Sunday Salon, Bloggy Book Club and All Girls Book Club Combo

I read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen for this month's Bloggy Book Club and for the first ever...All Girls Book Club, which is a book club that meets once a month. While I have loved blogging for Sunday Salon and for Bloggy Book Club and I love reading the comments of fellow reading enthusiasts on this blog and others...it was very gratifying to hear every one's opinion about this book in "real time"!

Water for Elephants was a great read...I know that I do write that phrase many times ...I am not a critic...I enjoy reading a story and I am led easily into it. I take the story for what it is...

In the Authors Notes in the back of the book, Sara Gruen writes that the idea of this book came about unexpectedly while researching for an entirely different book. The Chicago Tribune ran an article on Edward J Kelty, a photographer who followed traveling circuses around America in the 1920's and 1930's. The photograph that was included fascinated her so much she began researching Circuses and had abandoned her first idea for a book entirely instead deciding to write about the train circuses.

This is a story about a young man and his loss of both his parent's during the Depression and his adventure of running away with the circus. Sara Gruen contrasts the world of a showman's glamor and equestrian pageantry with the senseless cruelty of a sleazy sideshow.
This is also the story of an old man and his aged memories and his real fear of losing control of his mind and his life...and those memories he holds so dear.

The All Girls Book Club met and discussed this book at length and all of us either liked or loved this book very much! It is a great historical fiction and I liked it very much!
We decided that we will all go to the movie that is being made out of this book starring Reese Witherspoon, Sean Penn and Robert Pattinson

Sunday Salon...Read Along

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a great book that I am re-reading ...The subtitle of this book is How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
I enjoyed this book when I first read it and reading again at a new place in my life has been rewarding for me. I love to watch people and how they respond to one another...this book will make you see those interchanges in a new light! Change is inevitable but it is human nature for most of us to not respond favorably when we feel it is happening.

Because I like driving myself somewhat crazy and I just plain love to read...I am reading three other books right now...all good!
I am missing a great Sunday School class today because I am working but the book we are reading for that class, and while I am only on the second chapter it has been very interesting! It is by Paul F. Knitter and it is called Without Buddha I could not be a Christian.
It's probably an intriguing title to Christians and to Buddhists but I have found it to be sensitively written and very thought provoking!

I am reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen for Blogging book Club this month and for my brand-new-no-name-yet-in-real-life-thank-God-I-have-it-book-club!
I do like it and I will share more later in the month!

The fourth book I am just finishing up is a must-have for any young woman leaving college or as I am, any woman reentering the work force. It is Cathie Black's Basic Black...this book is terrific and has given me just the pep-talk I needed!

I am off to work today and I am actually happy to as I will be at the Florida Fairgrounds working at a booth for work ...which is fun for me!
Happy Sunday and Happy Reading!

Bloggy Book Club...so late!

When last we left our sweet heroine she said something about reading The Lost Symbol for Bloggy Book Club and that was way back in November...

Well, she ...uh, I did! I just didn't blog about it!

So...Bloggy Book Club for November was The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and I did enjoy it with some small reservations.

From the front cover: When Langdon's beloved mentor, Peter Solomon- a prominent Mason and philanthropist- is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and-never-before-seen-locations- all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

Sounds good....doesn't it? It was! I enjoyed it because of the interesting, historical and mysterious plot but this is my third time reading about Robert Langdon's experiences and frankly it read a little formula-like and became very predictable for me and that was disappointing. Even though the story is somewhat different...you basically know who the "bad" guy is and what is going to happen, because it is a very similar story line in all three books! This was an interesting storyline about The Masons and I did find that part of it intriguing.

But, the most annoying part for me is that while telling the story Dan Brown chooses to only honor some of Robert Langdon's past...he always has these characters who appear who are old dear friends who weren't mentioned in his past books. You then find recent characters you just read about in the last books aren't mentioned in the new book, which would be fine if he didn't reference events that occurred in the past book. It annoyed me that the author mentioned details from the last books and then doesn't mention anymore about any of the "dear friends" from the other books! It seems odd for his character to have these relationships that don't carry over to the other books.
This may not bother others...just me but it did distract me from an otherwise great storyline!

It is a great historical, fiction who-done-it?

For Bloggy Book Club in January we are reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Join in by blogging Sunday, January 31, 2010... Happy Reading!