Book Club | Book Chatter

Yesterday, my book club met to select our reading list for the year. We each get to pitch two books and then we go through a couple of rounds of voting to narrow it down to twelve or thirteen books. But yesterday, we didn’t have a lot of people show and some people only pitched one book so we only had to eliminate three books to get our list down to twelve.

The three that were eliminated:

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The Cuckoo’s Calling by J.K. Rowling
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

It was a great meeting. There was food and lots of good book talk plus the day was so pretty so we ended up outside.

The final list is below, and I will also post it under the Book Club tab at the top of the page. I also list the previous lists there in case you are curious.

Final List: (Begins with March since we already had Jan & Feb chosen from last year, see full list on Book Club tab)

MAR – Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
APR – Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
MAY – And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
JUN – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
JUL – The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
AUG – Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick
SEP – Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
OCT – I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
NOV – Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink
DEC- A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines
JAN – TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
FEB – Havisham by Ronald Frame

I pitched Never Fall Down and Twelve Years a Slave but overall, I think these books will generate plenty of discussion.

As for today, not a lot going on. The sky is a very strange color. It sort of looks like it could rain but there is no chance of it happening according to the weather reports. It makes me want to just hang around the house though, which is perfectly fine by me. Next week, I have a parent meeting for The Girl’s track team, more rehearsals and I need to figure out what to bring to the Super Bowl party we are going to.

What am I reading?

Finishing up The Secret of Raven’s Point and then maybe I’ll start Orfeo by Richard Powers.

What am I cooking?

Nothing special. I might make a chicken stir fry for dinner. Sometimes you just want chicken and rice or something simple and today is one of those days.

What am I watching?

I just watched this week’s American Horror Story. What’s happened to that show? The first season was so brilliant. The second, strange but still watchable. This season is just a blood fest. With them being witches, they are killed and resurrected so many times, I can’t even keep track of who is alive anymore.

I think I need to go back to watching Leave it to Beaver.

Coffee and a Book

It’s Friday!! Thank goodness. The week felt so long to me. Mostly because The Girl came down with a cold. She was sneezy and grumpy and totally out of it and that tends to throw me off my game. But, she’s better now and back to her perky self.

Do any of you read before work? I get to work super early to avoid traffic snarls so I have the luxury of getting a little reading in before I start my day. Typically, I’m walking during this time and the book in question is an audio book but my walking has been non-existent since the break so right now, it’s me sitting in my windowless office with a book and a cup of coffee. It’s kinda like a little reading cave. You’ve got to use your imagination when you never see the light of day.

At some point today, I need to think of some books to pitch for the big book selection meeting on Saturday. The book club that I’m in picks books for the year which tends to work out really well for most of us. But, it’s a big deal. We each get to pitch a book and then vote on it. I really have no idea what to pitch. I came across Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick which looks like it would be a good discussion book, but I’m not sure. Has anyone read it?

The rest of the weekend will be spent looking up recipes for the Super Bowl. For the past. I don’t know, five years, we have not been able to go to a Super Bowl party because the kids were always in a production that weekend. This year, production week begins the following week so we actually get to enjoy the Super Bowl like normal people! I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. So, I plan to make something really killer to take to the party. Did I just say KILLER?