January 2013 Books

[ClaraB]

I am having trouble putting The Round House down!

Kate

I couldn't put it down either - I ended up staying up past my bedtime last night to finish it. And I woke up thinking about it this morning. Although it's pretty tragic, it isn't a three-hanky kind of story, but a very clear-eyed one (if that makes any sense). I will definitely be checking out Erdrich's other books.

[Goin' Coastal]

I just got back from my book club's discussion of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. If you have never read it, I highly recommend it. Everyone in my book club loved it.

Book Description
Release date: May 30, 2006 | Series: P.S.
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

[Goin' Coastal]

I also finished The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey this week. Another excellent read!

Book Description
Publication Date: November 6, 2012
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

[amarante]

I just got back from my book club's discussion of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. If you have never read it, I highly recommend it. Everyone in my book club loved it.

Book Description
Release date: May 30, 2006 | Series: P.S.
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

This was one of my favorites books as a child and Francie Nolan is every bit the great female heroine that Jo March (I also loved Little Women). I recently re-read it and it stood the test of time as I still loved it.

[rosen]

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

Earlier in this thread I wrote about how much I loved Lupton’s second novel, Afterwards, and was going to check out her first. Well, I got Sister from the library, and as soon as I began reading I realized I’d read it before. Since it is date stamped by the library June 2011 – it wasn’t all that long ago that I’d read it – but since I didn’t write it down, and I couldn’t clearly remember it – I read it again. All I can say is that it was worth the second read. This is a very, very, very good first novel that packs a tremendous emotional wallop.

Bee, who lives and works in NYC, receives a phone call from her mother in London telling her that Bee’s younger sister, Tess, has been missing for four days. Bee flies home in disbelief that Tess would have just taken off w/out telling her. They have always been so close and Tess tells Bee everything. So begins the unraveling of what has happened.

The story of Bee’s search for answers is told in chronological order as Bee writes it all for Tess in one moving, poignant letter – while interspersed is Bee also describing current events.

Lovely, masterful, clever, absorbing, touching... I thought I would have surely written a review on one of these past threads – but I am unable to find one. If you enjoy domestic, gothic, thrillers – or stories about the wondrous bonds of sisters – you will like this literary crime novel.

[KAnn]

Just began The Monk Downstairs last night and was so absorbed in it that I read about 2/3 of the book....it's been out for a number of years now-don't know how or why I missed it!