Don't worry, Curls, there are no spoilers here.
Our book club is meeting tomorrow. We're reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. I found the book amongst the top sellers on Amazon while browsing my kindle trying to come up with something to recommend. There's nothing worse at book club then getting to the end of the meeting and no one has any suggestions for our next read and we're all just frantically trying to pick something. Because chances are, if we don't pick something at the meeting, it will take us at least another week trying to email and comment on suggestions back and forth. I just want to get reading already! I'll be halfway into something else, then have to stop and to read the book club book in time. None of us wants that. So I try to always have a suggestion. Stress on the trying. It doesn't always happen. And most of the time, I'm open to just about anything. I just want us to decide on something and keep rolling. We're really pretty good about it. And we've met just about every month for the last, what, four and half years is it? LT was less than a year old, if I remember right (we mothers always mark time by our children's ages, don't we?), so it must be about that.
I haven't read Kate Morton's first novel, but the reviews of this one just sucked me right in. I love a good mystery. How can you not love a good mystery? I learned to love reading through the Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Opening a good mystery is like a trip back in time. Staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading. I had an old fashioned lamp on the side of my bed, and I'd learned I could turn it off with out making that conspicuous clicking noise by carefully turning the key-style switch enough so the light was on, but not so far that it would catch in the on position. This way, I could turn the light off by turning the switch backwards and it wouldn't make a sound.
This is the sign of seriously devoted reader. I'm an escapist, no doubt. I would have lived in those stories if I could have.
The Forgotten Garden is over 500 pages. At least that's what I've seen on Amazon. It's hard to tell on a Kindle. I read the entire novel on vacation. I found it hard to put it down. All those pool shots I'm not in, yeah, I was lying in the pool-side bed with my nose stuck in a book.The book is sort of Red River meets Flowers in the Attic. Rather irresistible, in my opinion. Once I tired of devouring mysteries, I quickly moved on to V.C. Andrews. I voraciously read everything she published until I was about fourteen. Have I mentioned I'm a little sick and twisty inside? Nobody does sick and twisty better than V.C. Andrews.
Anyway, the book being so long, two of our members haven't finished it yet, despite the extra couple of weeks we granted ourselves. So how does this speak highly of the book, that half the club hasn't finished it and we're supposed to be done for tomorrow night? Because we're still going to meet, but we are not to discuss the book! Curls and Gem (does that work?), are trying in vain to catch up. They both want to finish, are enjoying it, but just aren't quite going to make it. We'll have to schedule another meeting in a week or so, to actually discuss the book.
I highly recommend The Forgotten Garden. A mysterious Authoress who writes bewitching children's tales, an abandoned cottage, children playing Jack the Ripper in the fogs of London, a lost little girl with no home, no memory, no family . . . . It will pull you right in.
In the mean time, I'm reading Crime and Punishment. Still trying to squeeze in a least one classic I haven't read before in a year. I know there's been all this hype by Polly and the DOL about reading Jane Austen. It's still on my list. Somehow I think Dostoevsky is more my speed. I didn't expect it to remind me so much of Angela's Ashes. Probably should be the other way 'round, but that's the order I read them in.
I can't wait to discuss the book. I loved it. While you were poolside reading on vacation I was enjoying coco locos in the pool- this may have been the reason for my delay. Great recommendation!
Posted by: Curls | June 04, 2009 at 08:55 PM