Our New Read

So, I have picked the next book we will be reading.  We won't be meeting in December though, we will meet in January instead.  I have chosen the book Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.  Here is a snippet of what it's about:

Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, leper-like, powerless creatures, and Elantris itself dark, filthy, and crumbling.

Arelon's new capital, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris. Princess Sarene of Teod arrives for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping -- based on their correspondence -- to also find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. So Sarene decides to use her new status to counter the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to Kae to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god.

But neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspect the truth about Prince Raoden. Stricken by the same curse that ruined Elantris, Raoden was secretly exiled by his father to the dark city. His struggle to help the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps reveal the secret of Elantris itself.

Okay, so it was sort of a BIG snippet, but it does it way more justice than what I tried to explain.  Interesting tidbit, the author is LDS and teaches creative writing at BYU.  So, grab a copy and happy reading!

Our New Read

Alecia has picked our book for November, but we will be meeting at Debby's house to discuss it.  We are trying to create a central location for us to meet and Debby and Sarah have offered the Mitchell/Aina household for us to use.  Thanks ladies!  Alright, back to the book.  We will be reading The Light Between Oceans by: M. L. Stedman.  Here is a little snippet of what it's about:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

So, pick up a copy from the library or borrow it from a friend.  Happy reading!  

Our New Read!

Sarah has picked our book for October.  We will be reading Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo.  Here is what it's about:

A young boy emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven.
Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.
Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.

So, pick up a copy at the library, borrow it from a friend, or if this sounds like something you want to have in your own library go out and get a copy.  Happy reading ladies!

Our New Read

Cecilia has pick our book for September.  We will be reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Cecilia thought it would be fun to read the book since the movie will be coming out soon.  I totally agree!   Here's a little description of what it's about:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.
The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest.  By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come.

So, grab a copy at the library, or borrow it from a friend, or, if you already have it, then a round of applause for you!  Happy Reading!

Our New Read

Debby has picked our next book to read.  But we won't be meeting to discuss it until Aug. 21st so you have an extra month to read it.  We will be reading Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston.  Here is a little snippet of what it's about:

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the  nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."

So, pick up a copy at the library and happy reading!

Our New Read

Dari picked our book for June.  We will be reading The Cross Gardener by Jason F. Wright.  Here is a little excerpt of what it is about:

Married and the father of a young daughter, John Bevan had finally found the traditional family he lacked as an orphaned child. But all that disappears when a fatal car accident steals away his wife-and the unborn child she carried.

Filled with sorrow, John withdraws from life and love. He erects a small cross at the scene of his wife's accident and visits daily, grieving. Then one morning he encounters a young man kneeling before the cross, touching it up with white paint. John's conversations and travels with this mysterious man-known to him only as the Cross Gardener-will forever change his world.

So pick up a copy at the library, I checked and there are plenty for us all. :) Happy Reading everyone! 

Our New Read

Alecia has chosen our book for May.  We will be reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Here is an overview of what it is about.

Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive.

So pick up a copy at the local library.  We checked and made sure there are plenty of copies available.  Happy Reading!

Debby's Tuesday Teaser

"So where does this leave us? Why do I need this man at all? I need him only because I happen to adore him, because his company gives me gladness and comfort, and because, as a friend's grandfather once put it, "Sometimes life is too hard to be alone and sometimes life is too good to be alone."  The same goes for Felipe: He needs me only for my companionship as well.  Seems like a lot, but it isn't much at all; it is only love.  And a love based-marriage does not guarantee the lifelong binding contract of a clan-based marriage or an asset-based marriage; it cannot.  By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later - again, for its own mysterious reasons."

page 80 Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love)

Our New Read!

Sudha has picked our next book.  We will be reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  Here's an overview of what it is about:

In this humorous and perceptive exchange between two devils, C. S. Lewis delves into moral questions about good vs. evil, temptation, repentance, and grace. Through this wonderful tale, the reader emerges with a better understanding of what it means to live a faithful life.

So, pick up a copy at the local library and happy reading!

Our New Read

I have chosen the book for March.  We will be reading A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.  Here is a little teaser summary:

Gemma, 16, is prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true.  She has had an unconventional upbringing in India, until the day she foresees her mother’s death in a black, swirling vision that turns out to be real. Sent back to England, she is enrolled at Spence, a girls’ academy with a mysterious burned-out East Wing. There Gemma is snubbed by powerful Felicity, beautiful Pippa, and even her own dumpy roommate Ann, until she blackmails herself and Ann into the treacherous clique. Gemma is distressed to find that she has been followed from India by Kartik, a beautiful young man who warns her to fight off the visions. Nevertheless, they continue, and one night she is led by a child-spirit to find a diary that reveals the secrets of a mystical Order. The clique soon finds a way to accompany Gemma to the other-world realms of her visions "for a bit of fun" and to taste the power they will never have as Victorian wives, but they discover that the delights of the realms are overwhelmed by a menace they cannot control.

So, pick up a copy at the library, borrow it from a friend, or you can purchase it on amazon for $9.99 if you think you'd like to add it to your collection.  Hope you all enjoy the book, I know I did.  Happy Reading!

Our New Read

Dari chose our book for February.  We will be reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok.  Here is a little description of what the book is about:

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.

So, go to your local Library, borrow it from a friend, or if you feel like this is something you'd like to own you can purchase it on Amazon for $7.99 if you get the Mass Market Paperback edition, or $10.20 for the regular Paperback edition.  Happy reading!

Teaser Wednesday--The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Rehnquist loved to sing, and he always led the caroling at the Court's annual Christmas party.  (Every year or so, a group of law clerks would write the chief justice an earnest letter complaining that the party created an atmosphere of exclusion for non-Christians; Rehnquist, who pointedly never adopted the term "holiday party," would reply by invititing the young lawyers, in effect, to get over it.)  In his early years on the Court, Rehnquist even sometimes wrote the sketches for the occassion.  In 1975, as Jeffrey Rosen first reported, he wrote a song about his least-favorite Supreme Court opinion, Miranda v. Arizona.  Sung to the tune of Angels from the Realms of Glory," it went: Liberals from the realms of theory should adorn our highest bench / Though to crooks they're always chary / At police misdeeds they blench."  The members of the chorus then fell to their knees and sang, "Save Miranda, save Miranda, save it from the Nixon Four."  Nixon's nominees were Warrent Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and of course, Rehnquist himself.

Debby's Tuesday Teaser

"Contrary to my legal training, I have come to realize that feelings are often more important than facts.  The law doesn't have much to do with feelings.  A feeling is rarely actionable or even admissible. But our most important decisions, though accompanied by a careful study of facts, are usually most immediately motivated by feelings.  Who we marry is an example.  What fact or facts, unaccompanied by feelings, would motivate that decision? 
Feelings are vital to the process of revelation.  In a talk, I listed eight purposes or functions of revelation.  They were testifying, prophesying, comforting, uplifting, informing, restraining, confirming, and impelling. Significantly, seven of these eight - all except informing - come as a feeling.  For example, we should always be prepared to act upon an impression when we "feel that it is right" (D&C 9:8), even though it is not justified by the facts."

From Life's Lessons Learned ~ Personal Reflections by Dallin H. Oaks