Literary Junkies November 2013: The Storyteller

1) What are you currently reading? Tell us about it!
Just wrapped up Jodi Picoult's "The Storyteller" and it was an amazing read. The overall story is about a young woman named Sage who comes from a Jewish family but doesn't really connect with her faith. It isn't until she meets an elderly German man does she realize exactly how important her family's history and the Jewish culture is in her identity. It was one book that I didn't guess the ending until it was happening. Such a great read!
Now I've moved onto "The Bone Season" and "The Valley of Amazement." I saw a ton of reviews on "The Bone Season" and how the author is in her early 20's and being compared to J.K. Rowling with a series that may be as popular as Harry Potter. I like the book so far but I don't think it will have the wide set appeal that the Harry Potter series had on a global level. With "The Valley of Amazement," I have been a huge fan of Amy Tan since I read "The Joy Luck Club." I'm incredibly excited to get started on her latest book.

2) How many books have you read this year? Do you set reading goals for yourself?
So far 18. I originally started off with a goal of 30, which may still be attainable but for some reason it got changed to 50 on Goodreads. Not thinking that's quite possibly at the moment but who knows, anything could happen.

3) What do you think are the best and worst book-to-movie/TV show adaptations?
This definitely got me thinking. Earlier this year, there was a series based on the Bible and I thought they did a phenomenal job. I think any person, whether they identified with Christianity or not, could really appreciate how the director and producers put the series together. People were even saying that the show had a hot Jesus. That's Hollywood for ya.

I am always so cautious about going to see book-to-movie adaptations because if I love a book, the movie could just kill it. For example, I love "The Fault in Our Stars" but since I really just adore the characters, I hope that the actors in the upcoming movie will be able to convey them.

4) What is the first line of your favorite book?
This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

5) What's your favorite quote from a book?
Variations of this quote, "Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die" (Herbert Hoover) and "I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in" (George McGovern), have been cycling through my mind the past couple of weeks. It's not my favorite book quote yet, but I'm trying to create a story with this as the main focus. I'm actually really excited about it.


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Literary Junkies 7.0

Had fun chatting with the other Literary Junkies and wanted to share some of the things I'm working on in terms of my little literary world ;)

I finally got my hands on an eBook copy of a Sophie Kinsella book!   

♪ VICTORY DANCE ♫

I absolutely love libraries and not only being able to borrow books by physically visiting a library but also digitally.  I'm such a book nerd about how excited I am about this.  However, I have like a 3-day loan on it so I'm trying to wrap this post up so I can get back to it.  I feel bad for ever judging chick lit because of a few bad samples.  Sophie Kinsella is hilarious and I love the character of Poppy so far!

 

 My three top reads that just fit warm summer days with a cold drink in your hand.

 

I have never finished Gone with the Wind, however the last time I tackled it was a summer years ago.  It's time to read this classic and watch the movie again.  If you're looking to get wrapped up in a summertime romance, consider Rhett Butler for your inspiration. Bloom is a book that I love and I could see myself re-reading this on a warm summer night surrounded by my little family.  Kelle is such a fun writer and blogger.  After you read the book (which I love), check out her blog.  Her posts are family-oriented and I feel like I would love to be a part of her life.  I read The Help during the summertime and you can relate to that down South heat.  It's an amazing book and one that you won't want to put down.  I highly recommend it and it's perfect for the theme of summer.

Three books that I can't wait to read this...since June is basically next week.

I've seen the movie, heard their was a movie, and then there's a blogger.

Can you figure out that riddle? ;)

I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook because I really liked Bradley Cooper and his family dynamic.  I like Jennifer Lawrence a lot and I liked them paired together.  For some reason parts of the movie didn't sit well with me.  I'm hoping that after I read the book it will all come together.

I just found out that The Handmaid's Tale also has a movie made in the early 90s. Oh boy howdy- gotta see it!  Finally, the wonderful Nicole from Three31 sent me a copy of Let's Pretend This Never Happened by blogger Jenny Lawson.  I've heard rave reviews on all three books and I'm excited to read em.

I know that I'm completely obesessed with this book and that it needs to become a movie but it needs to happen! Plus I truly think that Henry Cavill would be an amazing Michael Hosea.  

#gottahappen

I know Nicholas Sparks is coming out with another book in September that differs from his normal writing format and that's incredibly exciting! The man is a genius when it comes to marketing a product because it works and he has one helluva loyal fan base.  I remember a couple years ago saying that I would love to have that type of literary career.  He might not write books of the year but he writes a product that makes people happy.  Can't hate on that.

Literary Junkies: An Online Book Club Guest Post

Taylor, from Pink Heels Pink Truck, is visiting The Simplicity today to tell y'all about a great opportunity to join Literary Junkies.  It's an online book club that I found through a blogger and have met several other bloggers through this awesome opportunity.  If you're looking for ways to connect with other bloggers who love to read or want to join with your swap partner, read on!

Hi fellow book lovers!! I'm Taylor (Pink Heels Pink Truck), co-founder of the Literary Junkies Online Book Club. I'm excited to be here today to tell you all about our online book club!

