Loving Frank

Have you read Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank?  If not, go immediately to the bookstore or Amazon.com and buy it…then go home and start reading it.  I started reading about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair two weeks ago.  But then with the job change and a million other things going on, I didn’t have much leisure reading time.  Well, thanks in part to my June cold and taking way too much daytime Aleve Cold & Sinus, I couldn’t sleep last night.  Instead, I finished the last 300 or so pages.  And it was unbelievable.  Horan writes so beautifully – with perfect attention to detail – she doesn’t go overboard.

That’s all I’m saying.  I’m giving the book to Gabby tomorrow so she can read it and then I’ll reveiw/discuss it.  I can’t wait…that book is seriously historical fiction at its best!

The Shack by Wm. Paul Young

June Book Club isn’t until the end of the month, but I already finished the book…new record!  The Shack, by Wm. Paul Young isn’t like the books I typically read.

My family wasn’t very religious growing up.  I was raised to believe in God, and I do, but other than attending one week of bible camp each summer from kindergarten to fifth grade and going to church occasionally with friends, I never have really been exposed to structured religion.

The Shack starts out with the main character Mack facing a deep depression, the great sadness, over his youngest daughter Missy’s brutal kidnapping and murder.  It’s about three years after it happened, and him and his family (wife Nan who is deeply religious and their four other children) aren’t doing that well.  Then one snowy, icy day, Mack receives a note telling him to meet God in the Shack – which was the place the police found the evidence of Missy’s murder (her body had never been recovered).

Mack, not sure if it was a prank, the killer seeking him out, or somehow God himself, decides he has to go find out.  I won’t ruin the story that follow for you – but basically Mack meets God, Jeasus and the Holy Spirit and through a long process, finally comes to terms with what happened to Missy, his own bad relationship with his father and Missy’s killer himself.

This is written as a true story.  From the transformation of the forest into a magical and heavenly garden where God appears to Mack as a heavy-set black woman to walking on water across a lake with Jesus, it’s all supposed to be told exactly as Mack remembers it.

I’m not going to lie…I have a big problem beileive all of it.  It’s magical and fantasy-like…I guess maybe I’m more of a realist.  I do believe the underlying themes of the book:  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit love you and area always with you and turning to them in a time of deep emotional need can really help – just like it can at any other point in time.

It did make me think some about my own life and especially how I judge people (there’s a whole chapter on how Mack meets a judge-type person who I’m not familiar with), and I should pobably work on that.  Overall the book was interesting…I couldn’t really put it down because I did want to find out how everything was resolved.  The book’s ending wraped up a little too neatly for me, and that may be adding to my speculation as to whether the whole story is true or not.

An interesting note about the book, it’s a NY Times best-seller with more than five million copies in print.  The book’s success stemmed primarily from word-of-mouth marketing – the book was launched with only a $200 marketing campaign.  And now, it seems, it’s become somewhat of a phenomenom.

Have you read Friday Night Knitting Club? Don’t waste your time.

I love a good book.  When I get into a book, I read non stop until I finish.  May’s book club book is Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs.  I had heard of the book and even thought about buying it a few times, but my “want to read” reading list expands much faster than I can keep up with!

I started reading it and immediately was drawn into the story; Kate did a great job creating the characters and making you feel like you were right there in the Walker Daughter knitting shop.  You felt their pain and struggles and rooted for them.  I was on team Georgia and wanted her to be happy…finally…because she deserved it.

And then I got to the end.  What I thought was one of the best books I’d read in awhile turned out to be one of the worst.  (Spoiler alert…if you haven’t read it and for some reason want to waste a bunch of time, stop reading now.)  Now, I understand that every story can’t – and shouldn’t – have a happy ending, but dear God, why on earth would someone want to read about a senseless tragedy?  Just as poor Georgia Walker is finding true happiness and having things fall into place, she not only gets cancer but she dies.  And she dies so unexpectedly…I thought she was getting better!!!!

Ok, so yes, this kind of sad, devastating chain of events happens all of the time…but I don’t need to depress myself through a book.  I read to escape and get lost in other people’s worlds.  There are sad endings to stories that are good and make sense, and this one just completely pissed me off.  Kate Jacobs you are an idiot.

I’m serious.  I’m the kind of reader that once I get sucked into a good – or even decent – story or character, if there’s a sequel or other related books, I RACE to the bookstore to buy them and start reading right away.  I saw that there was a sequel to this book at the end, and I have no desire to even read the preview to find out what it’s about.

Thanks Kate Jacobs….for taking a really great story and wonderful characters and totally ruining it.  You could have created a sad tragedy-type ending without killing Georgia.

I can’t wait for book club

Dark at the Roots

This month, my book club is reading Dark at the Roots by Sarah Thyre.  I only got to page 88.  It’s a memior about a girl growing up in the South.  Sarah writes well, but I just had an issue because I didn’t know where she was going with anything…the points of all of her stories were really unclear, so I didn’t finish it.

Book club should be fun though tonight.  We’ve gotten more people interested in it…last month there were I think 10 of us there.  It’s nice to get together with friends like this…even if I won’t really be participating in book talk