Location for Early Bird

While most of us surely wish we were meeting around a pool in Century Village, alas we are not. But nearly just as cool...we'll be meeting at Jeana's place instead of Heather's. (Although, it must be said, we would have enjoyed the trip up north as well, Heather.)

So...November 18th at Jeana's to discuss "Early Bird".

Read on, dear friends, read on.

The Hunger Games

At Amy's House

Thursday October 14th

7:30pm

(Be there or next month we'll put you in a ring to fight to the death!)

Another Schedule Change

There has been another change for November.

The 11th won't work, but everyone in attendance at Shelley's this month thought it would work to push it back a week. So we'll be discussing Early Bird on Thursday, November 18th (location TBA).

Hopefully that night will work for everyone.

Change in Schedule

Heather and I will be swapping months for our books. The changed schedule will be as follows:

OCTOBER 14

HUNGER GAMES

@ AMY'S

NOVEMBER 11

EARLY BIRD

@ HEATHER'S

I hope the swap is okay with everyone. Thanks!

A Tale of Two Cities

Sorry we missed so many of you this month. I hope my early email didn't confuse you. We had a great discussion with all of us having read the novel. We loved it and love Dickens. He is such a great writer. We thought that the characters in the novel we admirable, which is so lacking in today's novels.

Date Change As of August

We did it again: we changed the book group night. So, mark your calendars for the rest of the year. Our book group meetings will be held on

the 2nd THURSDAY of every month.

(The dates listed in the right-hand column have been updated to reflect the change.)

Thank you!

Big Burn

This Wednesday, June 16, 2010 @ 7:30 pm- Melanie's Home

"The Big Burn"

The Big Burn

Hey Book Groupies...there was talk that some would like to up the date of June's get together from the 16th to the 9th. Let me know if this works in your schedule.

Bel Canto

I just cannot get into this book tell me why?????

Is This Thing On?

I'm just checking here...

Does anyone, anywhere, EVER check this blog?

Cause I do. And I feel lonely.

Give a shout out if you do...cause I'm gonna start haranguing people soon.

(Love you all! xoxo)

Amy

Bel Canto

Are you reading it yet?

You should be.

I'm really only posting this to get that horrible picture of my Frankenstein forehead to move down a few inches.

Cheers.

The Help & Caramel Cake

Look at that beautiful caramel cake! Thanks again for the wonderful evening Kim. :)

Sorry for the grainy phone picture...

Let's Get Cookin'

I am officially getting the ball rolling on our Book Group Cookbook. That's right...we have shared so many delicious dishes over the last decade (and then some) that it's high time we put it in print and shared the love!

Gather together your most favorite book group meeting recipes and send them my way. If there are any recipes you're particularly anxious for someone else to share, make a request and we'll make sure it happens.

I'm excited to see what we get...it'll be a delicious trip down memory lane!

Hugs and kisses!

Amy

It's coming!!

Book group is coming up again and I for one can't wait...it is next Wednesday night, March 10th, 7:30pm at Kim's. Can't wait to see everyone!
Kim

Sweet!

For those of you who missed book group last night, I thought I'd share a little taste of what you missed.

1. We all liked the book.
2. Some of us really liked the book.
3. Rosalie is still miffed that we didn't vote for Left to Tell instead.
4. Some of us felt that our lives were already abounding in drama and were glad not to read Left to Tell at this time.
5. Amy's childhood was replete with examples of What Not To Do To Your Siblings.
6. Kim proved that mothers can still embarrass their adult children.
7. Everyone should visit the Distribution Center and check out the new products.
8. Menopause is not fun.
9. Colette needs a new family picture.
10. Some of us are glad that Alan Bradley is writing more Flavia de Luce books (one coming in March).
11. The Venus is a woman's friend (best friend?)
12. There were FAR TOO MANY OF US MISSING!!!!

Hope to see you ALL next month at Kim's house. We'll be discussing The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Top Twenty Books by Amazon

I thought we did an awesome job with our picks this year. Three of ours made the top 20 at Amazon's best for 2009! BTW Rosalie, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is #20! The other two were Big Burn and The Help.

Cutest Blog on the Block

Tiffanie deserves some great appreciation for maintaining out blog. It always looks so good and she changes the background frequently. You'll have to show me how you do this without losing the content.

Tiffanie's Suggestions

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
374 pages

Synopsis: In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival. (adolescent literature)


So Brave, Young and Handsome
by Leif Enger
304 pages

Synopsis: The new novel by Leif Enger, author of the million-copy best seller, Peace Like a River, is a lively, big-hearted redemption tale; an unforgettable, picaresque Western yarn.

