We are excited to have a place to meet together to talk about one of our favorite things - Literature.
First up on the list to get this thing started is BOOK SUGGESTIONS!
Feel free to add some more to the list, or send an email out to the family and I will put the suggestions on here to have a complete list. We'll vote on the top books on Sunday and get things underway after that.
Current Books Suggestions:
The Alliance by Gerald N Lund (Michelle, Mom)
It's 18 years after the nuclear holocaust and the end of civilization, as we know it. Survivors are being relocated to a new society known as the Alliance. It seems like a dream come true for many of the new citizens. Crime, as well as harmful emotions, such as anger and prejudice have been eliminated, because the Alliance has computerized control over it's citizens from a computer chip that has been implanted in everyone. Eric Lloyd discovers the Alliance's corrupt power structure and vows to destroy it. But can one person change the world?
Mom: I really liked the Alliance Michelle has already suggested and wouldn't mind reading it again.
The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Michelle, Wendy, Mary, Janice, Julie)
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, didn't expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. As Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she's never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.
Mary: The host!! I love that book!
Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover (Michelle)
Based on the screenplay of the movie, "Star Wars: Episode III", the novel brings the epic full circle, revealing at last just how the young Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, became the most evil villain in the galaxy, Darth Vader, and father to Luke and Leia. When the novel opens, the Clone Wars are still in full cry, and numerous Jedi have already been lost. Anakin is struggling with his dual life: Jedi Knight and husband (in secret) to Padme Amidala. The time is drawing near for the machiavellian Darth Sidious - the Sith Lord determined to wrest control of the galaxy from the Republic - to draw tight the noose he has been creating around Anakin Skywalker...and create a new Sith Lord with unmatched dark-side Force powers...
Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling (Michelle)
Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.
The Peacegiver by James Ferrell (Michelle)
Unlike other books about the atonement, The Peacegiver is written as an extended parable. It tells the story of a man struggling, with the help of a loved one, to come unto Christ. IN reading the rich details of his often difficult journey, we find ourselves embarked on a personal journey of our own. His questions are our questions; his problems, our problems; his discoveries, our discoveries. Along the way, the truths of the gospel are unfolded with surprising clarity and power, illuminating aspects of the atonement that few of us have ever heard or considered before. These surprising implications show us the way to deep and lasting peace in our hearts and homes.
His Needs Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, Jr. (Michelle)
In the classic bestseller His Needs, Her Needs, Willard F. Harley, Jr., identifies the ten most vital needs of men and women and shows husbands and wives how to satisfy those needs in their spouses. He provides guidance for becoming irresistible to your spouse and for loving more creatively and sensitively, thereby eliminating the problems that often lead to extramarital affairs.
Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Relationships, Coming to Ourselves by C. Terry Warner (Michelle)
Life can be sweet. Our relationships with friends, spouses, colleagues, and family members can be wonderfully rewarding. They can also bring heartache, frustration, anxiety, and anger. We all know the difference between times when we feel open, generous, and at ease with people versus times when we are guarded, defensive, and on edge. Why do we get trapped in negative emotions when it's clear that life is so much fuller and richer when we are free of them? Bonds That Make Us Free is a ground-breaking book that suggests the remedy for our troubling emotions by addressing their root causes. You'll learn how, in ways we scarcely suspect, we are responsible for feelings like anger, envy, and insecurity that we have blamed on others. (How many times have you said, "You're making me mad!") Even though we fear to admit this, it is good news. If we produce these emotions, it falls within our power to stop them. But we have to understand our part in them far better than we do, and that is what this remarkable book teaches.
The Unexpected Guest by Charles Osborne (she also said it was by Agatha Christie ha) (MOM)
It is a murder mystery with lots of fun twists and unexpected happenings, but is rather short and easy to read in 4-6 hours or so.
Murder on the Orient Express by ?? (Mom, Mary)
This is also a murder mystery, but the book has more details than the movie. It is also full of unexpected twists (unless you've seen the movie). Even if you've seen the movie, the book has more details and it's fun to see how all the details are woven together to create the intricate twists and how all the characters fit together. This book has lots of French phrases as the Inspector is Belgian. It is also rather short and can be read in 4-6 hours or so.
Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (Mom, hasn't read it)
I've heard lots of quotes from it. I think someone makes a deal with the Devil for something and it has a religious overtone to the book? I am requesting it from the library.
