Recently I was reading an awesome post of Elizabeth’s at Silvers Reviews and she was talking about book club books. She was saying that her book club puts book choices for a year in to a bowl and each month they draw out of the bowl and choose their next read. She said this kept people from becoming hurt if their book was not chosen as everyone has a title in the bowl.
For us (The Bookies!) We have had a tried and true system that I really enjoy since we began in 2001. We encourage each person to bring a book suggestions with them to the group. When it is time to pick we go around and everyone who brought a suggestion gets a chance to give a little description of the book. We ask that it follows this criteria:
It should be a newer release (unless it is classic month) as there are 18 of us and we have to find copies
It can be paperback or hard cover as long as it is under $15
If you can share where to find it and at what cost that is a plus (such as “the library has 4 copies in book and also an audio version” or “Target currently has this one for $8.99 and there are about 12 copies available.”
When the nominees are in we go around the room and we each have two votes. The two votes stems back to when we were a very small group and we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; the two vote thing sticks to this day. 🙂
The book with the most votes is what we read for the next month. In the event of a tie, the decision goes to the Queen (oh and that is another post entirely….hee hee)
I like our system as we are not eliminating the possibility of choosing a book that just came out or to our attention.
If you are in a book club or reading group, how do you choose what you will be reading? It seems like every one I talk to has a different way of doing it and I am fascinated by all the ideas out there.
Please share here how your book club picks its books 😀
Good morning! Wednesday! This is exciting and anxiety causing all at the same time. The slow part of my week is over. Now every evening through Sunday I have something going on. Good stuff – a couple of dinners with friends and a concert… but when I look at it as a whole – it’s a lot. I am now in one day at a time mode 😀
For those of you who have been with me for a long time here, you are probably well aware of our Literary event we had here in Brainerd last fall called Wine and Words. It was an amazing fundraiser for our local Friends group of the library and it was a huge success. For our first year out of the gate we had hoped to have 100 people attend and we had close to 180. We had 5 amazing authors: Sarah Pekkanen, Sandra Brannan,William Kent Krueger, Wendy Webb and Lorna Landvik. It was incredible and we raised more money than we had intended.
So that is good. 🙂
We are set to do this again on August 22nd, 2014. I have already confirmed my wine guy “yeah Mark!!!” to donate all the wine, and I just dropped off the contract with the Arrowwood Lodge yesterday afternoon…. now… I need authors.
I have put a few feelers out, one that reads this blog often (you know who you are!) I would LOVE to have. I am looking for two out-of-state authors who have a few books under their belt and may be a recognizable name – as well as a couple Minnesota authors. We offer our authors an amazing room at the Lodge (seriously talk to any of them from last year – the rooms are incredible!) as well as their dinner. Myself and my co-chair of the event stay over night at the Lodge as well so we can spend as much time as we can with the authors. I am saying this out loud here hoping that if anyone has a connection, idea, or suggestion – either put it in the comments here or email me at journeythroughbooks@gmail.com.
We are going to have 200 people this year. I know this because we feel we will sell out and that is about all that room can hold comfortably with the silent auction and the wine guy (*waves to Mark again!*)
I think it would be amazing if I could find amazing authors through the help of my readership here. Feel free to pass the word on. 🙂 I would love to have the authors planned and in place by March.
Much like Downton Abbey, Longbourn gives us a look at what happens downstairs in the kitchens, and maids and footman’s quarters of the Bennet household (the Bennet’s of Pride and Prejudice). From the housemaids Sarah and Polly, to the Housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to the mysterious and handsome new footman named James Smith, there is just as much emotion and drama going on below the stairs as there is above.
In a modern world of many books taking a turn at the Pride and Prejudice classic (how can we ever forget Pride and Prejudice and Zombies???), it is almost with a sign of relief that I entered into this audio book knowing that I was entering the Bennet household zombie, vampire, and sea monster free.
As a big fan of the Downton Abbey Series (insert *sigh* here) and seeing many positive things said about the book, I eagerly downloaded this one to my phone. I am, as many are, fascinated that we as a society are not only intrigued with the rich and famous of the world, but also with the goings on of those who work for them. It is like a whole new era of potential rewriting.
Narrator Emma Fielding executed a wonderful flow to the book. Her voice was smooth and engaging.
