Book Journey

I have always loved books and books!  ~ Sheila

Here are two hundred reader-tested answers to the question “What have you read that’s good?”  The Readers’ Choice is the first book to feature titles based on the recommendations of numerous book clubs.  Victoria McMains has collected two hundred favorites of more than seventy reading groups nationwide, ideal for book group members looking for a “good read,” busy people seeking enjoyable books outside the bestseller lists, or anyone who wants to read more but isn’t sure where to start.

Combining her skills as a book reveiwer and a veteran book group member, McMains provides brief, captivating profiles of a diverse mix of fiction and nonfiction.  There are love stories and war stories, fantasy and political intrigue, biography and nature-and much more.  Each profile highlights the unique traits of the book and ends with a few questions for group favorites as well as little-known gems that have been discovered and treasured.  Indexes organize the entries by title and subject matter, helping readers find books that appeal to their interest. For anyone wanting to learn the easy essentials of starting a book club, check out McMains’s introduction.

In My Opinion:

In my reading room I have one shelf dedicated to books such as this one.  They are books that recommend must reads before I die, book club companions, how to organize and run a successful book discussion…. the titles go on and on.  I am thrilled to add this one to that shelf.  The Readers’ Choice is 200 Book Club Favorites that have been the top picks from more than 70 reading groups nationwide.

I couldn’t wait to pop my head into this one and see what other groups are reading and recommending!

It opens to information on how to start a bookclub answering questions as to how often to meet, how big, will you serve food, how will you choose books…  All of this I love to read as even though my group has been meeting wince August of 2001, I am always interested in ways to tweek our discussions so we can get more out of them, with 18 active members now in our group – that tweeking becomes more important.

Here are a few of the book suggestions that were made:

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom(I have to agree, while I didnt read this with my book club, I can see where it would be a greta one to discuss with a group!)

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (this sounds good and uhhhh….. AWKWARD….  I havent read anything by this author yet!)

Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg (I have read Berg but not this particular book)

The Diary of Mattie Spencer by Sandra Dallas (Interesting… I have read this book and several others by this author and while I enjoy the reads, I would not have thought of this to be a top book club pick – it must be that this book reads like a fictional diary and the voice of our main character Mattie is done in a way that makes you want to believe it is non fiction…. )

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (On my shelf… still unread.  A book about a soldier who decides to leave his hospital bed and walk home even as the war rages on…. )

Cleopatra’s Sister by Penelope Lively (Hmmm… I have read Cleopatra’s Dughter….  In The Readers’ Choice this recommendation comes with a warning that it is easy to become a Penelope Lively addict… her book Heat Wave is also in this list of top book club reads)

The English Patient by Michale Ondaatje (would you believe I have not read the book or seen the movie?)

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (Translated from German this is another one sitting on my shelf waiting on….me)

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd (Oh!  Yet another I have not read nor do I own…)

What I have put here in this review is only a tiny sampling of the recommended book club reads.  While I have read probably a little more than a handful of the titles offered, sadly none of them were with my book club.  As our group is so big we tend to stick to newer releases (unless it is classic month) so we are able to find enough copies for everyone without anyone having to work hard to find the book or pay a lot of money.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it as a gift to the reader in your life.  As I read the book descriptions of the ones I was not too familiar with I was finding I wanted to read them, if not with my group then at least for me.

About The Author:

Combining her skills as a book reviewer and a veteran book group member, McMains provides brief, captivating profiles of a diverse mix of fiction and nonfiction. Since 1997, Victoria Golden McMains has chaired the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA). Her popoular “Book Club Favorites” column is published monthly in the Press Democrat, the New York Times–owned daily newspaper serving northern California. Several of her short stories have been publihsed in literary magazines. She lives with her family in Healdsburg, California.

My Amazon Review

I received my review copy of this books from Harper Collins

Just the right read to relax into over a weekend… ~ Sheila

When Ava Nickerson was a child, her mother jokingly betrothed her to a friend’s son, and the contract the parents made has stayed safely buried for years. Now that still-single Ava is closing in on thirty, no one even remembers she was once “engaged” to the Markowitz boy. But when their mother is diagnosed with cancer, Ava’s prodigal little sister Lauren comes home to Los Angeles where she stumbles across the decades-old document.
Frustrated and embarrassed by Ava’s constant lectures about financial responsibility (all because she’s in a little debt. Okay, a lot of debt), Lauren decides to do some sisterly interfering of her own and tracks down her sister’s childhood fiancé. When she finds him, the highly inappropriate, twice-divorced, but incredibly charming Russell Markowitz is all too happy to re-enter the Nickerson sisters’ lives, and always-accountable Ava is forced to consider just how binding a contract really is . . .

In My Opinion:

A light read about two sisters that really did keep me turning the pages.  I enjoyed the sister relationship between Ava and Lauren and found I could relate to each of them in different ways.  While the book is clearly chick lit and the topics are somewhat serious in parts (a mother battling cancer) there were also relationships brewing for each of the sisters.

While Ava was too high strung and work focused we have Lauren who is too fun focused.  Ava’s issues are she takes no personal pride in her appearance and feels as long as she is clean, that is good – where Lauren puts too much into her appearance.  You can probably see where I am going here….

While the book had no wonderful message in it or even really a deep plot… it was enough to keep turning the pages and wanting to know how it was all going to come together.

