Read it

I couldn't put this book down.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory. Yes, it was 660 something pages and yes, it was historical fiction, but it was an amazing read. At least in my opinion. I started it last Saturday when my dear sister JoAnn was here and visiting...I had to have something to take along on her shopping quest to The Yarnery in St. Paul. I learned my lesson from last year when we went to the Yarn Cafe in Maple Grove - quite simply, there is nothing for a non-knitter in a knitting store. So, this time I armed myself with a book so she could shop at her heart's content. We both were happy. Anyway, it was a great read. It chronicles the time of King Henry VIII and his many mistresses, including Mary and Anne Boleyn. It was apalling and intriguing all at the same time. Highly recommend it.

So, I've been in a book club for about 9 months. It's been really fun - I've met some new girls and have had the excuse to have a girl's night out about once a month. When we meet we talk about the book for about, oh...15-30 minutes, depending on the book and our moods. We then generally move on to other topics and dismiss about 2-3 hours later.

Here are the books we've read so far, most of which I highly recommend:

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Scot will tell you I ended up in tears nearly every time I picked it up. It chronicles the lives of women in war torn Afghanistan. It came out after The Kite Runner, which was also amazing. Scot even read both of these books and gave them rave reviews (he never reads fiction, so it was a stretch). But he read The Kite Runner while he was in Afghanistan, so he definitely had a more intimate perspective with the story than most of us. I think all of us in the book club gave this "FIVE" stars.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
Another great read - most of us gave it between 4 and 5 stars. From Publisher's Weekly - "The narrative alternates between the present-day story of Trudy, a history professor at a Minneapolis university collecting oral histories of WWII survivors (both German and Jewish), and that of her aged but once beautiful German mother, Anna, who left her country when she married an American soldier." A powerful and emotional story during the time of Nazi Germany. This book also has a lot of Minnesotan references, so it was interesting from that perspective as well.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Didn't like it at all. Some did. And I know a fair amount of other people who really love this book. I just couldn't buy into most of it - I thought many of the characters were unbelievable...and there was only so much I could read about mating bees...

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
This is probably my favorite up to this point. It was an amazing story, intertwining ghosts, murder, romance...all that good stuff. Great book - we all loved it.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
This was actually one of my picks. Each month, we take turns bringing 3-4 book selections for the rest of the group to decide on. This one won by a narrow margin...and I didn't like it. It was recommended to me by my dear friend Adam and I really, really wanted to like it, but I didn't. And most of the others didn't too. But some loved it. It has a very stream-of-consciousness style of writing to it that I just couldn't embrace. I don't know, it just didn't seem to have much of a point and I thought the author/main character was very immature. Thumbs down on this one.

Three Cups of Tea - One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
Amazing story, but not all that well written in my opinion. It jumped around a lot from present to past tense and it didn't seem to flow all that well. You have to admire this man, though - he basically started from nothing and went on to build schools all over Pakistan. One person can make a difference. But in his quest to save children in another country, I felt that he essentially deserted his own wife and children. Kind of annoying.

Hmm...I think there's been one or two more, but I can't think of them right now. I'll udpate again if I remember. I should probably get off the computer and start our current book...we meet on the 16th, so I don't have much time...hopefully it's a page turner. It's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Rair that Changed America by Erik Larson. It is a true story about the events surrounding the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Looks promising...

Edited to add: I knew I forgot one. An Inconvenient Wife by Megan Chance. Another 4-5 star rating from our club. It follows a high society woman in New York in the late 1800s. Lots of startling content from the standpoint of the treatment of women in that era. Very well written and interesting.