Book Club.

So I buckled down and joined a book club about a month ago. It was perfect timing and the group is truly wonderful! I just figured I read enough and I am always looking for people to TALK to about the books I have read. So this is a great chance for me to develop some new relationships with some women who have a reading interest just like ME!

The past few weeks people have been asking me how many books I read weekly and how many do I read at a time...and the answer typically is two. And then I started thinking holy cow...thats a TON of books. Good thing I take full advantage of the public institution called the Library or else I would be in serious debt and people would be calling me the book lady instead of the cat lady because id have book instead of cats.

Anyhow...I am beginning to ramble and this post is suppose to be about my new book club and the latest book we read. It just so happened that for their first meeting which was to happen the week after I joined they would be meeting to talk about the delightful book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. As soon as I knew that was the book they were reading I thought ...this is going to be a perfect group, plus I had already read the book.

This book is nothing short of fabulous...or so I thought, but then again I do LOVE historical fiction. My ONLY issue with historical fiction is that the line is soo often blurred between what is actually real and what isn't. I mean how is a girl to decipher between it all...well she has to do a bit of research. Obviously the characters aren't real, but the story of the Japanese and the Chinese in Seattle during World War II is...

So On the corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. READ IT! ALL book clubs should read it...great conversation ensued and I loved stirring the pot a bit by talking about the issue of racial identity and discrimination within the book and how those same issues ensue today!! This book has been reviewed by countless people.

Below I have posted a brief summary of the book that I found on amazon.com....

Henry Lee is a 12-year-old Chinese boy who falls in love with Keiko Okabe, a 12-year-old Japanese girl, while they are scholarship students at a prestigious private school in World War II Seattle. Henry hides the relationship from his parents, who would disown him if they knew he had a Japanese friend. His father insists that Henry wear an "I am Chinese" button everywhere he goes because Japanese residents of Seattle have begun to be shipped off by the thousands to relocation centers. This is an old-fashioned historical novel that alternates between the early 1940s and 1984, after Henry's wife Ethel has died of cancer. A particularly appealing aspect of the story is young Henry's fascination with jazz and his friendship with Sheldon, an older black saxophonist just making a name for himself in the many jazz venues near Henry's home. Other aspects of the story are more typical of the genre: the bullies that plague Henry, his lack of connection with his father, and later with his own son. Readers will care about Henry as he is forced to make decisions and accept circumstances that separate him from both his family and the love of his life.

THE NEXT BOOK ON OUR LIST IS THE LONELY POLYGAMIST...ill let you know how that one goes!