Book Club: Catch Up

So while I was gone book club trucked on and we read some really good books.

    The Help was a really good unexpected read for me.  I didn't know how I would feel about reading a book with some dialect in it.  To be honest, I read some reviews prior to starting it and that was one of the complaints.  I learned not to let reviews jade me.  The entire book club really liked this book.  While it is a work of fiction about women in Jackson, Mississippi during the 60's there was some history intertwined throughout the story and you grow to love the 3 women in the story.  It's a story about racism and unexpected friendships.  Several of our group commented how we thought about these women when not reading the book and we wondered what happened to them after the story was over.  That to me is a sign of a good book.  

Being an animal lover, I knew this was going to be a book I loved.  This is told in a series of flashbacks.  Jacob is an old man who is living in a nursing home. A circus sets up outside the nursing home and he starts recalling his days of working as the vet for a struggling circus during the depression.  He travels with the circus on train from city to city tending to the animals the best he can.  Some weeks the food is low, some weeks there is no pay but it's a job for him.  He meets and falls in love with Marlena the equestrian star who is married already.  Rosie the elephant is a stubborn girl who grows to love Jacob and Marlena.  Great characters and a great story.  I thought it was an easy read too.

The book club is reading this one now but I actually read it back in April when I went on a trip.  This was another one that drew me in with it's great characters.  This book is different in that it is written in a series of letters from character to character.  At first it was little difficult to follow but once you got a handle on all the characters it was fun.  It also is a good one to read if you only have short periods of time because the letters are short and it's easy to find a spot to stop.  Coming out of WWII, Juliet is trying to come up with a topic for her next book.  A man she has never met ends up writing her a letter and they hit it off.  She is drawn into his group of friends who live on the island of Guernsey.  She learns of their lives during the war and trying to deal with the Germans who occupied their island during that time.  I was expecting this book to be serious but was pleasantly surprised by how light and easy this was to read.  Good quick read for the end of summer.