about who we are and who we hope to be… and in some cases, it is about who we were.
As Mia contemplates the life she had, filled with memories of growing up, making pancakes with her mom, school work her dad, watching her baby brother come into this world, and falling in love with the boy she knows she was meant to be with…..all while laying in a coma on a hospital bed hovering between life… and death.
She has to now see if she is strong enough to movie into a future that is so different from what she has known. Mostly Mia has to ask herself if she is strong enough to move forward, when it seems so much easier just to let it all slip away.
It is hard to review this book without slipping into spoiler after spoiler, so if my thoughts here seem…. cryptic, it is intentional. I found this book to be a fast read that really did not fully impact me until after I was finished… now I sit here and the question lies on my lips…
what would I have done if I had to choose?
This book is real. This book is powerful and fans of YA will enjoy the highly emotional roller coaster of Mia’s life – before, during…. and after.
BOOKIES THOUGHTS:
This was our February book pick for the bookies book club. We brought food over to Kaydi’s house and potlucked over our discussion. We try to theme the food to the book, but in this case as the entire book is centered around Mia and Mia in mainly in the hospital unconscious… there was not a lot of food opportunity. However… never fear – as Amy was wise enough to bring jello…. a hospital staple. 😛
The book brought up many conversations on music ( a beautiful piece about this book is that it is surrounded with music – the whole family is associated to it and Mia and Adam both play instruments… we even listened to one of the songs from the book called Girl friend in a Coma by the Smiths. (seriously that’s the name of the song).
We closed up our meeting with the final question that really is what sums up the book…. what would you have done? If your entire family is killed in a car accident and you are the only survivor… do you fight to live… or do you just … let go. This part of the discussion turned deep as mixed opinions – all highly understandable were brought to the surface as well as personal memories that brought the entire Bookies to tears. It amazes me how all of us seen to carry something – no matter how many years it has been, that brings these emotions to the surface in a blink of an eye… a trigger word or phrase.
Here is something I love LOVE about book club. We can take an average read such as this one – a likable read yes, but not over the top… and we can review to the point that I feel we leave the book club feeling like we bonded a little more and we all know each other in a deeper way that makes me feel thrilled about the power of a book.
Over all bookies rating (1 – 5) A 3 3/4 rating and a box of Kleenex.
Grab your coat and a change of clothes, we are going on an amazing adventure – and once we get started, you are not going to want to turn back!
Sheila
It is 1913 and a little four-year old girl is found coming off a ship in Australia. She has no memory and is taken in to the home of the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. When Nell, as we come to know her, turns 21, her life is turned upside down when the dockmaster shares the secret that she is not who she thinks she is.
Tormented,by the mysteries behind who she is, Nell’s only clues to her past are within a small suitcase that was with her when she was found abandoned. Many years pass and within the pages of a book of fairy tales Nell is able to put enough together to find that she was from England and just as she is about to embark on the journey that holds the keys to her past, her granddaughter Cassandra is left in her care. All plans are then placed on hold so Nell can raise her granddaughter.
When Nell dies, it is Cassandra who picks up where the clues left off – finding herself drawn to the mysteries of who her grandmother was, she takes the journey that Nell never had the opportunity to… and unlocks a much bigger story than anyone could have imagined.
Starting out in 2005 with Cassandra and the passing of Nell, we weave back to 1913 when Nell first arrived off the ship, to 1930 when Nell turns 21, to 1976 when Nell takes Cassandra into her home.
Looking at that above paragraph you can think that this 552 page book could be just a jumble of happenings and a big confusing mess… and..
you would be wrong.
Kate Morton weaves together strong women through the decades that in some cases never met, but still have their stories entwined, making not only the women, but the story , stronger. This writing style would not be for the light of heart or for someone of little imagination as you could easily get lost in the worlds that are within the pages, but again I had no trouble sorting out the story line, more and more fascinated and deeper involved as each page was turned. Kate Morton holds together each story on its own and a more in-depth read I have not encountered in a long time.
I like to think of The Forgotten Garden that way: just as a Victorian mourning brooch contains a plait made from the hairs of family members, my book’s narrative binds the lives of three women in three different eras into a single story.
At first I admit that I did find myself trying to remember what was happening when as each chapter for the most part switches years and pieces of the story. I was asked why I was not whipping through the book, and my response was that as I read I would have to back track to recall where I was and what was happening…. however, about 100 pages in, I picked up on the flow of the read and started to truly engage in each of the different parts of the story – looking forward to what was going to happen next.
