"Where the Heart Is" by Billie Letts

March 2011, Hosted by: Beth Kuhn

"Readers immersed in the offbeat world of Letts's lively, affecting first novel will forgive its occasional forced quirkiness. For 17-year-old Novalee Nation, seven months pregnant, the phrase "home is where your history begins" has a special meaning. Leaving behind a trail of foster homes in Tennessee trailer parks to live in a real house with her boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens, Novalee instead finds herself abandoned in front of a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Okla. With nowhere to turn, she cleverly conceals herself within the store, keeping careful accounts until giving birth to the "Wal-Mart baby" turns her into a local celebrity. Happily, the community reaches out to Novalee and baby Americus. Sequoyah's one-woman welcoming committee, Sister Husband, takes them in; cultured librarian Forney Hull takes a shine to them; photographer Moses Whitecotton encourages Novalee's raw talent for photography by teaching her all he knows; Lexie Coop, who has a huge appetite for food, diet fads and the wrong men, befriends her; and legendary Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton gives her a job. Meanwhile, Willy Jack, an aspiring musician, gets a shot at the big time before hitting bottom and realizing what he's left behind. Letts's wacky characters are depicted with humor and hope, as well as an earnestness that rises above the story's uneven conceits, resulting in a heartfelt and gratifying read." (Publishers Weekly)

Hostess Notes: 

• Reason chosen: Recommended by mother who reads a lot.
• well received by all  who attended the meeting.  Many people said it was a enjoyable, fast read, with interesting characters and a good ending.
• Everyone had their own thoughts about Willy Jack Pickens and felt that Novalee was able to make peace with their relationship. 
• Novalee was seemed to meet all the right people at just the right time, when she needed them most.
• Overall, the book was page-turner and gives you a new view on how so many different  people can be your "family".

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte

February 2011, Hosted by: Isabel Jefferson

"Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. The epic story of Catherine and Heathcliff plays out against the dramatic backdrop of the wild English moors, and presents an astonishing metaphysical vision of fate and obsession, passion and revenge. "Only Emily Brontë," V. S. Pritchett said, "exposes her imagination to the dark spirit." And Virginia Woolf wrote, "Hers...is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts...by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar." "

Hostess Notes:

"Hello everyone,

For all of you who came to my home and shared your comments about the book, thank you for sharing!

Comments about the book ranged from the age of the author, the moors, unsympathetic characters, to the narrators. Wuthering Heights is an interesting and thought provocative book.

In order to better understand it, I decided to put myself in the author’s place and started to see some of what she might have been trying to tell us.

At the time that Emily Brontë wrote the novel, women did not have many rights.  Women could not directly inherit their family fortune (if they had one).  Man, mostly white man, controlled the world in which Emily Brontë lived.

England was in political turmoil.  The middle class was sandwiched between the very poor, lowly paid or unpaid factory workers – black with soot; and the very rich.  Women basically, were property of their husbands.

Wuthering Heights had two main narrators: A white female servant and a white privileged man who thought of himself as a “mannered, educated” man.

There were no sympathetic characters in Wuthering Heights.  It depicted a raw, dramatic and conflicted world.

If Emily Brontë saw herself as the oppressed, she would probably be Heathcliff.  Angered with her circumstances, not being able to strike back, she did it so through the only means available to her - her plume.  And she used a pseudonym to publish her work – poetic justice? Maybe.

Wuthering Heights is an intense read, perhaps because it reminds us that the world is a harsh place.  It also points to us that love is maybe the only thing that surpasses the realms of a harsh reality.   The fact that only in death could Heathcliff and Catherine be together, is in itself a clue of the very restrictive environment the author was in at the time she wrote this novel."

"Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

January 2011, Hosted by: Diane DeSalvo-Knutson

"In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as the mining district's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta, the son of the town baker who seems to have all the fighting skills of a lump of bread dough, will be pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives. Collins's characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic, and engrossing. This book will definitely resonate with the generation raised on reality shows like 'Survivor' and 'American Gladiator.' " (School Library Journal)

Hostess Notes:

• Reason chosen: "Recommended by another member of book club, as it's very popular."
• Enjoyed by all.
• Very intense.
• Made a lot of comparisons to reality TV.