The Narnia series - C.S. Lewis (Mom, Jesse, Kevin)
They are interesting if you haven't read them yet. Also by C.S. Lewis and the books have way more details than the movies.
The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia) C.S. Lewis - (Wendy, etc.)
this would be fun especially since they're making the movie of it.
This book is the pre-cursor to the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. It explains how Narnia began, and how the wardrobe came to be, and how the witch came to be, and everything. I read it in 3 or 4 hours one night.
The Lord of the Rings books (Mom)
are even better than the movies, though the movies stayed pretty close in most areas.
The Hobbit (Mom, Kevin)
would be good to read before the movie comes out (It comes out in December)
Raising Up a Family to the Lord by Elder Gene R. Cook (Mom)
is a MUST read for all you parents and future parents. It is full of fantastic advice and encouragement for families.
Elder Groberg's books In the Eye of the Storm and The Fire of Faith (Mom)
are also excellent books
Stephen R. Covey's book The Divine Center (Mom)
is an excellent book to help you sort through priorities and how your life should be focused on Christ/God not family, church or anything else and how you have to be living in line with your core beliefs or you don't feel complete. It helps you plan the use of your time better and is also a MUST read book - or one like it to help you be successful in life/church/family.
Eleña by Jerry M. Young (Mom)
Grandpa always liked it. It is a romance of sorts but also involves angels protecting them and some fun things.
Fablehaven By Brandon Mull - (Mom, Wendy, Mary, Julie, Michelle)
I enjoyed the Fablehaven series. I also liked how the author put things to discuss and think about in the back of the books.
Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Mom)
I read it in college and remember it as a good book with interesting things that happened to him and other early Saints.
Edgar Alan Poe stories - (Sean)
Sean: They are good
Mom: - I disagree - once was enough!
I Am Legend - (Sean)
He says I am Legend is different that the movie, was long and not much action that he remembers.
The Uglies (Mary)
But it's about teenagers in the future and they have different rules and there are uglies and there are the pretties. When u're either 12 or 16.. U go and they pretty much do plastic surgery on u and then u sorta start a new life.. But some teenagers run away...and then stuff happens... and I think there's 4 books in the series?
The Candy Shop Wars by Brandon Mull (Jesse, Wendy)
Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan (Jesse)
The Undaunted by Gerald N. Lund (Dad)
Dad: That's a good book. It has the history of the trek and has the romance for the girls.
John Adams (autobiography?) (Dad)
Dad: John Adams was one of our great founding fathers. I enjoyed the book.
Tennish Shoes Among the Nephites (Kevin)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Kevin)
These is my Words by Nancy Turner (Wendy)
A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author's own family memoirs, these words belong to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier. Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon—from child to determined young adult to loving mother—she shares the turbulent events, both joyous and tragic, that molded her, and recalls the enduring love with cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot that gave her strength and purpose.
Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas (~ 208 pages, quick read) (Wendy)
Set in Depression-era Kansas and made vivid with the narrator's humorous down-home voice, it's a story of loyalty and friendship in a women's quilting circle called the Persian Pickle Club . Young farm wife Queenie Bean tells about the brief membership of a city girl named Rita, whose boredom with country living and aspirations to be an investigative reporter lead her to unearth secrets about the murder of a member's husband, in the process unearthing complicated relationships among the women.
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan (Wendy)
A young girl who has all the treasures a girl could want- beautiful dresses, a beautiful home with servants and a promise to riseto her mother's position to reside over El Rancho de la Rosas. A tragedy happens and Esperanza and her mother are forced to move to California and settle in a Mexican farm labor camp. They struggle to fit in among their own people during the Great Depression. (Based on her Grandmother's life)
Tuesdays With Morrie Mitch Albom (Wendy)
“The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house…The class met on Tuesdays. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience. No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. You were expected to respond to questions, and you were expected to pose questions of your own. Although no final exam was given, you were expected to produce one long paper on what was learned. That paper is presented here.” Very quick read, but life changing. True story.
Wish You Well David Baldacci (Wendy)
Precocious twelve-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives in the hectic New York City of 1940 with her family. Then tragedy strikes–and Lou and her younger brother, Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on their great-grandmother’s farm in the Virginia mountains. Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a new landscape, making her first true friend, and experiencing adventures tragic, comic, and audacious. But the forces of greed and justice are about to clash over her new home…and as their struggle is played out in a crowded Virginia courtroom, it will determine the future of two children, an entire town, and the mountains they love.
