I love to read. Its probably favorite thing to do unless its with a book that I just cannot get into. I am a proud member of a book club with three close girlfriends from high school. We have all moved on in our lives over the past 7 years (and writing down 7 years post high school makes me a little sad or adds to my quarter life crisis, which one is winning I'm not sure). Currently we are rather proud to have been so techy as to think of doing an international book club via skype. We meet once a month from Michigan, New Jesery, Texas, and China (we get to be Internationale because of China how cool is that??). We decided to start the club as a way to stay active in each other's lives and get a chance to read a differnt genre each month.
Let me say this has been wonderful and forced me to read genres I just walk right past. Some of our selections so far have been beautiful and captivating and make hours pass in what felt like minutes. Others have been long, a little dry, far fetched, or cheesy and made minutes feel like days.
Let me put a little disclaimer out there: I am not a book critic, my opinion is just my own, but I would love to hear if you agree or disagree or have any book recommendations for me. That's the great thing about books, they make each person react differently
The great book club list so far includes (with some hopefully witty and helpful comments or recommendations separated my genres):
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Best-seller (novel)
I dont think I can say enough good things about this book. I was skeptical, very skeptical about a period piece about afircan american help to wealthy whites in the south in the 1960's, but wow. Stockett knocked it out of the park. She writes from multiple points of view and nails it with all of them. She grew up in the south with "help" in her own home and I think becuase of this persective she truly captures the tensions and emotions whether beasutiful and heartbreaking or ugly and raw. I didnt want this books to end. I took this book babysitting with me and ignored the children I was supposed to be watching. I lugged this hardcover around in my purse to pull our whenever I had a free moment. I rooted to skeeter ,the heroine if you will, but rejoiced for her when things didn't always go as planned. This book with not make minutes feel like hours but will suck you in, make you care and make you want to learn how much of this book is fact and if it is fact, how sad that only 50 years ago this happening in the United States
Action/Adventure
If I could have a re-pick for a genre this would be it. Let me just say when you think around the world in 80 days you get this iconic image of a hot air balloon in your head right? First question after I struggled through the first half and skimmed my way through the second, where was the freaking balloon?!? It would have been much more interesting if there had been a majestic balloon ride instead of an ill throughout plot that frankly could have been over and solved in 80 pages in stead of 180. The dare to circumvent the globe was too quickly suggested and taken up, no one would have overheard a conversation and just abruptly left to spend a fortune on a trip, i don't care how eccentric a character you are. Frankly it just got worse from there but this is defiantly not on my must read list, I am sure there are many other great action adventure books out there that I should have read instead.
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Young Adult
Can't even begin to share my love for this trilogy it will get its own post later on, but I will say GO TEAM PEETA!
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Mystery
For a female writer to be so successful Christie must have had something going for her. That's what I thought going into this book and I was right. It was interesting, pretty faced paced and I did not see the twist at the end. It didn't have me up reading all hours of the night but it provided great entertainment for a cold Sunday afternoon in Michigan. I think i will try out some more of the Poirot novels on my own and see where the inspector takes me next.
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Romance
I am going to start off quiet frank, we picked this book because Zac Efron was on the cover, I kid you night. I am a closet HSM fan and hey if Zefron is in it, it must be great. It wasn't. I didn't see the movie either but if it followed the book then the movie must have been bizarre. Should have talked them into a Nora Roberts Selection for some good ole fashion romance, instead I got spirit ghosts and dead younger brothers. It wasn't awful, I read the whole thing, no skimming, and I did get to state at Zac's face on the cover so C+
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Historical Fiction
I loved this book. But a word of caution, which I did not learn until after reading this book. According to my sister who loves Philippa Gregory, you should read her books in order because they go in chronological order. I would also brush up on Tutor family history before reading. I was all over Wikipedia trying to figure out who was related to who, how many wives did Henry VIII have, and what did he do with all of them. It was interesting to have the viewpoint from a Jewish girl in the dramatic times of lets go be catholic, no lets be Protestant, no you must be catholic again Britain. The plot is good, faced paced, based mostly on true events and you even get a little love story in there which is just delightful. I would highly recommend this book and will be checking out others from this author as well.
· So there is a little peak at what book club has been up to so far. I also want to share some great YA reads because lets face it, i just can't shake that genre but thats for another time.
Happy Reading
Jenny
