Books

Well, I finally joined a book club appropriately titled "Sh*t girls read." I've always wanted to be in one and now that I have ample time, it works out perfectly. My guess is, it's probably one of the more casual book clubs - there are about 25 girls on the email chain and about 7 of us that show up to the meeting. And out of those 7, maybe 3 of us actually read the book so when we get together, we spend 10% of the time talking about what we read and 90% of the time just catching up, hanging out, and making fun of each other. But that's cool with me. Keeps me motivated to read and I always have plans I look forward to the first Thursday of each month. We've only read two books so far and both have been really good. First, The Nazi Officer's Wife. A true story about this Jewish woman who survived the holocaust. During which, she hid her identity, falsified her papers and married this German man who went to war fighting for the Nazis. One of those incredible stories displaying a person's will to live and making any "struggle" I have, seem laughable. Second, we just finished Shadow of the Wind. A mystery/crime type about this boy who stumbles upon this books that he falls in love with. He tries to find more books and information on the author only to discover that all traces of him and his books have been destroyed dun dun duuuuuuun. It was a really good story and is kinda fun to read about a character's love for books. I recommend and found it to be quite the page turner. Now we are onto By the River of Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho so you know there will be some major introspection/self reflection going on during this one. I wish I could say that I was one of those kids that loooooooved to read growing up. Unfortunately, I can't. Just wasn't really into it. In elementary when you could order books from those magazines, sure I would get a couple Goosebumps books, but generally I would opt for the pages of stickers or puppy posters instead. Yeah, kinda a lame kid was I. And then in high school, I took American Wilderness instead of Honors Humanities because the curriculum included a couple backpacking trips which was awesome but I missed out on a lot of the high school classic reads - Jane Eyre? nope. Of Mice and Men? nope. Lord of the Flies? Nope. A real shame. Whenever I meet a well spoken, overtly intelligent girl, I always assume that they were big readers growing up, and I'm pretty much always right. There is no doubt a clear correlation. Within the last 10 years or so, I've been trying to make up for that though and now I can confidently say, something that had little appeal to me growing up has become a real, genuine love. So...progress I guess.