Read in the Reading Room
I was in awe of how author Kate Morton was able to detail each part of the book so well and there was no story line that lagged. In books I have read in the past that have attempted this style of writing I have found that I prefer a storyline and skim through the others just to get back to what I like, this was not the case in this book. Each woman was so detailed in their time period I felt as though I was there – from the detailed descriptions of the houses to the clothing and the background characters, they all held a secure spot in bringing this divine work of literature to a very satisfying close that will not soon leave my heart.
This was our book club pick for our January 2011 review. It was a fun discussion and I was pleased to see that for as big as this book was, almost all of the group had finished it is time for the review, with a few exceptions (me included!), yet everyone was planning to finish.
My favorite discussion question was the one where we talked about what would happen if you found out everything you thought was true about your life, was false, such as Nell did when she turned 21. At that point Nell made huge life changing decisions because of this news. This surprised me and our discussion became pretty deep as we talked about how we would each take such news. While some of us felt you could move froward from that moment with little disruption to your life, others strongly disagreed and felt that news like that would truly change the course of your life and you would always be left with that “what if”, and “who am I really” feeling.
Out overall rating on a scale of 1 – 5 was a strong 4.8. In many cases, the highest rating some of our members have ever given a book.
I posted over the weekend that I was scraping in at the last second on our HUGE book club read that was due for review on Tuesday. Did I make the deadline?
Uhhh…. no
Pretty much an epic fail.
I did however hold my head up high and showed up as the moderator that I am for our book club and confessed that I was not done… I had procrastinated on starting it and I was not finished.
And how did this great group of women respond?
With love and kindness as we have all been there. I love that about my book club. Read it, we hope you can, but we also get that life happens… and that’s ok too. Above all else we hope you show up – book read or not.
Our review was awesome and as I have now completed the book I am ready to post my review later today as well as share their thoughts on this incredible read. Stay tuned….
I went into book club on Tuesday evening feeling S T R E T C H E D…. tired out, over booked (no pun intended but there it is anyway), and really had nothing else to give.
And you know what? When it was all said and done in that two hours I was there, this is what I left my book club thinking:
Oh yeah… also… our newest Bookie (born in December):
Despite his single mother’s financial hardships, 12-year-old Eddie is certain this Christmas he will receive his much-desired Huffy bike. To his dismay, what he finds under the tree is “a stupid, handmade, ugly sweater” that his mother carefully modeled after those she can’t afford at Sears (one of four places she keeps part-time jobs). Eddie tosses the sweater and insults his mother before the two go visit his grandparents at their farmhouse. On the drive home, though, Eddie’s exhausted mother falls asleep at the wheel and crashes, dying instantly. Sent to live with his grandparents, an increasingly bitter and angry Eddie lashes out at his accommodating guardians, trying to make sense of a world he is not sure he wants to be a part of.
This was our Bookies Book Club read for December.
Honesty check. I find it hard to review Christmas themed books. For the most part, the ones I have read seem to have a pleasant hum to them but really no sparks to fuel the fire of a good discussion. As I tried to develop good discussion questions for our book review, I fell short. The characters were minimal and surface developed, the plot was really non-existent, and the ending was, well…. as expected.
It’s not that I did not enjoy this book…. I did. It was a wonderful read for Christmas, but to me it was more a book you read, you enjoy, and you move on. How can I say this….
it didn’t hold a lot to be discussion worthy.
Overall, as a group we gave this book an average rating. It has a wonderful message in it and the fact that it is a true story mixed in with a dab of fiction here and there still made it an enjoyable read. After all, isn’t that what makes Historical Fiction such an awesome genre? I sure think so!
There is an opportunity in this book to ask a couple hard questions…. I could have asked if we could share a time when we had done something that we wished with all our might we could take back, however – when it came down to it, I just did not want to open up that emotional discussion at our Christmas review. Instead, I opted for a better version….. we discussed gifts that were just …. awkward, and how we handled receiving that gift.
Here are some of the fun responses:
Was given a pair of extremely ugly gray boots for Christmas by husband that had fake gray fur around the top, a pointy toe and a large plastic gray heal. Wore them once to husbands grandmother’s house and never wore again.
Husband’s parents give gifts they pick up at garage sales…. sometimes they are ok, sometimes broken. Have learned to just smile and move on…
Husband purchased a Salad Shooter at a thrift store. When book club member opened it on Christmas it had chunks of dried up lettuce and salad dressing stuck inside it. Husband cleaned up Salad Shooter and all was well.
Mother would purchase the long boxes of individually wrapped soaps and separate them… giving one soap to each child.
One Bookie said her aunt received a gun for Christmas from her husband. She responded by the next year giving him a microwave. From now on, the hubby gives her gift cards to her favorite stores.
Given an electric razor for Christmas by her parents when she was old enough to shave. Her brothers laughed and picked at her so much she never used it.
