Animal Attraction (Animal Magnetism #2) by Jill Shalvis (Goodreads Author) 4.15 · rating details · 1,977 ratings · 227 reviews Jade Bennett couldn't be happier to escape her past for the quiet ranching town of Sunshine, Idaho. Plus, there's nothing like working for veterinarian Dell Connelly. And though Dell has no intention of settling down, Jade's strength and sass are enticements no red-blooded male can resist.

BookClub Pictures

Pictures from the bookclub meeting July 26th at Jim's house where we discussed the WWII book of survival entitled "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand.

Bookclub pictures from Lee's house on May 2nd, 2012 for "The Hunger Games" discussion.

Pictures from the Latest Bookclub @ Joe's House

Bookclub Discussion Goes Into Overtime!

Last night's bookclub discussion of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" was by far the best that we have had in quite a while. There were many great discussions about the author's unusual presentation, the characters and their actions. We wished everyone could have made it to this gathering in Lori's festively decorated "Woman's Cave" (or did you call it a "Girl's Cave"? I don't recall exactly...)!

Review of 'Willie Mays; The Life, The Legend'

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Authorized by Willie Mays and written by a New York Times bestselling author, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball's immortals.
Considered to be "as monumental--and enigmatic--a legend as American sport has ever seen" (Sports Illustrated), Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball's bold expansion to California. With 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and 338 stolen bases, he was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now, in the first biography authorized by and written with the cooperation of Willie Mays, James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.

Willie is perhaps best known for "The Catch"--his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research, and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a complex portrait of one of America's most significant cultural icons.

Love This Poem!

This poem captures how I have felt many times especially in my youth...

Evening Star
by Charles Goodrich

Fork down hay
for the white-face steers.
Sit in the hay mow door
watching the horses graze,
chewing myself a dry clover sprig.

Long day over.
No evening plans.
Dust motes drift
on the ambering light.
Pigeons flap and coo in the rafters.

First star now
low in the east.
Sweat cools
and crusts on my face,
muscles lean back on their bones

and all thoughts heal down
to a low whistling.

"Evening Star" by Charles Goodrich, from Insects of South Corvallis

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

Matt Prior, a hapless, middle-aged protagonist, is on a late-night milk run at the 7/11 when he meets with destiny in the form of Skeet and Jamie, two stoned, twenty-something gangbangers with unfortunate tattoos and uncertain futures. Despite the trappings of upper-middle class, Matt's future is equally uncertain. A former journalist, he quit his job at the newspaper to pursue the creation of an unlikely website that synthesized two of his key interests - investment advice and blank verse poetry. After the predictable demise of poetfolio.com, Matt is quickly burning through his limited resources and is now in imminent danger of losing his house to the bank and his wife to an ex-boyfriend.

So it is just another in a string of bad choices that finds Matt taking hits from a glass pipe as he chauffers Jamie and Skeet to a party of similarly low-rolling derelict youths, while the boys, in the argot of their peer group, eloquently expound on the provenance of the marijuana that the trio are smoking:

“Shit’s designer. Like three hunnerd an ounce," Skeet says.

The next roll of coughs I can’t suppress. "Really?"

"Definitely," Jamie explains, voice lilting with excitement. "In this lab in British Columbia? This Nobel Prize dude? He Frankensteined that shit? It’s knock-off, but shit’s still pretty good. They can do whatever you want to it, you know? Make it do a thousand different things to your mind, yo.”
Readers familiar with Showtime's hit television series Weeds (and even those who are not) will find the direction that Matt's plight takes unsurprising, but Jess Walter, an extremely talented novelist in whose hands the characters of Matt’s new juvenile delinquent friends and senile father are each rendered with fantastic believability, intricately weaves narrative sub-threads into this perhaps predictable plot line to balance humor with pathos as Matt’s world unravels in the wake of his increasingly desperate decisions.

Yes, despite Matt’s on-rushing collapse amidst the same mortgage crisis that is a harsh reality for many of us, The Financial Lives of the Poets surprisingly turns out to be the funniest book I’ve read in a long time and Jess Walter, a new author to follow.

Review of 'Unaccustomed Earth'

Unaccustomed Earth Jhumpa Lahiri

" The idea of excess, of being out of control, did not appeal to Sudha. Competence: this was the trait that fundamentally defined her." SEARCH THE SITE


Reviewed by Vanessa Gebbie

Of the eight stories in this collection the title story is my favourite. Four or five reads in and Unaccustomed Earth still gives up its treasures, as each scene seems to contain more and more images and references that deepen the whole. And yet nothing seems placed. This writer’s style appears natural and effortless. The prose flows by smoothly, beautifully. The central character of this story, the first in the collection, is Ruma, a lawyer and second- generation Bengali living in the USA. She is married to an American. They have a child, Akash, who is three, and she is pregnant again. She is very isolated. Her husband’s work has moved them to Seattle, where she knows no one, and Ruma has given up work to look after Akash before he goes to school. Despite herself, she finds herself living the life she was determined to rise above: “Her mother’s example – moving to a foreign place for the sake of marriage, caring exclusively for children and a household – had served as a warning, a path to avoid. Yet this was Ruma’s life, now.” Her husband is away for a week, and she is visited for the first time since her mother’s unexpected death, by her widowed father. The story contains moments of aching poignancy as memories rise up and as Ruma and her father seek to find comfortable common ground. The story switches seamlessly between their two points of view, and between story present and memory. Lahiri explores with great tenderness what it is to be pulled in different directions in the small struggles that surface for them both each day of her father’s short visit.

June Bookclub Moves It Outside!

We had a great time at bookclub tonight at my house. Despite the rain earlier in the day we were able to go outside to eat burgers, discuss 'The Things They Carried' and make GIANT SMORES! The wind was enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay and it wasn't too cool. I would call this my favorite weather.

We missed you Candace, Michelle and Jim! Have safe travels tomorrow Lee and Candace. And thanks again for the wonderful treat Rhonda (Elk Sausage)!