Overall, I am going to be in the minority on this one. Perhaps my feelings are based on the fact that I have never read Pride and Prejudice in its entirety (I know, I know.. put the torched down! I am working on it!) I found Longbourn to be a bit drawn out and not as action packed as I had hoped – instead it was more of a slowly drawn out romance read, strongly leaning on a few main characters instead of the household. Romance reads have never been my thing. Longbourn does have its moments. My favorites are when the staff engage with the characters we know from Pride and Prejudice. I am sure if I had read P & P I would have connected more with the happenings.
I may have chosen the wrong time to listen to it, my mind tended to wander during the audio and it did not hold me for whatever reason. In this case, it may have served better to have read the book.
I do, as I mentioned, realize I am in the minority on this one, and as I do in any review that was not as favorable as I had intended, I offer to you reviews from bloggers I trust who had other opinions on Longbourn:
Good morning and happy Tuesday! Today is my first day back to work for the week and I am ready. It was fun having an extra day off but really…. I need to get moving 😀
Two things this morning – one is that Gautami Tripathi from India and from the blog Everything Distils Into Reading, sent in her picture of her book of the year yesterday and here it is:
If you have never checked out her blog, you should. I enjoy reading her posts. 😀
Secondly… and reason for the CREEPY title of this post, did you see I posted my review last night of Flowers In The Attic? A re-read for me probably from 25+ years ago. It was a fun adventure back into the attic.
I was sharing this read synopsis with a friend I had lunch with over the weekend. She had not ever read the book and I was sharing a few details that included the Grandmother calling the children something close to Devils Spawn but not quite. This led to me saying it in a very creepy voice over and over…. “Devils Spawn”. Then…. I thought it must be part of the post…
Well, it didn’t make the post, but I thought maybe it could make the morning meandering recap because if you have read the book (and even if you have not) – the grandparents are a few sandwiches short of a picnic….. awful people.
Nicknamed the Dresden Dolls for their fair complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes; Chris (14(, Cathy (12), and the twins Cory and Carrie (3), are adored by all who see them. When it comes to their parents, also tall, and gorgeous with that same blond hair and blue eyes they look like something out on a movie set.
Then one day a horrible accident rips through the family shattering their happiness. Their mother, who had no work skills outside of taking care of her children and home, is forced to do the unthinkable and ask her extremely wealthy parents for help. The older children soon learn that their mother had committed an unthinkable sin in the eyes of her father and he had disowned her years ago. While she works hard to restore her relationship with her father and be put back in his will, he must not know about the children. The children are placed in an upstairs bedroom that adjoins the attic out of the eyes of the servants and her father and asked to remain there for a few days while things are settled. The only one who knows they are there besides their mother is the grandmother who brings them food once every morning to last for the day.
But days tend to turn into weeks and weeks to months as the four children wait for the day they will be released from the room and given all the riches their mother has promised would come if only they were patient. Yet as the months turn in to years, and their mothers visits are less and less, the children, who in some cases are no longer children, realize they have only themselves to rely on for survival.
I read Flowers In The Attic back in probably my early teens. Originally released in 1979 I recall this book as being exciting and V C Andrews probably one of the few authors at the time that you could consider YA reading and that to a reader of my age at the time was something awesome.
When I agreed to review this book for the upcoming release of the Lifetime movie on January 18th, I was excited to revisit this story line. It is amazing what a difference a read can make from the eyes of a teenager, to reading it again as an adult.
In recent discussions with friends about the book, we laughed about how we loved the book as teens and how we thought it was some of todays YA that gets carried away with subjects that are a little heavy on the partying or the drug use considering the age of the reader the book is meant for…. however a little recap of Flowers In The Attic woke us up. In the early 80’s we were reading V C Andrews take on children being locked in an attic during a peek time of adolescence and definitely – although I dont think I thought too hard on it in my teens, a brother and sister that become way too close due to the circumstances they are held in.
The book, caught me again. At first I wasn’t sure in those first pages if I could bring back the feelings I had the first time I read through this one. Yet as I was caught up in the story line of bad parenting 101 coming down the generation pipeline I found myself reading late into the night wanting to know once again, how would they survive, what would happen to the twins, how did they stay sane confined to a room…. it was like reading it again for the first time.
I think perhaps this time, as a parent, my blood boiled a little more at the treatment of the children then it did all those years ago. Although I started out planning to read this book and leaving it at that, after finishing this one last night I know I will be searching out Petals In The Wind. Who knew that V C Andrews was the master of cliff hangers that make you have to read the next book in the series, just as well as many of our popular authors of today. Truly V C Andrews could still stand among the best of them.