One Bookie wanted a stereo really bad for Christmas. Come Christmas day, her sister opens up a huge stereo! Book club member received a clock radio.
Ok… we laughed at our stories, they are fun memories!
Anyone have any gift giving gone wrong stories?
Al and I: Ugly Sweater Party Dec. 2009 (I feel like an extra from Lion King)
*waves arms madly back and forth while hopping up and down*
“I do!!!!”
Last night was our December Bookies book club meeting, closing the door on our ninth year of bookish reviews, tons of laughter and even a few tears through the 112 meetings we have had together.
We always have a Christmas potluck and a gift exchange along with our book review in December. If possible we theme the food around the book, and had great success with this two years ago when we read and reviewed A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I actually made Smoking Bishop and another girl in the group made Figgy Pudding. Unfortunately, the last two Christmas reads we have reviewed have not had much food mentioned in them….
Oh well…. we still had a wonderful mix of good eats!
After our eats and then our review of The Christmas Sweater (review up later today), we play a game where we each pick a gift out of the pile in the center of the room. (We each bring a gift valued around $10). This is a lot of fun as you can take from someone else and when we are all done, each person has a gift.
This year I received a box of chocolate santa’s (say good-bye to my yummy friends!) and a darling Bookies tree ornament. I LOVE ornaments that have meaning behind them so this is totally SSSQQQQUUUEEEEE worthy.
Next months book club read will be The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. YES! One that is sitting on the TBR!
In the heart of Medici Florence, part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra stumbles across a deadly secret when she is asked to pose for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli’s famous Primavera. When Luciana is turned away without being paid for her posing for the picture, she steals a smaller scroll of the painting in compensation, only to find that within the picture holds a secret. The secret is so deadly that her friends are being killed all around her as she is forced to run for her life, and finds help in the one man who has never exploited her, Guido Della Torre, a novice at the Monastary of Santa Crose.
I do like a good mystery, and in that way,the Botticelli Secret did not disappoint. I found it to have a very Dan Brown feel to it, much the same as I found in his books The Davinchi Code and also in Angels and Demons. However the main characters Luciana and Guido (a prostitute and a monk) are not Sophie and Robert Langdon. I mean – Luciana has quite a reputation for herself and Guido is a man of the cloth….
however – in that sense the book works, and is mainly why I kept reading.
Where I struggled is that the first 250 or so pages, when Luciana is still quite rough around the edges, the language is foul, some of the acts that the reader is allowed to “witness” is stomach turning, and there is a point where I had to skim in hopes of the books tone changing as Luciana spends more time with Guido.
It does.
The painting features six female figures and two male, along with a blindfolded putto, in an orange grove. To the right of the painting, a flower-crowned female figure in a floral-patterned dress is scattering flowers, collected in the folds of her gown. Her nearest companion, a woman in diaphanous white, is being seized by a winged male from above. His cheeks are puffed, his expression intent, and his unnatural complexion separates him from the rest of the figures. The trees around him blow in the direction of his entry, as does the skirt of the woman he is seizing. The drapery of her companion blows in the other direction. Clustered on the left, a group of three females also in diaphanous white join hands in a dance, while a red-draped youth with a sword and a helmet near them raises a wooden rod towards some wispy gray clouds. Two of the women wear prominent necklaces. The flying cherub has an arrow nocked to loose, directed towards the dancing girls. Central and somewhat isolated from the other figures stands a red-draped woman in blue. Like the flower-gatherer, she returns the viewers gaze. The trees behind her form a broken arch to draw the eye. The pastoral scenery is elaborate. Botticelli (2002) indicates there are 500 identified plant species depicted in the painting, with about 190 different flowers.
The second half of the book shows that Luciana’s heart is softening and I was able to relax more into the details of the read and beauty of the details as they travel around trying to solve the clues that are given within this amazing (and real) painting. I enjoyed the clues and the solving of them and liked the second half of the read a lot more than the first half.
Overall, if you can hang in there, the book is filled with colorful details of the cities they travel fifteenth century Renaissance Italy.
Bookies (Book Club review)
The Bookies found the book centered around the painting to be quite interesting. Of the 13 of us at the review, only one of us had ever heard of the painting before. In that sense, the book gave us a little bit of culture that we were not quite expecting, but enjoyed.
Most of us found the beginning of the book and Luciana’s character to be quite crude and the language and acts in that part were probably the worst we have encountered as a group in all the years we have been meeting (since Aug. 2001). However, only 4 of the Bookies at the review truly disliked the book. The rest found that if you could get through the first part, and realize that the author is creating a very vivid picture of who Luciana was, it makes the ending all the more sweeter.
On an overall scale of 1 – 5, five being the best, The Botticelli Secret rated a 4 average with the Bookies.
