blueberry pie (:

sorry.. i keep doing this but I have a suggestion for a book for when when we get back into school. Ann Hood's most recent novel, The Knitting Circle, was a FABULOUS book. She is a local author, living in Providence. Perhaps we could ask her to come in for a brown bag lunch? She might not... but its worth a shot... Feedback?

cherry pie

uhh sorry that didn't really make any sense... when do we need to finish the book by would have been more straight forward... sorry :)

apple pie (:

mrs. mac.. do you suppose there might be a time when the meeting is so we have an idea of when the reading of the book is? thanksss

Hi everybody,
Let's get this blog moving. Emily managed to get in, and Dylan Marshall has left several comments about postings. At the last book club meeting we decided to try to continue sharing ideas about our reading through the summer. A book I suggested you all might like to read is Heart On My Sleeve, by Ellen Wittlinger. It will be considered the June selection, but we won't necessarily meet to discuss it. Write in to the blog about it when you have finished. I will come up with some suggestions to post in June or July. You can read my suggestions and talk about them, or talk about any titles you find interesting during your summer reading. If people are interested, we could possibly meet once over the summer to share ideas for next year. Maybe at Panera, or some place like that. Just let me know your thoughts about it!

mangoes.

woohoo it worked! what's our next book?

Last Book Club of the Year: What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones

I am looking forward to our last Book Club meeting of the year. What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones, is a great book, and I know that you have all enjoyed it, because many of you have stopped in to the library to tell me so. I hope that I will see you at the meeting tomorrow. I think that what I like best about the book is the format. I really like the verse novels. I think it is so unique that a writer can convey a whole story, with plot, characters, theme, etc. with such a small number of words. When I taught English I would always explain how I thought poetry was the coolest form of literature, because so much thought and emotion was conveyed in so few words, while novelists use so many to convey their stories. Obviously, the verse novel is, to use the vernacular, "way cool."

Next book?

Greetings!

I suppose it is too late in the year to get another book started? Maybe you could post some interesting choices for summer reading?

I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and then found out it won the Pulitzer. I plan to read it again. It's a book that haunts you with its images. A little boy and his father try to survive in a world that's been destroyed by nuclear holocaust. And despite all the horrors of a place without a soul, there is goodness here.

Amazing.

I have wanted to read a book by Julia Alvarez for a long time now. I am so glad that I finally have. I just loved her style. I thought that In The Time of the Butterflies was a great book. I felt as though I really knew the sisters and feared for their lives. I found myself wanting to tell them to turn back when they went off for that last time. I wanted someone to help them when they were overtaken by the thugs who would kill them. Their voices came through so loud and clear in her writing. I hope that the rest of you enjoyed the book as well. I know it has a somewhat difficult narrative structure, and hopefully you were willing to persevere and get through it. Let me know what you thought about the book.

March by Geraldine Brooks

Greetings!

Since I just finished a book, I thought I'd write about it and possibly jumpstart this book blog. I'm not sure if any students have read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, but many of you might have seen the movie that came out a few years ago. Anyway, this book is about the father in that novel who has left Marmee and her four "little women" at home to join the Union army during the Civil War. He's an absent character in the novel/movie, but the women are definitely affected by his absence.

This novel looks at the character's reasons for leaving his quiet corner of Massachusetts (Concord) and living his ideals about ending slavery in the South. He's actually much too old to fight, but he goes as a minister to the MA troops. It follows his experiences as he deals with the horror of war, and how it affects his beliefs about his own idealism and truths about who he thought he was. It also includes letters home to his wife and girls and pulls in bits and pieces from the lives of the family that occurred in Little Women.

I liked the book, with its many references to actual people/events of the time (Nat Turner, Thoreau and Emerson and Hawthorne, Lincoln and the Underground Railroad). It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and I'm not sure if I agree that it deserves that high honor, but it was still a good story. Brooks writes it in the style of 19th century writers, so some of the vocabulary is out there, but you don't have to pull out the dictionary to figure out what is going on. If you like historical fiction or if you remember Little Women, you might want to give this book a try.