Book Club

[beckyb1012]

The Museum Of Ordinary People, by Mike Gayle;   Jess as lost her Mother and now it is time to clear out her home.  There is no room in her own home that she shares with her boyfriend and his particular ways and style.  Jess does not want to just throw away the set of encyclopedias given to her as a child her mother worked so hard to buy.  In the process of putting them in a storage unit Jess stumbles on tons of items just sitting in a room.  The former but now deceased owner of the storage company also cleared homes for loved ones of their dearly departed.  Many items he could not bring himself to toss so there began the collection.  Jess as always wanted to work in a museum so she convinces the new owner of the storage unit to let her turn this into a museum for people to visit.  Families come but so do people not wanting to throw something in the dumpster when it could lovingly displayed on a shelf. New items are taken in and the displays are rotated.  Anything and everything that was once a part of someone's life that meant nothing to anyone else but lives on for the world to view.

[teganslaw]

Judaline, "The Only One Left" is fiction. A woman becomes the caretaker for an invalid in her 70's, who was accused many years ago of murdering her parents and sister. She was found not guilty of the crime, but there is still doubt as to her innocence. 

The story takes place in an old mansion in Maine, and has a gothic type atmosphere. 

[HB glamma]

Struggling with Tom Lake, author Ann Patchett.
I’ve enjoyed her other books but find this one slow and kind of a boring story.
I also didn’t finish reading Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
I don’t know if I’m that hard to please or if books just aren’t as good as they used to be?! Been an avid reader my whole life.

[smoochy]

Just started Circling the Sun by Paula McClain. So far so good. Its about a young British woman who is raised in Africa and becomes a well known aviator. Set in the 1920s and 30s. I enjoy historical fiction. Will report back after I finish

[Carolina925]

Oh my goodness, smack dab in the middle of The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, the story about the dial painters for clock dials that were painted with radium in the early 1900s. It's not a book I'd have ever chosen but a friend suggested it so I gave it a try. It's about a time in our history before workers compensation agency and when anything a woman mentioned healthwise was written off as "women's issues". I know women's rights were virtually nonexistent during that period but it's chilling to read about things that went on. So far, this is a definite good and informative read. A Google search shows that it's been made into a movie on Netflix although I've not researched that yet. The movie reviews weren't all that good.

[smoky22]

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@smoochy wrote:

Just started Circling the Sun by Paula McClain. So far so good. Its about a young British woman who is raised in Africa and becomes a well known aviator. Set in the 1920s and 30s. I enjoy historical fiction. Will report back after I finish

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@smoochy  I enjoyed Circling The Sun, the fictional story of Beryl Markham.  And then I read West With The Night, actually written by Beryl Markham and I enjoyed that more.  Paula McClain is s good writer of historical fiction, but the real story was more intriguing to me. 

[mildoo]

Paua McClain is a very good writer of historical fiction.  THE  PARIS WIFE is another good book of hers, about Hadley Richardson ( she was Hemingway's first wife).  

CIRCLING THE SUN is very good.  Several years ago, it was my selection to the book club that I belong to and one of the members who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon told me that was the best book our club had read (up until that time, anyway).  I felt so good.

Hope you enjoy it.

[Judaline]

I think a lot of you have read Nancy E. Turner's, These is My Words. It was recommended to me right here, quite a few years ago. I read all of her books and now I see two years ago she wrote a sequel to These is My Words. I'm about to delve into it but to summarize it is beyond me. "Words" is about the west. Here's a short summary-

"These Is My Words begins with Sarah Prine's family pulling up stakes and traveling toward a new home in the early 1880s. Deciding to record the events of her life in a diary, Sarah takes us step-by-step through the real tragedies of life on a frontier but also through the triumphs that make life bearable. Sarah is a tough young woman who is a sharpshooter, both with a rifle and her spirit. Young and impressionable, she finds out that people and events are not always what they seem and she makes plenty of mistakes along the way."

I didn't say anymore because it tells a little too much. Hope y'all read it who haven't. It's not my style at all but I loved it. Now I have the sequel. Light Changes Everything.

[Epicurean]

Just finished re-reading the first two of four of Eugenia Prices Savannah series.love these books. Next to read is a book  of short stories by Joe Hill,who in case you may not know is Stephen Kings son. He writes very much like his father.

[Alter Ego]

I finished listening to the memoir EDUCATED by Tara Westover. This is an older book that had been sitting in my Audible library and just “read” now for book club. I thought it went a little long and repetitive at the end. This is the book discussing her childhood growing up in a very strict religious, anti-government household and going on to study at Harvard and Cambridg, becoming estranged from half her family.

Recently, Audible has started to automatically select my next book for me from what I have downloaded. This time it’s a Riley Sager that’s a couple months old. So far, so good.