In 1915 Minnesota, writer Monte Becket has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives simply with his wife and son until he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale. Plagued by guilt over abandoning his wife two decades ago, Glendon aims to go back West on a quest for absolution. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Monte agrees to travel into Glendon’s past, leaving behind his own family for a journey that will test the depth of his loyalties and morals, and the strength of his resolve. As they flee the relentless ex-Pinkerton who’s been hunting Glendon for years, Monte falls ever further from his family and the law, to be tempered by a fiery adventure from which he may never get home.

With its smooth mix of romanticism and gritty reality, So Brave, Young, and Handsome examines one ordinary man’s determination as he risks everything in order to understand what it’s all worth, and follows an unlikely dream in the hope it will lead him back home.


Child 44
by Tom Rob Smith
528 pages

A propulsive, relentless page-turner.

"There is no crime."

Stalin's Soviet Union strives to be a paradise for its workers, providing for all of their needs. One of its fundamental pillars is that its citizens live free from the fear of ordinary crime and criminals.

But in this society, millions do live in fear . . . of the State. Death is a whisper away. The mere suspicion of ideological disloyalty-owning a book from the decadent West, the wrong word at the wrong time-sends millions of innocents into the Gulags or to their executions. Defending the system from its citizens is the MGB, the State Security Force. And no MGB officer is more courageous, conscientious, or idealistic than Leo Demidov.

A war hero with a beautiful wife, Leo lives in relative luxury in Moscow, even providing a decent apartment for his parents. His only ambition has been to serve his country. For this greater good, he has arrested and interrogated.

Then the impossible happens. A different kind of criminal-a murderer-is on the loose, killing at will. At the same time, Leo finds himself demoted and denounced by his enemies, his world turned upside down, and every belief he's ever held shattered. The only way to save his life and the lives of his family is to uncover this criminal. But in a society that is officially paradise, it's a crime against the State to suggest that a murderer-much less a serial killer-is in their midst. Exiled from his home, with only his wife, Raisa, remaining at his side, Leo must confront the vast resources and reach of the MBG to find and stop a criminal that the State won't admit even exists.

Melanie's Suggestion

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America
by Timothy Egan
324 pages

Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: When Theodore Roosevelt vacated the Oval Office, he left a vast legacy of public lands under the stewardship of the newly created Forest Service. Immediately, political enemies of the nascent conservation movement chipped away at the foundations of the untested agency, lobbying for a return of the land to private interests and development. Then, in 1910, several small wildfires in the Pacific Northwest merge into one massive, swift, and unstoppable blaze, and the Forest Service is pressed into a futile effort to douse the flames. Over 100 firefighters died heroically, galvanizing public opinion in favor of the forests--with unexpected ramifications exposed in today's proliferation of destructive fires. Just as he recounted the Dust Bowl experience in The Worst Hard Time (a National Book Award winner), The Big Burn vividly recreates disaster through the eyes of the men and women who experienced it (though this time without the benefit of first-hand accounts). It's another incredible--and incredibly compelling--feat of historical journalism.

Shelley's Suggestions

Laddie, A True Blue Story
by Gene Stratton-Porter
408 pages

Synopsis: Loosely based on the author's childhood, Laddie is a double tale--the classic poor-boy, rich-girl romance and the story of a child of nature and her idyllic childhood. The narrator, Little Sister, is a girl who lives on a farm with her older siblings. Laddie, the oldest, is a strong influence on her life. As Little Sister grows, she realizes the value of experience in learning about nature. Although schooling and books teach her the names of plants and animals, it is only by being outside and observing her environment that she truly learns. Like Gene Stratton-Porter, Little Sister was not meant for a life indoors. Her joy in life is being with nature, not living and working in indoor confinement. This novel is a good one to read to understand Stratton-Porter's childhood and how it later affected her life and work.



The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
224 pages

Synopsis: "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.


The Good Soldiers
by David Finkel
304 pages

Synopsis: Several meticulously researched and insightful books have explored why the United States went to war in Iraq. Works like Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco and Barton Gellman's Angler have thoroughly examined the hubris, confused thinking, and ever-changing rationales for the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, but no one volume has fully captured the day-to-day grind and lethal reality faced by American troops on the ground in Iraq. Until now.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel, a Washington Post staff writer, spent over a year with an American infantry battalion, known as the 2-16 (whose average age is 19), as they deployed from Fort Riley in Kansas to one of the most dangerous, war-ravaged areas of Baghdad. Carefully detailing the experiences of the 2-16 and its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, Finkel has crafted a wartime account so visceral and so emotionally wrenching that it will leave many readers stunned.