Save the date! Mark your calendars for January 18th and the Lifetime premiere of Flowers In The Attic starring Heather Graham.
Did you know….
Flowers In The Attic (not surprisingly) hit the banned books list many times due to topics of incest?
There once were rumors that the book is part non fiction base on a situation of a relative to V C Andrews where a boy and his siblings were locked in an attic in order to ensure an inheritance.
Flowers In The Attic was my first book of 2014This book was mainly set in Virginia, where the grandparents home was.
Hey there! Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!
I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!
A pretty decent week – not for reading, no I have yet to finish a book in 2014, but for ringing in a New Year with friends, and running my first 5K of the year, I feel accomplished. 🙂 Here is what I did post this week:
For this week, I am still finishing up on the books I posted last week, I hope to start:
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical – most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent – and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don’s Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie – and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.
I want to post books as well but the truth is I have three I am working on this week, the same ones I mentioned last week so I am going to leave it at that. 🙂
I would love to know what you are reading this first week of January! Please add your What Are You Reading post below where it says click her.
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While doing a little blog hopping yesterday I stumbled across this idea called One Little Word. I love the idea of calling a word your own for a year, a word that will be your mantra, the word that you will apply to your life for a year.
While LOVING the idea… picking the word was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. After all… I have to live with it. I tossed around the idea of “motivated”, and “Thrive” …. and then finally after looking at the list and the definition of the words that didn’t quite fit, it came to me before I seen it…
Embrace.
1em·brace
verb\im-ˈbrās\
: to hold someone in your arms as a way of expressing love or friendship
: to accept (something or someone) readily or gladly
: to use (an opportunity) eagerly
I prefer the verb version as to the noun. I am thinking more of this as accept (which was possibly going to be the word but I like embrace better.
And this is really what I mean:
Embrace everything. I like that. There was a time when I used to say no thank you a lot. A lot. Friends would invite me to go do things, weekend trips, movies, etc, and I would almost always say, “no thank you”. At the time I would use the excuse that I had to be home with the kids, or maybe I didn’t know some of the people going with and the introvert in me didn’t want it to be awkward…
It’s odd to think of that old me now. I am quite the “Yes” girl and if I can say yes, I usually do. I have come to terms that life is too short, too precious to live it on the sidelines watching others live it. The word EMBRACE fits right in with that mind set. I want to embrace new things, I want to challenge myself and them embrace the outcome. I want to wholeheartedly embrace LIFE.
So there it is. I think I am going to find myself a little something at an Etsy shop, or make it myself that says embrace. I love the idea of owning a word for a year. I will embrace the challenges, the goals, my job, my family, my friends, the good and the bad….
Are you ready? What’s your word? If you decide to do this, please go to the original siteand say so, but also… I would love it if you would leave your word here with me too 🙂
Good morning! Welcome to Sunday. Because we are in a cold weather warning I took care of all of my running yesterday. I went to church last night, and have left today open in case it was hard to go anywhere. The Governor of Minnesota closed the schools state-wide for this Monday, the first time that has happened since 1997. While yes it is cold, it does not seem (at least at this time) to be as cold as they were anticipating. I think they were expecting wind chills and maybe that is still to come but as of right now… its pretty mellow out there.
So here is my Sunday update:
Time: 8:51 am
Place: That awesome recliner in the living room. I ♥ the recliner.
Food or drink: I am having a mocha espresso right now, not as tasty as I had hoped. Will be having plain old coffee soon. 🙂
Reading: Flowers In The Attic (page 97), not reading as quickly as I had hoped but then again, really haven’t been home much this week to read. 😀 Also had started Reconstructing Amelia which I put down for the first book of the year (FITA) but hope to get back to that one if not today, then tomorrow.
Watching: We found the first half of Season 4 Walking Dead on tv and we (hubby and I) are super stoked as we have watched all the three previous seasons on DVD and have been hoping to find the first half of season 4 before the second half starts on February 9th.
Cooking: Not sure yet. Navy Son is coming over for dinner tonight. I want it to be tasty but not a lot of work. I think I went soup or chili the last two times he was here so I am trying to get “out of the bowl”
Whats Ahead: A pretty full week actually. Today I am invited to an open house at a friend’s home. I am hoping to make an appearance. Tomorrow morning (Monday) the Friends of the Library are meeting to take down the Christmas decorations at the library and then have our monthly meeting. Wednesday we are working with the students again after the holiday break. Thursday I have dinner plans with my cousins. Friday I am going to meet up with a group of friends for dinner. Saturday we (me and three friends) leave for Fargo where we will be seeing PINK in concert that night, staying over night and coming home on Sunday. Yup…. bust week 😀
So that is what is happening here 😀 Whats on your agenda for today and the upcoming week?
