Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Book Club Tonight


So. Our book was NOT a biography, in keeping with the blog's theme this month, but it was FABULOUS nonetheless! The Book Thief is a must-read. I loved the writing style--almost poetic. The author isn't overly-descriptive; the writing is rather spare and condensed, with metaphoric phrases and lyrical descriptions. I also really loved the way he went about the characterization. For example, I REALLY disliked the mother pretty much throughout the book--and somewhere towards the end I realized I understood her. Didn't like her, but understood her. The author very subtly accomplished that. And! At the end of the book, I liked the mother. I could go on & on. He (author) also draws many parallels that you find yourself discovering along the way. And the last line of the book--oh my. It was beautiful. One of the most perfect finishing sentences of a book I've ever read (and that's saying a lot). I handed the book off to Wendi, so I'm curious about your feedback. What do you think?

Not next month, but soon, my book club is reading this book:
I'll count it as my autobiography, even though I'm not reading it this month. This is going to be a goodie. Maybe I'll read it before our schedule--I'm very excited to dig into it. I saw an interview with this woman on CNN with Glenn Beck and she is POWERFUL. She lives with the knowledge every day that she is on the Muslim radicals' hit list. She has bodyguards. Several attempts have been made on her life. Go look up the book on Amazon & read about it. Wow.

3 comments:

SuperCoolMom said...

Oooooh, both of those sound good. We talked about several that we're going to read:

Next month we're reading The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can by Leslie Householder

I ordered FlyBoys by James Bradley, A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, and The Princess Bride by Myra Immell.

Some of the others on our list for this year are:

The Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson, published 1682 originally

Death comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather

The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw

and I'm insisting that we read one Jane Austin (FYI, all 6 Jane Austin's are going to be on Masterpiece Theatre in the next month. They started Sunday with an excellent new production of Persuasion)

Wendi said...

Just finished The Book Thief yesterday. LOVED IT!

crystal said...

Julia, aka supercoolmom, aka RAD chick:

I'm going to read several of those right along with your squeeky clean book club! Can't wait. But where's the list for the dirty book club?....THAT's the list I REALLY wanna see ;)