We will be discussing this book in next month’s book club. I hope you can join us!

In honor of Children’s Book Week, join us Wed. May 14 at 7pm as we discuss Geraldine Brooks’ Pulitzer prize winning novel March, a story inspired by the father character in Little Women and drawn from the journals and letters of Louis May Alcott’s father.

In Alcott’s Little Women, readers see a perfect, self-sacrificing, loving, close-knit family. This book focuses on the absent father. Brooks creates a picture of his struggle with his not-so-perfect life during his tour of duty as a chaplain on the Civil War battlefields of Virginia.

For those who loved Little Women this story adds a wonderful dimension to a favorite classic. To all, it is a beautiful love story and tale of a man of principle who must adjust to fit the reality he encounters. 

Okay, you may wonder why I would suffer any guilt in enjoying this book so let me explain. I am a *huge* Gone with the Wind fan. Not just the movie but the book also. I have read all 1024 pages 12 times and I have no idea how many times I’ve seen the movie. That said, I have always considered myself a GWTW “purist”. When “Scarlett” the so-called sequel by Alexandra Ripley came out in the 1990s, I refused to read it. In fact I went so far as to refuse to touch it–at the time I was a shelver at my local library and whenever the book came through the bookdrop on my watch I would go find someone else to check it in and shelve it because I didn’t want to go near it. The very idea of a sequel to Ms. Mitchell’s perfect book rankled me and I felt that reading it would somehow sully or cheapen the original. I knew that Ms. Mitchell had been asked repeatedly for a sequel during her lifetime and always said that the story was over. Although, like every other GWTW fan I wondered whether or not Scarlett & Rhett would get back together, I preferred to keep the mystery alive. So I’ve never cracked open a copy of Scarlett, although I have on occasion accidentally touched one–they show up a lot in library donations. I have to admit that I watched part of the mini-series–two hours of my life that I profoundly regret, but I have managed to block the memory of it for the most part.

So now over fifteen years later I hear about this new book that tells the story of GWTW from Rhett’s point of view. I couldn’t wait to read it! I don’t know how I’ve managed to justify reading this book when I still cringe at the site of a ”Scarlett” bookcover but I have wrestled the demons and come out on top. And I am loving it! I am only about a fourth of the way through the book, Rhett has only  just met Scarlett, but it is great fun. McCaig really knows Rhett’s character and he knows the story of GWTW perhaps as well as I do. Whether the book goes beyond Scarlett & Rhett’s parting I don’t know yet. And if it does, I’m not certain I’ll be able to read past that part because I still hold true to Ms. Mitchell’s assertion that “The End” was on page 1024 and the rest is up to the imagination. I suppose I’ll cross that page when I come to it.

This month I finished “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, a fantastic book! The story is of Jacob Jankowski’s life with the circus during in Depression-era America. The story bounces from Jacob’s life in the circus to current day where Jacob, in his nineties, struggles with life in a nursing home and getting older. The story is beautifully written and pulls no punches about the horrors of circus life in the 1930s or the struggles of life in the twighlight years. Also excellent in audio.

The other book I am close to finishing now is “1000 White Women”. In 1854, a Cheyenne chief proposed that 1000 white women be given as brides to his warriors so that his people could be more easily assimilated into the white culture. This much is true. However, the story takes off in the fictional world when President Grant takes him up on the offer. The story is told from the perspective of May Dodd in journal form. The actual story is fascinating and reminds me a bit of the movie Dances with Wolves only a little grittier. My main complaint with the book I think is actually with the audio format which I usually prefer. I don’t care for the narrator’s tone or voices much so that seems to get in the way of the story. So this one I would recommend as a good read, but not a good listen.  

OK, probably not what you expected to find on this blog, but a good read none-the-less.  If you have a college-bound student in your household, this book offers great information about different majors offered in most of the country’s 2- and 4-year colleges. Who knew you could get an associate’s degree in barbering or boilermaking? This big (1,252 pages) book gives a description of all the different majors and tells what type of classes a student in each major would take. It also gives information about careers in that field and lists the schools where the different majors are offered.  Now if I could just get my son to read it…

We just read this book as a part of our library book club. It is an excellent story and also an interesting lesson in the history of Afghanistan told from the perspective of two women. A wonderful book!

I just finished this book last week and it is wonderful. Beautifully written and a very good mystery! It’s an excellent audiobook as well.