It was book 6, The Half Blood Prince; so much was going on… Sirius had died,the Order of The Phoenix was a mess, and Dumbledore had taken Harry under his protective wing, sharing secrets of Tom Riddle. This is the book where we learn of the Horcrux’s. And this is the book… when Dumbledore dies and my heart breaks a little….forever.
It would take me 8 years before I realized this was my favorite book of the series.
~Sheila
I dont know why but this question has been in my head for a few weeks now and finally has made it to the blog. It is one of those pivotal fiction moments that is embedded in me forever.
I was at the YMCA on the treadmill. I had just read through the whole chapter of Harry and Dumbledore searching for a horcrux and they had just made it back to Hogwarts, Dumbledore being in a weakened state. It is Malfoy who approaches Dumbledore first and Harry is hiding below the staircase where he can see it all as it plays out. Soon Belatrix arrives with her sister and they are shouting at Malfoy to do it, just kill him… but here is where you see that Malfoy is not as evil and dark as he wished he was. It is then that Snape comes up the stairs quietly past Harry and you think that Snape will save the day…. but he doesn’t. He instead kills Dumbledore and the pages become a massive blur of smear as I try to keep reading and understanding believing it must be a joke… it has to be really great magic …. it can’t be….
but it is.
That July day in 2005 I was at the YMCA on a treadmill with tears rolling down my face reading a big hard cover book that was hard to hold on the treadmill but it didn’t matter.
It is amazing that even as I write this I have to pause and take a deep breath because it all comes rushing back.
I write this post because much like the loss of a beloved relative or friend or famous actor, we tend to remember forever where we were when we first heard… first knew… it amazes me that in a really incredible read, that can happen as well.
For you maybe it wasn’t the death of Dumbledore… maybe there was another beloved character out there that even when you think of them today tears can come forward or your heart takes that little extra beat of sorrow.
I would love to know who that character was for you and from what book. Sure, for me there have been others, but Dumbledore was the one that really taught us all lessons (not only the students) through the years of the books leading up to book 6. I still hold his wisdom true today and occasionally quote him the way some would quote Yoda. 😉
Please add in the comments either the answer to the BIG question, where were you when Dumbledore died, or where you were when that character you loved and cherished ceased to be.
*Oh and just in case anyone calls “Spoiler alert” to my description of the death scene…. I am sorry but…. REALLY? I think the statute of limitations on spoilers in a book like this ran out a long time ago. If you have not read this or any of the Harry Potter books you are truly missing out on the books that changed fantasy writing forever.
Happy Saturday! Is it sad that I have been looking forward to this day since last weekend? No work today, no big commitments other than lunch with a friend which will be fun…. Saturdays are my favorite day of the week. 🙂
For Saturday Snapshot today I wanted to post the pictures from the Polar Dash my friend Amy and I ran on January 1st of this year. I could not think of a better way to kick off the year than with something fun and good for me all rolled into one.
Here we are up close pre-run. We had actually just arrived and got out of the car. 🙂
This is at the start. The temp was -6 below zero.
Those that had chosen to run the longer runs – there was a 10K and a 14K option that started earlier than our 5k, were a little frosty.
Of course I dont think any of us were as cold as this guy had to be and he ran the 10K (6.4 miles!)
My number and medal. Since I signed up for the monster series this will by number for the 2014 year with the Ortho runs.
Now before you all say “You sooooo crazy girl!”, know that 5,000 other crazy people ran the Polar Dash with me (including my friends Belinda, Sheila W, Ryan, and April). Yup. 5,0000 crazies…. all together in the same area. 🙂 AND the money raised went to the Shriner s Children’s Hospital. We like that.
Check out what other people are taking pictures of this COLD January morning at the Saturday Snapshot host blog, West Metro Mommy Reads. In Minnesota it is about to get really cold. The wind chill starting late this afternoon and will be 40 to 55 below zero with wind chill through Tuesday. We are in a severe weather warning through the weekend and the Governor has already cancelled school for the entire state on Monday.
Book Journey 