While on an ill-advised holiday to Nigeria to repair their failing marriage, Andrew Rourke, a journalist, and his wife, Sarah, editor of a fashion magazine, meet Little Bee, a 16-year-old girl, and her older sister, Kindness. The girls are running for their lives from the men who have ransacked their village for oil. Even after suffering an act of unimaginable violence that day, the participants can hardly imagine how their lives will intertwine—and be irrevocably changed. As Andrew spins out of control and Sarah struggles to raise the couple’s child, the appearance of Little Bee, now a refugee who has come to London in search of the Rourkes, her last best hope, forces both women to make difficult choices.
I didn’t know what I was getting into when I read this book. It was chosen as our April book club read, and the first time I heard of the book was at our March meeting when it was nominated. This is what I knew about the book that evening in March:
We don’t want to tell you too much about this book!It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:
It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.
The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.
And it’s what happens afterward that is most important.
Who wouldn’t want to read that?
Then when I came home from book club and read the synopsis on-line… I was a little skeptical. The book wasn’t what I had through it would be about from what was described during book club. I have to admit, I went into this book with an attitude that I was not going to like it.
The Other Hand is another title this book has been published under
As little Bee opens,we find little Bee in immigration detention, a place where we has been for two years. She has learned to protect herself by dressing in loose clothing and wearing heavy boots that are donated to the detention center to avoid the attention of men. She has also spent this time reading everything she can get her hands on which has given her two years of learning the English language. As Little Bee is released (sort of) from the center, she has hung all her hope on a name and an address for the O’Rourkes who she had met under horrifying circumstances years earlier in her own country. These circumstances, are what this book centers around.
Sarah O’Rourke is not my favorite person. She lacks qualities that I value. She puts more into her job than into her family…. and she seeks for what she is missing in the arms of another married man. Her life is spiraling out of control and she acts as if, or perhaps she really doesn’t, know.
Little Bee is a fighter and a survivor and somehow through out this book and the circumstances that drew Bee and Sarah together I felt strongly that this was a book that needed to be read. While at times is can be described accurately as visually gory, the setting of this book in Nigeria, was an accurate portrayal for me and reminded me of some of the circumstances I have seen and heard about from my time in Honduras.
As I completed this book I had a new respect for what Chris Cleaves had put together. The first part of the book took me a while to wrap around where I was reading from and I was somewhat lost as to what was happening until I made my way tot he background story of how all these characters come together. From that point on, I flew through the book, fully engrossed in the storyline. While it was not the book I thought I was going to be reading, it was the book I was meant to read.
Bookies Thoughts:
This was our book club read for April and for our group the book over all rated low. Some of our members found it too horrifying and the language flow of the book to be choppy.
Even in a low rated book, we always seem to find interesting discussion and the line about Scars was one that led us into such discussion:
“I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
In the book we found that Little Bees scars are what saved her.
We also found not only humor – but sadness as Little Bee had an escape plan, or more so, a way to kill herself wherever she was. Little Bee was truly a survivor and she had made up her mind that no one would ever take her like her sister was taken. She would rather die by her own hand.
Book Club Ideas:
We had a potluck and centered our food choices around the Little Bee book. For those of you who have read the book, you know there is not a lot of food discussion. I hound in the grocery store graham crackers by Nabisco in the shape of, you got it, little bees. I made a cream cheese dip to go with it.
Angie in our group made plantains and a Nigeria type cookie made with corn meal. Kaydi brought a rice dish with beans.
Little Bee and her sister renamed themselves. While our book club did not do this, I did find on-line that a suggested book club activity for this book would be to rename each of us by characteristics we are known for.
If you would like to know more about Nigeria and some of the issues discussed in this book link here.
We had our first book club meeting of the year last night and that also means we recapped 2009. Every December we do a survey on our picks from the year and then I put all of our reviews into a book format that everyone receives a copy of and in this book, I reveal the winners – and losers- of 2009 per their voting.
Now… I can share the results with you:
First of all here are the books we read as a book club in 2009
(all questions on the survey were to be answered by using these books)
Favorite Male Character: Jacob from Water for Elephants *(with an honorable mention to Pope Joan)
Best new (to us) author: Sara Gruen (Water For Elephants)
Best Over All Author (new or old): Donna Woolfolk Cross/ Sara Gruen
Worst Book Of The Year:
Walking In Circles Before Lying Down
Best Book Of The Year:
There it is! We had a great recap meeting… laughed as always at our funny memories of the year (Dressing in Prom Dresses in a storm for our Queen Event, sharing our Christmas traditions, two of our members dressing in clown atire for the review of Water For Elephants…)
*The votes are based on the opinions of the 18 girls in the Bookies Book Club. Majority votes won.
Book Journey 