January's Book

So my very good friend Hilary is supposedly a part of this book club, but right now she is busy working and being pregnant... so we will need to pick a new book without her.

Does anyone have any books they are dying to read?

Here are my suggestions... let me know if you like any of them.

-Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
-Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (I think Ella just read this)
-The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &Clay by Michael Chabon
-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
-Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
-The Swiss Famly Robinson by Johann David Wyss

All of these are on my nightstand, so any of them will make me happy... so you decide... and quickly so we can start reading!

I hope you all are having a great New Years Eve!!!! I hope 2013 is a great year for all!

God Bless Us, Every One!!!

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity and the time to read this book during this Christmas/Holiday season. Now I didn't reach my goal of finishing it before Christmas... Stacey you are awesome for doing so... but I still loved reading it. (It also gave me hope that someday my brain will be smart enough to understand a full Dickens novel!)

I love the simple message of this book... that we can change. That nothing is fully set in stone, not even our personalities. We can and should continually improve to be the best self that we can be that will bless ourselves and all those we come into contact with.

Now I wanted to be smart and try and think of great discussion questions... well I'm not very original, so I googled it (or I might acutally have used bing...) and this is some of what it came up with:

1. Had you read A Christmas Carol before? Did anything surprise you in the book?
2. This is a very short book, and not the only Christmas story that Dickens wrote. Why do you think that it and its message endured and became such a part of English-speaking culture?
3. Did you have a favorite part? What image or line or scene sticks with you the most, if one does?
4. How would you characterize Bob Cratchit’s attitude toward Scrooge? Scrooge’s attitude toward Cratchit? Besides literal heat, what might be the symbolism of the tiny coal fire that Cratchit has in the office?
5. How is Scrooge affected by seeing the Cratchit family?
6. What is the lesson Scrooge learns when the ghost shows him the Cratchit family after Tim’s death? Why is this lesson needed when Scrooge’s attitude has already changed so much?
7. Is Scrooge’s transformation believable?

Now I want to have an actual discussion so I'm not sure if I should answer the questions on my own or wait to see what other people think or write???

***On a side note and final note, here are some of the quotes or lines of the characters that really stuck with me:

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you." p.23

"The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever." p.28

"I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child and yet to have been madn enough to know its value." p.53

"...For it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too..." p.59

"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that, while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor." p.81

"...For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas..." p.85

"Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own, to make amends in!" p.115

Alright so I actually want to see what everyone else thinks before I share my own opinion. I hope more than Stacey and myself read... but if not, I still think it will be an awesome conversation!

So start talking/typing!

A Thought

Okay, so I haven't been the best at keeping this book club going month to month. In my excuse I started a new job that is kind of stressful and taking all of my time. But I promise to do better.

Now I know December has already started, and I know it isn't my month to choose, but I am not sure if Beckah is really following much in the book club so I'm going to make a suggestion, and you can do with it what you will.

It is December and everyone is all Christmas focused, as we should be. So I thought a fun book to read this month would be "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. I have never read it and always wanted to, so that is what I will be reading in Decemeber. Please feel free to read along and we can talk about it and all the memories and thoughts we have about the book and all its film adaptations.

Let me know what you think?

PS... I going to try and finish this before Christmas so that we can talk about our Christmas and our reading!