She Said. Read. Recommends.

Remember that cool sidebar thing-a-majig we have for anyone to add other books (read: non book club books) that they have read and would recommend... well I added one. But I just thought I would type up a post about it just in case people don't look at the sidebar. Anyway... here it is! :) Great to see most of you last night. I had a really good time.

I read this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Pretty science fictiony but still very entertaining. It's the first in the series and the only book of the series out at this time. Also, I guess it's going to be made into a movie... so no time like the present to read it before you have all the movie people jumping on the band wagon. :) LOL!

November Book Club Book

I have chosen Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford for the book club read for November.  It's an amazing book!  I'm so excited to host book club next month.  I've got some exciting things planned!  If the library doesn't have any copies you can get them on Amazon for less then $6.00.  It's worth buying this book.  You'll want it for your library. 


In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.
Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart. 

October's Book: Eat Pray Love

Hi ladies, Sam here. So Tami had surgery on both her feet, and while she can walk - sorta - she is not quite up to having us all over. So we decided to trade months. So I will be hosting October, and she will host November. AND I was so proud of myself, because I already knew what book I wanted to read! So I spoke with Melissa to make sure we had the months right, and then started reading my book. This morning I was thinking how proud everyone would be that I picked a book so quickly, and that it was not a self help book. And then it donned on me - so far only three of us even know what the book was!! I swear I DO have a brain, and some day I may even USE it!! Oh wow!! Anyway, sorry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, here is the book. And I have a copy and should probably finish sometime early next week, so if someone wants to borrow it, just let me know. Thanks!

Sam

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls “Anne Lamott’s hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister”) is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.