"Half Broke Horses" by Jeannette Walls

November 2010, Hosted by: Julie Sass

"Originally conceived as a biography based on family interviews and historical research, Walls found herself filling in too many blanks for Half Broke Horses to remain a work of nonfiction, so she assumed Smith's indomitable voice and set out to write a novelistic recreation of Smith's unconventional life. Most critics were captivated by Smith's earthy, straightforward style, despite the steady stream of repetitive axioms intermingled with her antics. Only the Washington Post seemed thoroughly disappointed, lamenting that "this book is no Glass Castle." Though Smith, "a gumption-packin' ranch gal whose pluck never quits" (New York Times), may not rise to the intensity of Walls's troubled, nomadic parents, Half Broke Horses nevertheless tells the heartwarming story of an irrepressible woman who carved her own destiny." (Bookmarks Magazine)

Hostess Notes:

• Reason chosen: "I read [Wall's first memoir] The Glass Castle and liked it."
• Beth and Kim liked that it was written in the first person. "It was like reading Lilly's diary."
• Women back then didn't talk about their emotions.
• "Lilly got slapped by reality many times," said Kim.
• Jim and Lilly worked well together.
• The Glass Castle is a true story about the author and her mother, Rosemary, daughter of Lilly and Jim.

"The Forgotten Garden" by Kate Morton

October 2010, Hosted by: Lana Goepfert

"Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting--from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot. This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts, while the mysterious Authoress's fairy tales (every bit as magical and sinister as Grimm's) whisper truths and ignite the imaginary lives of children. As Morton draws you through a thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story could cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren't clothed in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the heady stench of emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that furtively flourished in the glasshouse of Edwardian society. While most ache for a spotless mind's eternal sunshine, the Authoress meets the past as "a cruel mistress with whom we must all learn to dance," and her stories gift children with this vital muscle memory." (Amazon.com Review)

Hostess Notes: 

• Reason chosen: "I read this book this past summer and enjoyed it"
• Lively dialogue; great interest in the book.
• Angela felt the fairy tales that Eliza wrote were incorporated into this story. The Golden Egg (page 458) paralleled Eliza's life.
• Was this a romantic story? Julie said an emphatic "Yes! It was very romantic."
• Sarah G. expressed that Cassandra's aunts were "warm and buttery".

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson

September 2010, Hosted by: Sarah Gonnering

"Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy." (Publishers Weekly)

Hostess Notes:

• Reason chosen: "I chose this book because of it's popularity - best selling trilogy and Swedish movies - soon to be American movies starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara."
• The first 100 pages weren't easy to get into, but then it was a quick read. Very exciting!

"Invitation to Valhalla" by Mike Whicker

June 2010, Hosted by: Vicki Mueller

"Erika Lehmann. She is the Nazis' top spy. Code-named Lorelei, she is the English speaking daughter of Hitler's old comrade and a member of the Führer's inner circle. She is beautiful, athletic, and clever-the epitome of Aryan womanhood-and she'll stop at nothing to accomplish her mission. Charlie Pulaski. A down-and-out FBI agent from Chicago on his last legs, Pulaski is sent on what he is sure is a pointless wild goose chase when a garbled shortwave transmission coming from southern Indiana is accidentally intercepted by an amateur HAM radio operator. Axel Ryker. The Gestapo's top henchman. Ryker is Heinrich Himmler's top problem solver, i.e. murderer. As ruthless as he is cunning, Ryker is sent to America with a startling mission-find and kill their own spy, Erika Lehmann. The year is 1942. In Evansville, Indiana, a Jewish metallurgist named Joseph Mayer is conducting top secret experiments for the U.S. Navy. Life could not be better for Joe Mayer: he loves his job, he is contributing greatly to the war effort, and he just began dating a fascinating young woman."

Hostess Notes:

• Reason chosen: "I chose this book because my sister had recommended it from her book club."
• Captivating!