July book drawing on July 1st

Sounds like we have some good suggestions for this next month. Does anyone else have more to add? Feel free to leave a post with your suggestions or add them as a comment to this post. I'm excited to see what it will be.

Lisa - do you want to start an online discussion for our June book?

July Post

I love these two books (yes two, I'm just going with the flow). They are wonderful books with great explorations of varying emotional extremes....

"The Pilot's Wife"-Anita Shreve

"A Bend in the Road"-Nicholas Sparks

Dinner Party

I thought long and hard about my authors and guest so here goes, just go easy on my since it's my first post...

Authors:

1. Patricia Cornwell
2. Tami Hoag
3. Emily Bronte
4. C.S. Lewis
5. J.R.R. Tolkien

Characters:

1. Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

• how could you not want to hear from this man

2. Kay Scarpetta (any Cornwell)

• she is just the most intriguing character, from working with the FBI to the the Chief Medical Examiner, I'd love to hear about different cases she has worked

3. Arwen (The Lord of the Rings)

• choosing to leave her own people to be with her love the future King would entertain any party

4. Hester Pryne (Scarlett Letter)

• the Scarlett S, enough said...

5. Edmond Dante's (The Count of Monte Cristo)

• from being falsely imprisoned, to watching his love married to his best friend and now enemy, to overcoming it all...

July book submission

Thanks for getting us started, Cat! Here is my book submission:

"Mary Modern" by Camille Deangelis

and if we are allowed to have two submissions, here is my second:

"Mutiny on the Bounty: a novel," by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

Alright - let's fill up that jar with suggestions, so don't be shy. You can post as a comment or post as a normal post. To leave a comment, look below this entry and click on the "Comments" link. To leave a post, log in (if you are a member) and click the "new post" link in the top right corner. If you are not a member, leave a comment that you'd like to join and we'll get it situated.

July Book Submission

Here is my July Book Submission.

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780345477248&itm=1

My dad also recommended it, said it was really good. Click on the book title and it will take you to a summary and some reviews of the book.

Okay, if we are going to do two:

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780142001806&itm=1

It's an alternate reality type book, kind of like how 1984 by George Orwell with his Big Brother government, or Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Fictional dinner party

Yesterday, I was checking out another book club for more ideas - grand forks anarchist book club - and they had a fun question I thought about all morning:

If you were hosting a dinner party and could invite 5 writers and 5 fiction characters, who would be invited?

Alright, I'll tell you my answers if you promise to leave a comment telling me yours....

5 writers
1. Daphne Du Maurier
2. Alexandre Dumas
3. Samuel Clements
4. Stephanie Kallos
5. Cornelia Funke

5 fiction characters
1. Captain Jack Aubrey
2. Elphaba
3. Elizabeth Bennet - a must at any imaginary dinner party.
4. Albus Dumbledore
5. Miss Marple

Now it's your turn....

June Book

I am so glad that Lisa suggested and insisted (:D) on this book for the month. It was so cheap that I went and bought it to read. I bought it on a Friday afternoon, started it around lunch Saturday, and finished it late Sat night. While I was reading it, some people asked me about what I was reading, and asked to borrow it from me. I was home sick from church on Sunday, so I read it again to make sure I had everything before lending it out and possibly not getting it back before I left back to Savannah.

Yes, I read it twice in two days. Don't judge me.

I've always loved a good vampire story. Most of the ones these days have lots of inappropriate parts (ie:sex) that really turn me off, but it's a clean love story. It shows that you can have romance without sex.

I am excited that the sequel, New Moon, is out already and the final installment, Eclipse, is due out in Aug/Sept this year. I looked it up on the online library here in Raleigh, and both books are all completly checked out of all the libraries in the entire county.

And Edward, the vampire, is a good character. Definitly in the leagues of Mr. Darcy and Gilbert, like Lisa said.

Read it!

Are you in love yet?

So, I have to know if any of you are in love with Edward yet? One of my favorite things about this book is that I fell in love with the main character :). And of course, I am also in love with people like Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, and Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables, etc, etc. I just wanted to know if Edward has made it onto your list as well ;).

And here it is . . .

Our book for June is Twilight by Stephanie Meyers, and I am so excited for all of you to read it :)!! It is a romance with a twist - consider this: you fall for a vampire who is especially attracted to the scent of your blood. Intriguing, don't you think?

One of the real things that attracted me to this book in the first place was the story behind it. The author, Stephanie Meyer, is a mom just like me, but had an idea that blossomed into a sereies of really well written, exciting, and fun books. To find out more of the story, go to her website - but be careful not to read too much, because she gives away some of the stuff from the book as she tells her story.

June book choice

Alright, since its already June, we are going to go with a book selection from Lisa this month. Normally, Amber draws from our J'aime Lire book club jar, but since we want to give everyone plenty of time to read, let's go with Lisa's suggestion and plan on having our next drawing July 1.

That means you are welcome to start posting suggestions beginning WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, for July's book. I know that isn't very far, but I leave on the 14 and won't return until July 1 and want to make sure my suggestions get included. Sorry, driven by a selfish motive.

Alright.... Now for the book, I'll turn it over for an introduction by Lisa.

"Mirror, Mirror" Discussion Summary

Great discussion for "Mirror, Mirror," ladies! Thanks for all your great thoughts in the comments of our last post. I think most of us agreed that it wasn't our favorite book and wasn't the best retelling of Snow White, but we enjoyed that the author placed the fairytale in a historical period to show how it could have happened.

If anyone else has any more thoughts on the book, feel free to continue sharing. In the mean time - let's move on to our June book!

Discussion Day!

Here are a few reader discussion questions from Maguire's web site to get us going. I'm only posting a few, but you can read them all at: http://www.gregorymaguire.com/books/mirror_guide.html

Questions for Discussion

1. Maguire has said he doesn't want to be known as the writer who retells children's stories for adults. Is Mirror Mirror a retelling of the story of Snow White, or is it something else? Something more than a fairy tale? Something less?

3. ... What does it do to an old tale to slap it into a particular set of decades -- in the instance of Mirror Mirror, the first three decades of the sixteenth century? Is that story at home here?

11. Who is the fairest one of all?

Discussion Wednesday

Yay! It is almost time for our first meeting and discussion.

If you live in Savannah, we will be meeting at Lisa Brown's home at 7:30 p.m. Bring your thoughts on the book and any little treats you would like to share.

Now, since not everyone lives in Savannah AND this is a BLOG we need to discuss the book online, too. On Wednesday at 12 a.m. the book is open for discussion on J'aime Lire. Just leave a post saying whatever you want. Ask questions, leave comments, seek input, etc... Anyone can leave a comment and ANYONE can POST. That's right POST - just make sure you are a signed up member of the blog. Let me know if you're not, but would like to be. It's super easy to get you going.

Alright, so until Wednesday...