Intentions to Read

My Book Group met on Monday...and as always...it's a lively group of 3 or 4 different conversations going at a time with wine and food and sometimes, but rarely, a discussion of the latest book we read.  We catch up on each other's minutia and discuss the latest great happenings in our lives.   A book is always chosen to be read by us all before we meet again.  But the book is simply the glue.  Whether we read it or not, we will meet again.  It's on our calendars. 

 

The last book we all read (but most didn't get to finish because of the busy holidays, etc.) was Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling. I am reading it on my Kindle Fire and it tells me I am at 40% completion. I intend to finish it because I am finally catching on to all the characters and their connection to each other. J. K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, can weave a tale. It's set in a town in England and begins with the sudden death of a man which leaves a vacancy on the town council.  From there it spins out in to characters in the town.  She puts in a lot of detail of each character and the room they're in and the street they walk down.

 

The biggest complaint we all had was there are way too many characters being introduced in the first few chapters and it's hard to keep them all straight. If you read this, I recommend a piece of paper and a pen to jot down each character as they're introduced with a note of "who they are"....you will thank me later.  I hope I didn't scare you away from this book because the ones that finished it said it was really good and worth finishing so that's my plan. 

 

The book we chose for our next read is The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. 

Amazon's book description:

A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

 

 

This book has great reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  I plan on buying this one in the real deal...a paperback.  While I'm loving my Kindle, there is just something about holding a book and seeing your progress in pages...not a number at the bottom of the screen.