Welcome! And let the voting begin!

Thanks for coming over to check out the blog for the book club! Be sure to bookmark this page so you can check it often to keep up with discussions and other news. This will be THE PLACE for updates, discussions, questions, and pretty much anything having to do with the book club. We still plan on meeting together after finishing the book, but for the meantime, this will be like our online meeting place. If you would like the to be notified via email of comments made on the blog, including the content of those comments, please leave your email address in the comments section. You don't have to use "blogger" to leave a comment; simply change "comment as" and then add your name in the comment form. Look on the right of the posts for links that might help you in your reading. Also to the right is the poll where you can vote to choose which book we'll be reading first. In order to help you decide, here is some information about the books we will be choosing from. Vote only once, please.

Choice #1
Stargirl by Jerri Spinelli

Leo Borlock follows the unspoken rule at Mica Area High School: don't stand out--under any circumstances! Then Stargirl arrives at Mica High and everything changes--for Leo and for the entire school. After 15 years of home schooling, Stargirl bursts into tenth grade in an explosion of color and a clatter of ukulele music, enchanting the Mica student body.But the delicate scales of popularity suddenly shift, and Stargirl is shunned for everything that makes her different. Somewhere in the midst of Stargirl's arrival and rise and fall, normal Leo Borlock has tumbled into love with her.In a celebration of nonconformity, Jerry Spinelli weaves a tense, emotional tale about the fleeting, cruel nature of popularity--and the thrill and inspiration of first love.


Choice #2
Invisible Lives by Anjeli Banerjee

Lakshmi Sen was born with a magical ability to perceive the secret longings in others. Putting aside her own dreams to help run her widowed mother’s struggling Seattle sari shop, Mystic Elegance, Lakshmi knows exactly how to bring happiness to customers—from lonely immigrants to starry-eyed young brides. And to honor her father’s dying wish, she has agreed to marry a respectable Indian doctor who will uphold her family’s traditions. But when a famous and demanding Indian actress chooses Mystic Elegance to provide her wedding trousseau, Lakshmi finds herself falling for the actress’s sexy chauffeur—all-American Nick Dunbar—and her powers seem to desert her just as she needs them most. As Nick draws Lakshmi into his world, however, new dreams awaken in her, and she begins to uncover deeper, startling longings in those closest to her—her mother, her friends, her fiancé, and even herself. But choosing between Nick and her fiancé seems an impossible task, like intuiting the very nature of true love. Is it instantly recognizable or does it need time to grow? And how can she possibly know for sure?

Choice #3
A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway

As a youth of 18, Ernest Hemingway was eager to fight in the Great War. Poor vision kept him out of the army, so he joined the ambulance corps instead and was sent to France. Then he transferred to Italy where he became the first American wounded in that country during World War I. Hemingway came out of the European battlefields with a medal for valor and a wealth of experience that he would, 10 years later, spin into literary gold with A Farewell to Arms. This is the story of Lieutenant Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy, and almost immediately Hemingway sets up the central tension of the novel: the tenuous nature of love in a time of war.

Choice #4
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

Sherlock Holmes takes on a young, female apprentice in this delightful and well-wrought addition to the master detective's casework. In the early years of WW I, 15-year-old American Mary Russell encounters Holmes, retired in Sussex Downs where Conan Doyle left him raising bees. Mary, an orphan rebelling against her guardian aunt's strictures, impresses the sleuth with her intelligence and acumen. Holmes initiates her into the mysteries of detection, allowing her to participate in a few cases when she comes home from her studies at Oxford. The collaboration is ignited by the kidnapping in Wales of Jessica Simpson, daughter of an American senator. The sleuthing duo find signs of the hand of a master criminal, and after Russell rescues the child, attempts are made on their lives (and on Watson's), with evidence piling up that the master criminal is out to get Holmes and all he holds dear.