As I said, I'm one of the co-founders of the Literary Junkies. My partner in crime in this awesomeness is Leslie (By the Porchlight). We both share a huge (like I mean, HUGE) love of books and we got to emailing/chatting back and forth one evening about our love of said books and well, it just turned into "why don't we start an online book club so other book lovers have a place too" and ta-da! The Literary Junkies was born. :)

We have over 50 members currently and are growing! Membership is easy peasy! Just click here, make a request to join our group and the doors will open to you. :) (Well, after we click the little approve button...but don't worry we let everyone in who asks...we just keep it private so we can personally welcome each one of you! Oh and to keep the spammy people out!)

The Literary Junkies meets monthly on Twitter on the 3rd Tuesday of the month under the hashtag #LiteraryJunkies. When we aren't partying it up on twitter, we mingle with each other on our facebook group page. We also host a monthly Literary Junkies link up that falls on the same 3rd Tuesday of the month. This fun linky is, you guessed it, all about books. :)

We are currently reading "Diamond in the Rough: A Memoir" by Shawn Colvin and will be chatting about her book on May 21st. Our next book for our June discussion is "Silver Linings Playbook" by Matthew Quick.

We've got some fun and extremely exciting things (well Leslie and I think so) coming up for all of our members and we would love to have more fellow book lovers join in, so if this sounds like it's your cup of tea...come join us!

Literary Junkies Link-Up

What are you currently reading? Tell us about it!

I enjoy Kelle Hampton's blog and one day she was talking about her book going to its paperback version.  I didn't even realize that Bloom was her book!  I preordered a copy and have enjoyed reading through it and admiring the beautiful photographs.  It's Kelle's motherhood memoir and what it was like for her realizing after she gives birth to her second child that her baby has Down Syndrome.  The reviews of the book have received a lot of heat, but I think it's from critics of her blog.  I definitely plan on doing a review of my experience with reading it.

Let's learn about each others Reading Habits!! 

 Answer the following questions either with a simple answer or with lots of details! Up to you! :)

Amazon or brick and mortar?

I could spend hours in a brick and mortar. I love bookstores.  They are one of my favorite places in this big, wide world.  However, I also have an Amazon Prime account and the prices usually are way stellar than dropping $50+ at Barnes and Noble.  So I'm kind of stuck in-between.

  

Locally owned bookshop or big name chain store?

I love supporting a local business but the thing about Barnes and Noble is that you will always be able to find the book you're looking for there.  My favorite is going to thrift stores and scoring books for only a few bucks.  I currently have a Barnes and Noble membership and even though I shop there frequently, I don't really think the membership is worth it.  It only knocks $1-$2 off of the total.

Bookmark or dog-ear?

I usually use a bookmark (even if it's a piece of junkmail or scrap paper). I'm not a fan of dog-earring books.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?

Usually by random assortment.  I'm sure Ryan has organized them in some way but I could care less, as long as they're out for my amusement.

Keep, throw away, or sell?

Keep! Although my husband would probably be yelling "sell"!

Keep dust jacket or toss it?

Keep! I love keeping books in great quality.

Read with dust jacket or remove it?

I usually keep mine on. I think with the Harry Potter series I removed the dust jackets a few times to make sure they stayed nice but I keep the entire book together.

Short story or novel?

Novel :)

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?

I haven't read these in awhile, although I'm more familiar with collections rather than anthologies.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?

Stop reading when I'm tired. I miss the days that I would read into the wee hours of the morning because I absolutely could not put it down.  Now adult responsibilities call...le sigh

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?

As a hopeless romantic I could go with either ;)  Once Upon a Time for a beautiful fairytale or even dark and stormy night for a bit more sensual of a story.

Buy or borrow?

Either is fine with me but lately I've been buying a lot more books.  I really need to switch it over to "borrow."

New or used?

I love both, especially finding a used copy of a fairly new release. 

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?

Book reviews and recommendation! If I'm a thrift store, you'll find me on my iPhone browsing through my Amazon app to check reviews.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?

Depends on the author and the writing style.  If it can be expanded into a series without it becoming tired, definitely cliffhanger!

Morning, afternoon or nighttime reading?

Nighttime or traveling because it calms me and adds closure for the day as well as helps me to wind down.

Single volume or series?

Kind of the same with the cliffhanger response, it depends on the author and the book content.

Favorite series?

Harry Potter is always a classic but I loved Little House on the Prairie and I really want to tackle Game of Thrones since I love the show.  Of course I can't forget about The Hunger Games and although I enjoyed the first two books in the 50 Shades Trilogy, I couldn't get through the last because of the awful writing.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?

Nowadays I tend to read books off of recommendations or Bestsellers lists, so I'm sure everyone has heard of the books that I read.  I love checking out the recommendations from magazines and supporting budding authors :)

Literary Junkies Linkup

1. What are you currently reading? Tell us about it.

The best answer to this would be a response along the lines of, what am I not reading?  

If you've followed my posts in the past, you know that I am a bookaholic and due to my rigorous training schedule, I haven't been able to read as often as I would like to.  Usually by the time I get home, I'm wiped, but my Goodreads, an overflowing bookshelf, and an Amazon wishlist just itching to adjust to my Kindle contain several items, including:

 

 

 

That's not even a dent in my reading wishlist, but I am so excited to dive into each one :)

 

2. If you could choose any author in the world to write a story based on your life, who would you choose to be the author? Why?

