Get it Free

Dani just found the April book (Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim) free in the Kindle store. If you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle app for your tablet or smartphone that lets you read kindle books. So go for it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Enchanted-April-ebook/dp/B00849PNY2/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1360090194&sr=8-10&keywords=%22enchanted+april%22

Check It Out

Right above this post, and below the title of our blog, I've added little tabs for the Home page (this one) and a page with our list of recommended books for SNAPS.  It's so small, I couldn't find it, and I'm the one who posted it!  Check out our second page, but don't be confused.  It looks exactly like the Home page, except there's only one post with a long book list.  I want to get rid of the duplicate information on the side, but I need help from a more experienced blogspot blogger.

The Hobbit - Review by Ann D. on Good Reads

I've read this before, but it's one that's always worth rereading.

I love so many things about this book. I love Bilbo. I puzzle and chuckle over Gandalf. It's a shortish novel but it gives one the feeling of reading something deeply rooted in lore and all things ancient. I love that.

There's also this wonderful sense that like Bilbo, none of us really knows what we are capable of until we set out to live up to the high expectations of someone who knows more than we do. But we don't have to let fear get the best of us and we don't have to let the doubts of others drag us down. We may be able to accomplish a whole lot more than we ever thought we could. That's a happy thought. And it's a happy thought that no matter how strange the adventure turns, our little armchair in our little hobbit hole is waiting for us back home.

I'm so glad Tolkien wrote!

A New Year of the RS Book Club

Someday this blog might catch on with the book club members.  I can see us posting about our selected books, or just a book that we're reading on the side and want to recommend.  It could be our private Good Reads.  We could make announcements and share recipes from our yummy refreshments.  Right now it's just a keeper of our book lists for the past few years.  I'll get this year's selections on the shelf soon.  We had a hard time coming up with a list this year, and now we have a few too many.  We'll have to make a decision at our meeting tomorrow night.  We're also coming up with a list of favorite books for young/teen girls that we might want to donate to SNAPS.  I'll post that too.  After that, we might not have any activity until 2014.

An Idea From Oprah

This is from an article, "6 Things You'll Never Regret Doing".  I think I'll do this.  It's hard to stop at your second or third though.  It might be Little Women or Huck Finn or My Antonia.  I also might revisit Cashamara and see why I loved it so much in high school, or maybe a Nancy Drew.

 Rereading Your Second Favorite Book

My favorite book is As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I reread it every year. Many other people also have this habit with their favorite books, including Faulkner himself, who used to go back to Don Quixote, my father, who returns to The Angle of My Repose, and my friend Allison, who revisits the Bible. What I've noticed across the board is that these books tend to be the ones with fat, thick spines and wise, life-changing import. They teach you big things. Your second- or third-favorite book, however, is like a younger child; it doesn't have to work that hard—it can even goof off. Mine is Little House in the Big Woods, which I've also learned a lot from (specifically to always mind my pa and never go sledding on Sundays). And yet until this year, I didn't make room for it on my to-reread list. Because we tend to think of “favorite” as singular. A favorite book. A favorite movie. A favorite person. But it's not as if adding to that group will diminish your feeling for the first selection. Choosing favorites may just be like loving: the more, the more rewarding.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Six-Things-Youll-Never-Regret-Doing/3#ixzz2If4jU5Zk

Free Children's Books Online

I came across a website on Pinterest where you can read free children's books online, both fiction and nonfiction picture books.  This is a great resource worth sharing with you, but it gets better.  First of all, by reading books on line you'll be doing good works, because for every book you read, they donate a book to a special reading program.  Better yet, I'll be able to read these on my Kindle to my grandkids.  And better yet, when I was checking out the site, I saw the picture book that has been written about our February book selection, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.  This boy's dream came about because of books that he had read.  One of the reading programs that you can contribute to is Harnessing the Power of Reading.  And best of all, FREE.  Here's the link:

http://www.wegivebooks.org/campaigns/harnessing-the-power-of-reading

2012 Update and Stuff

Kay will be our hostess, Melissa the discussion leader, and Mary Jo is bringing refreshments.  The book is The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick.  I've been reading it this weekend and love it.  I think there will be a lot of interesting things to discuss.

Thanks to Dani for taking over the book club e-mails.  I'll get a schedule made up that we can pass around and hopefully get volunteers signed up.

I got a Kindle for Christmas (which I love) and a few of our 2012 books have free downloads:
The Importance of Being Earnest
Frankenstein and Dracula
Letters of a Woman Homesteader  (possible pick)

I think a couple are in the $3.99 or less category too:
A Separate Peace
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
I bought A Daughter's Walk, so if anyone else has a Kindle, you can borrow it from me.  I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.

I also read a list of things that you should do to have a successful book club in an e-mail that Oprah sends to me.  I'm happy to report that we're doing all of them.  There was this idea for December that we might keep in mind for next year.

13. Take December Off
Nobody has time to finish a novel during the holidays. Have everyone bring in a short, memorable piece to read out loud, like a poem, a few paragraphs from a novel or article, or even a meaningful personal letter. 

Finally, I'm going to try to get our bookshelf restocked on the side of this blog.  I never know how to do it, but somehow I've gotten it to work the last couple years.