Saturday, May 18, 2013

What Book Next?

The Hunger Dames have agreed that the books chosen each month will be books none have us have read. This makes is a challenge.
So, what to read now?

These are off the reading list due to the face one or most of us have read them:
Stephanie Meyer - Twilight series
Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse: True Blood series
Lord of the Rings
Hunger Games
Game of Thrones/Fire & Ice
Wheel of Time
Heinlein, Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Gaimen,Orson Scott Card, CS Lewis, George McDonald


These I am reading on my own:
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Glass Castle by Jeannette Wells
Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (someone else has already read the series)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - never heard a bad word said about it. No one in the group really wants to read it.


Possible Books Hunger Dames' books:
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion - sounds interesting. But they are zombies. I don't know if any one of this group is a zombie fan.

I looked for list and for NPR's 'Your Picks: Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy' Great list. No YA or horror, they said that would be another list. This is people's submission and votes.

#26 Snow Crash  by Neal Stephenson. Sounds like a interesting and fun read.
--Amazon.com review: ... world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible

#75 The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The story of an engineer who creates a device to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself reveals what happens when a young girl of the poor underclass obtains the device.

 #60 Going Postal by Terry Pratchett - I have had that book in my hand a couple times and considered reading it. 
Sentenced to death for forgery and swindling, Moist von Lipwig accepts an offer of a pardon in exchange for revamping an ancient post office, but his efforts are thwarted by tons of undelivered mail, an 18,000-year-old ghost postman, his shoe-wielding new girlfriend, and murderous characters who want the post office shut down.
 
 Comment with any of your favorite books. Share book titles. Choosing a book is an ongoing process that must be decided unanimously.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

It came to pass that my friend approached me and said she would like to read more but never knows which book to read next or how even to chose the book. She asked, since I am always reading, if I would be interested in starting a book group. I was. Other women were invited into our book group. And now we are seven.
Our first meeting everyone brought delicious food to eat and we ate as we discussed our book. Now food is brought to each meeting, the more book relevant the food the better. However, my pickled herring were perfect for Life of Pi but unappreciated by the group, I was the only one who ate them. From our delight of eating good food while talking about good books came our name: THE HUNGER DAMES.
We pick a book no one has read. This takes out all the great books we have read and love and want to share - our friends will have to read those on their own time. It also introduces an element of risk that none of us might like the book since we are picking the book based on reviews. However, all of us will be on equal footing during discussion and all of our book libraries will grow. After a month we reconvene and discuss what we have read, what we thought, share insights, ask questions, and eat.
The Hunger Dames are all having a splendid time.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (meeting on 9/25/2012)

We all loved this book. It is just beautiful. The two adult magicians, in a competition they don't understand, falling in love, manipulated by their parents/grandparents, and all taking place in the Night Circus that everyone loves.
We tried to bring circus like food and had hot cocoa.
This book was picked because I saw it in all the stores, read the reviews in EW, and heard some other people reading it. And the title is brilliant.

My Name is Memory by Ann-Brashares (meeting on 10/30/2012)

Neat book, interesting ideas were brought forth in it. Some fun twist.
This was picked because it was written by the author of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - we did not know this was book 1 of a trilogy that has not been finished. The ending is a cliff hanger.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (meeting on 11/27/2012)

Beautiful book. Charming. Lovely. Enough to make you uneasy for a few minutes but then smooths everything out again. A warm fuzzy book for sitting beside a nice fire with cup of coffee and a quilt tuck around on a rainy day.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel (meeting on 1/8/2013)

Loved it. There was a tiger in a boat (maybe). I picked it because I saw the movie previews with a tiger in a boat. Saw the movie, read the book with the Hunger Dames, then all of the Hunger Dames and myself went to see the movie - the movie after reading the book had a different slant then before reading the book.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl (meeting on 2/5/2013)

Fun. Some interesting twist.
This was picked because there was a movie coming out and we wanted to read the book before seeing the movie.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, & Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (meeting on 3/12/2013)

Not a nice book. Hard, mean, scary. It is a biography so there is no internal dialogue, "Just the facts, ma'am," and that was hard to get use to. And then the troubles and hardships the main character suffers. But the payoff in the end is worth all the heartache in reading up to it. 

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (meeting on 4/2013)

Fun twisted trip along the path and through the mind of a boy growing to be a man, and all the demented twist on fairy tales he meets along the way.



The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (meeting on 5/21/13)

Just finished this - fun book. 3 sisters and their reconciliation of themselves and who they are and who their sisters are set in the backdrop of a small town and a father who is a Shakespeare aficionado.

I don't know what our next book is going to be.