Little Bee

Stacey here. The WORST BLOGGER EVER award should probably go to me since we met back in February, tomorrow is May 1, and I am JUST now blogging about our book. However, I think I redeem myself a little bit by including PICTURES with this post! Yay!

Anyways, the book I chose for us to read was "Little Bee". I don't want to give too much away about it because the main event in the book is pretty much what the entire novel is about! In fact, this is what the back of the book says: "We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this: This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again- the story starts there... Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please doesn't tell them what happens. They magic is in how the story unfolds."

So see? I would love to tell you lots about the book, but the back cover specifically tells me not to... I will say that it is a GREAT book! It's always a little intimidating to start a book that you know NOTHING about, but this one doesn't disappoint. The main character, Little Bee, is a Nigerian refugee living in the United Kingdom. She reconnects with a woman from her past and the story goes from there. As mentioned in the description, they are connected through something that happened in the past. Chris Cleave is the author of the book and did a great job at winding the different cultures and different personalities together. "Little Bee" isn't always an easy read. In fact, there are some parts that are pretty detailed and hard to read. But, there is actually some funny moments to it, too! There's a four-year-old boy named Charlie that provides some good comedic moments - he lives in his Batman suit and refuses to take it off... ever.

Like I said, I can't get into too much detail on the plot, but it's one of those books where you can't help putting yourself in the story and asking "What would I do?" I highly recommend reading it! On a side note, they're making a movie about it and I think Nicole Kidman is going to be in it... Should be good! 

Here are our ratings for this book:

Stacey: 9.25

Allison: 8

Kristin: 8.5

Camille: 7.9

Erin: 8.5

And some fun book club pictures!

Reading little Jase a bed time story, as all good book clubbers should do.

Honorary member for the night.

Why not?

Every book club, we pass our "Reading is Sexy" pin (it is!), as well as the purse that we share!

I thought this picture was too funny not to post...

Read this book!

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Hello readers! Kristin, here, FINALLY writing our first book club blog!

Way back in September 2010, at our annual sleepover in Kaufman, it was my turn to pick the next book - a fact that I remembered as we were bringing our stuff into Mark and Karen's house. Usually I would have spent a few days before book club coming up with the best ideas I could, but with all the other stuff going on with Jen and Sarah in town, it completely slipped my mind that I picked next. After some quick iphone BarnesandNoble.com browsing, I brought 2 suggestions to the table: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Hunger Games. Obviously, the vote went to The Hunger Games. To be clear, we were only required to read the first book of this trilogy. But as you know if you've read it, these books are way too rad to stop at just one. Everyone enjoyed the first one so much that we were all rushing around to find the 2nd and 3rd ones to borrow. (This is where I give a huge shout out to my dear Emily Neuberger, who was willing to loan her copies to some people she'd never even met! We love you!) Since we were enjoying them, we decided to push book club back to December to give everyone time to finish the whole trilogy.

When we finally got together to discuss the trilogy, we were on our annual Christmas outing to Dallas to exchange gifts and have dinner at Margarita Ranch. We spent some time simply discussing what we all liked and didn't like about the story, characters, and writing. Most of us seemed to think that the 2nd and 3rd were not as good as the first, but were still really great (as you'll see reflected in the ratings below). I don't want to get too specific with details of what we talked about, because I want to be spoiler-free for people who still haven't read the series. I'll just include some of the questions we discussed.

- Team Gale or Team Peeta? Why?
- Would Katniss have acted differently if the games weren't televised?
- Why do you think everyone watched the games for over 20 years and never tried to stop them?
- If you were chosen for the games, how would you have acted?
- With the current popularity of reality tv, do you think this could ever happen in America for real?

When we finished our discussion, we wrapped up with our traditional rating of the book ceremony. Since we read a trilogy, we all gave a 1-10 score for  each book individually and then for the trilogy as a whole. Here's how it went down:

Kristin: 10, 10, 10 - 10 (clearly I loved it)
Camille: 9.67, 9.5, 9.5 - 9.5
Erin: 10, 9.5, 9.5 - 10
Stacey: 10, 9, 8 - 10
Allison: 9.75, 9.25, 9 - 9.5

I think it's safe to say we would all highly recommend this series to anyone! Check it out, if you haven't read it. And if you have, post some comments and let us know what you thought!

Stay tuned for next time, when our blogger will be Erin, and our book will be The Maltese Falcon!