About Claire:

She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, went to Harvard and moved to LA. (Her name was Claire Scovell for a large part of all that.) She lives in the Pacific Palisades with her husband Rob (who writes for “The Simpsons”), her four kids (Max, Johnny, Annie and Will) and too many pets to keep track of.

I received my review copy from Hachette Book Group

Reading Group Guide

A fictional faith journey that I was glad to be a part of… ~  Sheila

I meet Jesus on the day I get home from the war. I’m on the beach, but I don’t know how I got here. My mind is as dark as the night. . . . I spend the whole night on the beach. But when the sun’s faint light begins to bend around the Earth, I see him. . . . There, coming toward me, out of the light, is a man. . . . Behind the man a faint curtain of light rises to the sky out of the ocean. He wears the light like a robe, though I see he’s dressed like me. Jeans and a T-shirt, no shoes. And that he’s older than I am, a lot older, maybe mid-thirties. He walks right toward me. He walks right into my eyes.

So begins the spellbinding story of Warren Harlan Pease, a young U.S. Army sniper freshly returned from the Iraq War to his native New Hampshire. What follows is a page-turning adventure that is also a powerful meditation on religion and war, love and loss.

The Last Day answers questions and asks many more. Armed with a sniper’s rifle and his deeply held faith, Specialist Pease travels across ideological borders and earns an appreciation for his enemy’s culture and for what connects us all as human beings. “War doesn’t test your faith in Jesus,” Warren comes to realize. “It tests your faith in yourself.” Upon returning home, he spends an entire day with Jesus visiting and contemplating his own life with fresh eyes, and a willing heart. He examines his relationship to those he loves, and grapples with the pain he has been carrying inside since the death of his mother when he was just a boy.

In My Opinion:

Iraq war (or any war really) would not hit my favorite topics in any format, especially in reading.  However, I dipped a cautious eye into this novel and found myself reading it as a memoir.  And it is not a memoir, but a character, not a real person, but Warren Harlan Pease.  And…. I find out …. I like Warren.

I enjoyed the banter back and forth between Warren and Jesus.  The book mainly swirls around the theme of faith and takes us from Warrens life as a young child to his relationships with parents and into the war.  I had moments of tears and moments of laughter as I read.  In some parts of the book the war topic goes over my head but the basic message of the book was interesting and I found the book overall a good read.

I received my ARC from LibraryThing

In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her place in the larger world. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, she was primed for change. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, her three-year-old daughter Maya’s curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Confused and worried about how to handle Dodo’s apparent hold on their daughter, Edelman and her husband made the unlikely choice to take her to Maya healers in Belize, hoping that a shaman might help them banish Dodo—and, as they came to understand, all he represented—from their lives.

An account of how an otherwise mainstream mother and wife finds herself making an extremely unorthodox choice, The Possibility of Everything chronicles the magical week in Central America that transformed Edelman from a person whose past had led her to believe only in the visible and the “proven” to someone open to the idea of larger, unseen forces. This deeply affecting, beautifully written memoir of a family’s emotional journey explores what Edelman and her husband went looking for in the jungle and what they ultimately discovered—as parents, as spouses, and as ordinary people—about the things that possess and destroy, or that can heal us all.

In My Opinion:

Hope describes herself as a “I have to see it to believe it” type of person.  She begins her memoir without having faith in anything  other than the possibility of everything – but not without visual proof.  My belief system is so much in contrast to Hope’s that I hungered to see her know there is more.

Getting deeper into the book, while I enjoyed Hope’s writing style I just had a hard time getting fully into the book.  I tried to place myself in her shoes…. doing whatever I could for my child no matter what.  I  of course would…. yet the direction they go still surprises me.  There are points of this book where I simply have a hard time relating to the authors thoughts.

While Hope Elderman has a way with words,  parts of this book seems to drag out the details and I found myself passing over pages quickly to find the heart of the memoir.   I did enjoy the details about Belize but by the time I finished the book I was still not in agreement with the actions this family took for their daughter.

I have read some wonderful reviews on this book so be sure to check out other opinions.

About The Author:

Most of the year I live outside of Los Angeles with my husband, two daughters, and a growing menagerie of beloved pets. You can also find me every July in Iowa City, where I teach in the summer writing festival and never miss the Johnson County Fair. I’m a New Yorker by birth, a Californian by circumstance, but a Midwesterner at heart.

Here are the rest of the tour stops – be sure to check them out!

Thursday, Dec. 3
Book reviewed & giveaway at Luxury Reading

Friday, Dec. 4
Book reviewed at Readaholic
Guest blogging at As the Pages Turn

Monday, Dec. 7
Interviewed at Blogcritics
Book reviewed at My Reading Room

Tuesday, Dec. 8
Interviewed at The Hot Author Report
Book reviewed at The Life of an Inanimate Flying Object

Wednesday, Dec. 9
Reviewed at Review From Here
Reviewed at Rundpinne

Thursday, Dec. 10
Guest blogging at Blogging Authors
Guest blogging at Carol’s Notebook

Friday, Dec. 11
Book reviewed at A Sea of Books

Monday, Dec. 14
Interview l Chat l Book Giveaway at Pump Up Your Book!

Tuesday, Dec. 15
Book reviewed at Brizmus Blogs Books
Book reviewed and guest blogging at My Book Views

Wednesday, Dec. 16
Book reviewed at Buuklvr81

I received my review copy of this book from Pump Up Your Book Promotion