Book Club Recap 5/19/09

Attendees: Christopher, Denise, Heather, Keo, Rambo, & Rhonda (Raven was an excellent hostess!)

This is hard to believe, but we jumped right in and started talking about the book that we read. We even talked about it for awhile! We all thought that the writing was excellent. Rhonda felt like the book was a bit of a downer, which it was, but it was written really well. Christopher felt like he got a good glimpse into what life would be like for people who were poor and grew up in shitty situations like the characters of the novel. I said that I loved the story about his inability to keep from throwing up in his dad's van. Keo said that his favorite story was about him getting masturbated by another guy :) Christopher's favorite story was about the pig face boy. We all agreed that he was able to tell these stories with a bit of humor in them which didn't make them as depressing as they could have been. We found it interesting that the main character didn't seem to stay constantly high even though he was a drug dealer (his girlfriend always seemed tweaked out). A member (we won't mention names) talked about how an acquaintance of theirs was a heroin addict and this member shared a wealth of information on heroin addiction. Denise said that she got her book from the library and what made it more interesting for her was that there were comments written in the book from a previous reader who she assumed had to have been a student. If you haven't read this book you should because we all liked it. It was also a very fast read and it is all short stories.

After talking about this book it was time to pick our next book. This was HARD! We didn't know what to read so we went to the Internet to see what other sites had listed as the top reads. Rambo found some book about a lady who wasn't a Mexican or a maid, but was a detective! It sounded cheesy! Rhonda had suggested a book, but when reading the synopsis we couldn't pronounce the names of the characters and nixed that book. Rambo found a book about how to run correctly, but only half of us were interested in that. I had suggested a book about a lady who has Alzheimer's, but once we read the review that said it wasn't a good book we tossed that one out. I don't think that we have ever spent this much time trying to pick a new book. Rhonda then remembered that Gary and Ben had this book that they really enjoyed. She called them up and Ben got to make a special voice guest appearance at our book club! The book is The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. The author looks into who survives when disaster strikes and why. To read more about the book you can go to the authors website or you can buy the book here!

We decided to have book club on 6/30, but Rhonda just let me know that she will have to travel on business earlier that day. That means that Rhonda will pick a new date for us to meet.

Once again, if you want to check out the actual blog instead of just reading the emails you can go to rhondasbookclub.blogspot.com

If you read the book and want to make any comments please do!

Hope to see everyone next time!

-Heather