Stargirl Jerry Spinelli (Wendy)
This is a book you can read in an afternoon. It's just fun, and reminds you of the tough world of high school. ''She was homeschooling gone amok." "She was an alien." "Her parents were circus acrobats." These are only a few of the theories to explain Stargirl Caraway, a new 10th grader who wears pioneer dresses and kimonos to school, strums a ukulele in the cafeteria, laughs when there are no jokes, and dances when there is no music. In time, incredulity gives way to adoration as the student body finds itself helpless to resist Stargirl's charm, pure-spirited friendliness, and penchant for celebrating the achievements of others. However, popularity is a fragile and fleeting state.
The Help (Wendy)
Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s is a city of tradition. Silver is used at bridge-club luncheons, pieces polished to perfection by black maids who yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, to the young white ladies who order the days. This is the world Eugenia Skeeter Phelan enters when she graduates from Ole Miss and returns to the family plantation, but it is a world that, to her, seems ripe for change. As she observes her friend Elizabeth rudely interact with Aibileen, the gentle black woman who is practically raising Elizabeth's two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, Skeeter latches ontothe idea of writing the story of such fraught domestic relations from the help's point of view. With the reluctant assistance of Aibileen's feisty friend, Minny, Skeeter manages to interview a dozen of the city's maids, and the book, when it is finally published, rocks Jackson's world in unimaginable ways. With pitch-perfect tone and an unerring facility for character and setting, Stockett's richly accomplished debut novel inventively explores the unspoken ways in which the nascent civil rights and feminist movements threatened the southern status quo. Look for the forthcoming movie to generate keen interest in Stockett's luminous portrait of friendship, loyalty, courage, and redemption.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens & The Mansion by Henry Van Dike (Wendy)
Walk Two Moons- Sharon Creech
Thirteen-year-old Sal Hiddle can't deal with all the upheaval in her life. Her mother, Sugar, is in Idaho, and although Sugar promised to return before the tulips bloomed, she hasn't come back. Instead, Mr. Hiddle has moved Sal from the farm she loves so much and has even taken up company with the unpleasantly named Mrs. Cadaver. Multilayered, the book tells the story of Sal's trip to Idaho with her grandparents; and as the car clatters along, Sal tells her grandparents the story of her friend Phoebe, who receives messages from a "lunatic" and who must cope with the disappearance of her mother. The novel is ambitious and successful on many fronts: the characters, even the adults, are fully realized; the story certainly keeps readers' interest; and the pacing is good throughout. But Creech's surprises--that Phoebe's mother has an illegitimate son and that Sugar is buried in Idaho, where she died after a bus accident--are obvious in the first case and contrived in the second. Sal knows her mother is dead; that Creech makes readers think otherwise seems a cheat, though one, it must be admitted, that may bother adults more than kids. Still, when Sal's on the road with her grandparents, spinning Phoebe's yarn and trying to untangle her own, this story sings.
Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen (Wendy)
Two distinct, thoroughly likable voices emerge in Van Draanen's (the Sammy Keyes series) enticing story, relayed alternately by eighth graders Bryce and Juli. When Juli moved in across the street from Bryce, just before second grade, he found the feisty, friendly girl overwhelming and off-putting, and tried to distance himself from her but then eighth grade rolls around. Within the framework of their complex, intermittently antagonistic and affectionate rapport, the author shapes insightful portraits of their dissimilar families. Among the most affecting supporting characters are Bryce's grandfather, who helps Juli spruce up her family's eyesore of a yard after Bryce makes an unkind remark about the property, and Juli's father, a deep-feeling artist who tries to explain to his daughter how a painting becomes more than the sum of its parts. Juli finally understands this notion after she discovers the exhilaration of sitting high in a beloved tree in her neighborhood ("The view from my sycamore was more than rooftops and clouds and wind and colors combined"). Although the relationship between Bryce's grandfather and his own family remains a bit sketchy, his growing bond with Juli is credibly and poignantly developed. A couple of coincidences are a bit convenient, but Van Draanen succeeds in presenting two entirely authentic perspectives on the same incidents without becoming repetitious. With a charismatic leading lady kids will flip over, a compelling dynamic between the two narrators and a resonant ending (including a clever double entendre on the title), this novel is a great deal larger than the sum of its parts.
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