Here is the complete list of books we have read, in the order we read them:
1. The Book of Bright Ideas
2. The City of Ember
3. A Long Way Gone
4. Night
5. The Princess Bride
6. The Pleasure of My Company
7. The Thirteenth Tale
8. The Bell Jar
9. The People of Sparks
10. The Reason for God
11. Escape
12. The Taming of the Shrew
13. The Name of This Book is Secret
14. Sarah's Key
15. Twilight
16. Spirit of the Rainforest
17. The Neverending Story
18. The Year of Living Biblically
19. And Then There Were None
20. Same Kind of Different As Me
21. We
22. A Thousand Splendid Suns
23. Enslaved
24. Shadow of the Wind
25. The Nanny Diaries
26. The Year of Fog
27. Agnes Gray
28. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
29. Mr. Lincoln's Wars
30. The Hunger Games Trilogy
31. The Maltese Falcon
32. Little Bee
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Maltese Falcon
Hello! This is Erin, blogging to you about an hour and a half before we will meet to discuss the book that we picked after this one, so I figured it was about time to post my blog entry!
I knew I was going to have a really hard time picking a book to follow The Hunger Games trilogy, so I didn't even try very hard. I picked three book options that I had picked for earlier book clubs, but were not picked. The choices were White Noise, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and The Maltese Falcon. We ended up with The Maltese Falcon, and I was excited to read one of the books that had made it on to several lists as one of the best mysteries of all time.
We got together in late January to discuss the book. I had set up a "Maltese Falcon Malt Shoppe" dinner for the girls, which really had nothing to do with the book other than "Malt," but I thought it would be fun anyway. We discussed different points of the plot, but focused on the novel's main character, Sam Spade. Sam Spade, detective, and womanizer, seemed pretty consistent throughout the book until the very end. We all agreed that his actions in the final scene were very surprising. We all expected something different from him or a bigger twist, like some of the more modern mysteries we have grown accustomed to. I enjoyed the old, film-noir feel (can you say that for a book?) throughout the whole story. However, overall, I think we were a little disappointed.
Our ratings for the book were:
Stacey: 6.25
Camille: 6.5
Allison: 5
Kristin: 7
Erin: 6.5
I'm curious if our ratings would have been any higher if we hadn't just read one of the best book trilogies of all time right before it. Probably not.
Look for our next blog, which will be written by Stacey about Little Bee!
I knew I was going to have a really hard time picking a book to follow The Hunger Games trilogy, so I didn't even try very hard. I picked three book options that I had picked for earlier book clubs, but were not picked. The choices were White Noise, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and The Maltese Falcon. We ended up with The Maltese Falcon, and I was excited to read one of the books that had made it on to several lists as one of the best mysteries of all time.
We got together in late January to discuss the book. I had set up a "Maltese Falcon Malt Shoppe" dinner for the girls, which really had nothing to do with the book other than "Malt," but I thought it would be fun anyway. We discussed different points of the plot, but focused on the novel's main character, Sam Spade. Sam Spade, detective, and womanizer, seemed pretty consistent throughout the book until the very end. We all agreed that his actions in the final scene were very surprising. We all expected something different from him or a bigger twist, like some of the more modern mysteries we have grown accustomed to. I enjoyed the old, film-noir feel (can you say that for a book?) throughout the whole story. However, overall, I think we were a little disappointed.
Our ratings for the book were:
Stacey: 6.25
Camille: 6.5
Allison: 5
Kristin: 7
Erin: 6.5
I'm curious if our ratings would have been any higher if we hadn't just read one of the best book trilogies of all time right before it. Probably not.
Look for our next blog, which will be written by Stacey about Little Bee!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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!
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!
Friday, September 24, 2010
We have a blog!
The day has finally come. Our book club, the Yet-to-be-Named Book Club, has a blog! The first post will come from Kristin in October... Stay tuned!
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