The first author that popped into my head was J.K. Rowling, but I was obsessed with Lemony Snicket's books while growing up.  I think his witticisms and charm would be fun to have in constructing a story written about a young woman in the nuclear weapons field of the Air Force.  That could become really interesting.  Otherwise, I would love to be interviewed by Oprah and she has a a world famous bookclub, so regardless if my story made a book, I'd at least get an Oprah blog post ;)

3. Tell us about your favorite place to read.

As a kid, we had this incredibly comfortable couch and it was the "fancy" couch.  We had a family room in a finished basement, however, the "fancy" couch was my favorite place to read.  Now on my own, I love to read while traveling on a plane.  That's usually when I find the time to actually finish what I started and often times I end up picking a new selection at one of many airport bookstores.  I remember trying to establish an internet connection for my Kindle Fire and it just wasn't working at some airport.  I finally got fed up and bought the paperback at the bookstore.  Although not really a place where I sit down to devour novels, I love bookstores! We have this adorable small bookstore, not too far from where I live and I frequent it often, solely because small bookstores have a certain charm that even places like Barnes and Noble can't capture.  Picking up a book and reading the back cover or the sleeve is a magical experience. 

4. What books would you buy for lovers of a) suspense/mystery, b) chicklit, c) comedy, d) literary fiction, e)nonfiction, f) classics? (You can choose how many of those subcategories you want to talk about.)

Suspense/Mystery 
 
Everyone and their mom is talking about Gone Girl and I actually own it.  I have been dying to read it and with winter exodus, aka winter break, I'm hoping to crack open those pages.  Beeteadubs, I got it used for half price $$ <-- love when that happens :D

Goodreads Summary:
One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around. 

Chicklit

Now I'm not sure if the 50 Shades trilogy technically counts as Chicklit but let's face it, everybody knows about Christian Grey and they're an easy read.  Although it has become a phenom for its more risque elements, though I'd like to preface that by saying that what is usually mentioned in the books is commonplace in any raunchy romance novel, I think it's beneficial for our generation to explore the type of communication Christian Grey uses throughout the books.  Not the whips and sexy jeans type of communication, but he does actively ask for consent for every element of their relationship.  I'm a firm believer that our social construct could really benefit from having communication and consent become major factors on how we teach our children to socialize with each other.  When they grow up, that still carries with them and not to rant too much, but real, in depth communication could probably help alleviate many problems that people have with their relationships today.

Comedy
Now I can't think of any off of the top of my head, but I do own Bossypants, but I haven't read it yet.  I heard there were great reviews on that.

Literary Fiction

  

I read this a long time ago and the book was touching that it made me cry. You fall in love with the characters and their struggles and triumphs.  It makes you appreciate that simplicities in life are not so bad.  I highly recommend this and there's even a movie on it, if you also enjoy movie adaptations.

Summary from Goodreads:

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

 

Nonfiction
 

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade 

I came across this book when I was really young and kind of put it on the back burner until I got older just because I wasn't sure if I could quite appreciate the content.  I graduated from UW in strat comm and gender & women's studies, so I ended up taking a rhetoric of reproductive rights course and my term project was on reproductive rights, I know surprising.  However, this book was a major component of that discussion and how the climate and conversation around reproductive has evolved in some ways but not all.  This book is very good and I highly recommend it.  It really dives into a look at an earlier generation and a topic that wasn't really discussed around them.  It most definitely is not Leave it to Beaver kind of material.

Summary from Goodreads:
A powerful and groundbreaking revelation of the secret history of the 1.5 million women who surrendered children for adoption in the several decades before Roe v. Wade

In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls Who Went Away tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler's groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women's voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail. Today, when the future of the Roe decision and women's reproductive rights stand squarely at the front of a divisive national debate, Fessler brings to the fore a long-overlooked history of single women in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies.
In 2002, Fessler, an adoptee herself, traveled the country interviewing women willing to speak publicly about why they relinquished their children. Researching archival records and the political and social climate of the time, she uncovered a story of three decades of women who, under enormous social and family pressure, were coerced or outright forced to give their babies up for adoption. Fessler deftly describes the impossible position in which these women found themselves: as a sexual revolution heated up in the postwar years, birth control was tightly restricted, and abortion proved prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, a postwar economic boom brought millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. Caught in the middle, single pregnant women were shunned by family and friends, evicted from schools, sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, and often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses, and clergy.

The majority of the women Fessler interviewed have never spoken of their experiences, and most have been haunted by grief and shame their entire adult lives. A searing and important look into a long-overlooked social history, The Girls Who Went Away is their story

Classics  
 
I love The Great Gatsby in all of its sadness and its emphasis on humanity.  It captures the human spirit and how we can be wonderful and cruel, all depending on circumstances.  Leonardo DiCaprio will be playing Gatsby and I am incredibly excited to see how this turns out.

Summary from Goodreads:
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.