Blogger Book Club

So, this is not the Blogger Book club that I tried to start. This is a really fun idea started by Sian! It's almost a book swap in a way. The plan was to send your favorite book to one person in the group. We keep rotating the books around and write a review of each one. Then, the book gets sent on and you get a new one in the mail! I'm so happy to have found this group of bloggers and I can't wait to get more books. I also can't wait to see what everyone thinks of my favorite! I had to pick my second favorite since I didn't want everyone to have to send around Harry Potter :)

Here's my thoughts:

This was a really great book. The premise is the author goes around to the happiest and unhappiest places in the world to find out what the secret to happiness is. My favorite chapters had to be the one where he went to Bhutan and the one where he went to Iceland. The author met a lot of people in his travels that were, what he called, "hedonic refugees". These were people that were born in one place (like America) but now live somewhere else. He said that a lot of them had moments where the traveled somewhere and felt like they belonged there. A feeling that they had been born in the wrong country. This really touched me because I felt the same thing when I went to Scotland. I studied abroad there and as soon as I stepped off the plane, I had this feeling that I was meant to be there. I've traveled a lot and never had that feeling anywhere else. There were a lot of funny parts mixed in with facts and the authors opinions of each place. The only thing I didn't like was the generalizations made about an entire people based on the meeting of a few or just his impressions of one city. Can you really know everything about India by just going to Bangalore? Can you know everything about America by living in Miami? I felt like some of the chapters would have been better if they were more fleshed out.

To summerize, this is a great book and I highly recommend reading it! Head over here to check out what she thought of my book (it was ok apparently) and see what everyone else thought of their books! 

Blogger Book Club - June Review

Hi everyone! I hope some people got to read the Sugar Queen and will be up for a discussion/questions.

I thought this was a light, fun book. Even though the plausibility of this story was lacking (I mean what 20-something person would only leave the house when her mom did?) I thought it was a good read. In my book club discussion, my friend Laura said she thought the characters were a little flat and I have to agree. I wish we could have learned more about each character throughout the story instead of just lightly touching on multiple people. I also wish the author had given a better explanation for why the mom was so terrible. I didn't want to like but maybe we weren't supposed to.

Did anyone else get a chance to read this?

The next book is a book I just finished called The Winter Sea. It wasn't for my book club but I really liked it. I do love everything Scotland but the story was really compelling . It is a historical fiction/romance which is one of my favorite genres second only to mysteries :)

Here is the review!

In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.

Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.

But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her...

Book Review - The Tiger's Wife

One of my favorite days of the month is my book club meeting with my friends. I LOVE to read and read every chance I get so it's really fun to meet up with people who love to do it too. So, I thought I would share with you what we just read, give a little review so you could check out the book for yourself. I am not pretending to be some great book reviewer but I thought I would share my pros and cons of each book so you can see for yourself!

This month, we read The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. This writer is only 25 years old! I couldn't believe it. I really loved this book and let me tell you why. First off, the book is about a young woman named Natalia who lives in a make-believe country that sounds very similar to WWII Russia/Yugoslavia/etc. Natalia grows up to become a doctor just like her beloved grandfather whom much of the story revolves around. The book takes you into the past to hear stories from the point of view of Natalia's grandfather when he was a young man and also when he was a child. You hear stories about the tiger's wife and the deathless man which are two key stories that weave throughout the whole book. You are also in present day with Natalia who crosses the new border to immunize orphans and comes upon a very weird situation when she arrives.

The story beautifully intertwines war and its consequences with fairy tales and legends that people hold on to in difficult times. Each character that is introduced has their own story and background so you are never left wondering what their life was like up to the point they are at right now. Plus, the magical and mystical elements never seem strange or out of place which I think is a great feat. All the characters believe in these superstitions and legends to a different degree. The interesting part is how each reacts when reality and the superstitions collide. Some disregard reason and cling to the legends much to their demise.

I hope you liked my little book review! It's really hard to summarize all that you liked about a book without giving anything away!