Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

A CBC Radio One recommendation that didn't disappoint. 

Here's a summary thanks to Goodreads.com: 

I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I will try to remember to come back.
Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to water.  

Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.

I gave this novel to my mom for Christmas 2015. It was recommended by CBC's Book Reviews as one of the top 100 novels of 2015. I would rate this one as one of the top 25 books in 2015, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My mother who is almost 80 also enjoyed it very much.

The enduring love that Russell held for Etta was delicious and sweet. It is a true, gentle love story. It's creative and original in nature. We never quite know who James is...and I still don't.

I recommend it as a very enjoyable read.  

All the Light We Cannot See

2015 Winner of the Pulitzer

What a way to start our 2016 Book Club reading.

We were really fortunate to have chosen All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

Here's a quick summary:

"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. 

When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge." 


http://www.anthonydoerr.com/books/all-the-light-we-cannot-see/

The book club's discussion today was very fruitful too. Of all attendees, only one hadn't read the novel...Most of the other ladies enjoyed it thoroughly.

The Author...Hope He's Busy Writing
More Fiction for ME!!!

Perfect Place for This Perfect Book

We agreed that is was a rich story that was cleverly woven together. The shifts in time were interesting, and the wide range of characters with different experiences and perspectives was fascinating.

The only lady that didn't enjoy it, indicated that she had heard many stories about traumas of WW2, and as such, didn't enjoy the story. She also mentioned that her reading of the story was often interrupted. In my opinion, it's hard to enjoy any novel that requires some attentive reading if you are constantly having to put it down and attend to other things.

Personally, I devoured this novel over the Christmas break and savoured the last 40-50 pages on the trip down to Playa Del Carmen in Mexico.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch--The Painting that is used
as the novel's central theme 

If I could only take 3 books with me to a deserted island for a one year stint, one of those books would surely be The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This novel is not to be missed, and is so rich with detail and plot, that it could be re-read and enjoyed anew many, many times over.


Here's a summary by Goodreads:

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Here is the author speaking about her novel:

Notice in the painting above: The goldfinch sits on a perch and is trapped by a delicate but undeniable chain on his right claw. The Goldfinch somehow is able to chain Theo Decker throughout his life also. Loved it. It's winding and  fraught with tension. The characters are well developed and the settings are so well drawn that you can almost smell and taste them. The writing is beautiful, and insightful. It is memorable and certainly one that I recommend.  

The Book Thief Stole My Heart

The last novel for the year for my monthly book club, and I believe we may have saved the best for last with The Book Thief.

Summary thanks to Goodreads:

"It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down."

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.  The group discussed this novel over lunch at our annual Christmas Book Exchange party. The vast majority of the ladies loved it, finding little fault with the writing or the gripping story.

I thought that it read like poetry at times; Zusak's prose is so beautiful. With Death as the narrator, The Book Thief is a creative and unique wartime story was written from the perspective of a young German girl.

Here is the author with his thoughts:

This novel should be mandatory reading in high school. It is not to be missed. 

Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones--Forgot to post…but here it is anyway!

Here's a summary provided by Goodreads:

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.
So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.

So, my mother recommended this novel to me as a charming and heart warming read. For the most part (with a few glaring exceptions), we have similar taste in reading. But on this one, I have to say that it left me flat.

Now, I admit that I do most of my pleasure reading before signing off for the night. There are times in my life, when I fall into be, and really shouldn't be allowed to read. It is in these exhausted stupors that I read and (perhaps) don't see the novel in it's best light. I will not deny that this could be the case here, but here's what I didn't enjoy about the novel.

First, I thought that some of the characters were simplistic. The bible thumping mother…The white english teacher…

[SORRY…I WAS INTERRUPTED ON THIS BLOG ENTRY, AND NEVER FINISHED IT UP. NOW I CAN'T REMEMBER ENOUGH OF THE BOOK TO COMPLETE IT! I'M JUST GOING TO LEAVE IT LIKE THIS CUZ IT'S MY BLOG, SO I CAN!!!]