Let’s talk about what went down last night.
The Regulars
Now that we’ve settled into the new Facebook format, we have some Boozy Book Club regulars – the ladies who show up every month and have such awesome, insightful things to say. Thank you for being there! We love you!
At this point we’ll have to change up the intro since we all know where we live and what we’re drinking by now…not in a stalker-y way, we promise.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
My own personal thought is that I never want to type that title again! From here on out it shall be referred to as Guernsey and Guernsey only.
Despite the long, unwieldy name, we were all charmed by this book. It’s easy for a book about war to become about the tragedy of it all, but Guernsey has this constant feeling of hope and lightness to it, despite all the horrors these people had seen. I can’t imagine anyone reading this book and not wanting to take a trip to the Channel Islands. Life there just seems simpler. That and the fact this book takes place 70 years ago…
It’s safe to say we’re all excited to see Michael Huisman as Dawsey, and we even had a BBC’er in the UK who had already seen the movie and gave it a good review. Too bad we have to wait til August around here…
Out of five Boozy Bottles we gave it 3.5.
The main thing everyone seemed to feel passionate about was in response to a quote from one of our favorite characters, Isola. She claims “Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
We politely disagree. Morgan put it best when she said
I find it hard to decide what good books to read but easy to choose the bad….
She’s right. Bad books garner low expectations; good books make you hopeful, which can be a dangerous thing.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing about this book again in August when the movie comes out so check back then, if for no other reason than the Michael Huisman in old-timey garb pics…
The Alice Network
Despite being set in almost the same time period (mainly) as Guernsey, The Alice Network has a very different feel. Light-hearted is not a word that would be used to describe it at all. It was moving, and a great story of what women are capable in bad times, working against the odds.
Where the residents of Guernsey were open and eager to tell their stories, every character in The Alice Network had secrets there were desperate to hide. It was interesting to read these books together and get such different perspectives on the same historical event. Great book picking, ya boozers.
Out of 5 Boozy Bottles we gave it 3.75.
What resonated most about this book in a book club that is 100% women (or at the very least 98%) was the double standards shown to women in wartime. All Eve wanted to do was fight. And for silly reasons, she couldn’t. So she served her country however she could.
Charlie just wants to find her cousin. But in doing so she finds herself. She gets out of her mother’s clutches and moves through the world of her own volition. The journey wasn’t about her but she discovered her courage along the way.
But as women, we’re still not satisfied. On the topic of double standards and how they’ve changed (0r haven’t), Diana said,
Unfortunately, things haven’t changed enough. Men are still heroes for having sex and women are branded sluts. Hopefully this gets better with the next generation.
But we all know women make the best spies. No one takes us seriously, they tell us all their secrets, and we get. shit. done.
May’s Boozy Book Club
So how do we choose these books? Each month we ask everyone in Boozy Book Club to suggest books that they think that we should read the next month because we’re nothing if not magnanimous rulers. This month y’all came up with five great choices and we’ll be reading the top two choices.
Without further ado, the books we will be reading for the May 21st meeting are…
Emergency Contact
Beth won us all over with her review of this book and had us judging it all by its cover—it’s beautiful, hang-on-your-wall-worthy cover. In the past few years, I’ve become more of an ebook type of gal for the fact that they save me money considering I’ll buy like a book a week. Yes, I know the library exists. My library’s ebook collection seems to be lacking only the books that I want to read and I don’t have time to go the actual library as often as I’d like. But for Emergency Contact I’m going to make an exception – I want this book on my already overstuffed shelf.
From its description, it seems like this will be a YA book with the right mix of substance and fluff. We read a lot of YA books about that college transition, meeting boys in unusual ways, or any number of ~important~ life events, but from the reviews, this take on those typical stories is standing out from the crowd.
Emergency Contact was released on March 27th but it already has a 4.07 rating on Goodreads. We’ll let our state of the art rating system be the judge of that. Buy it! (if only for the cover alone)
The Last Namsara
That’s Normal is two for two when it comes to book recs because this was another book review that was posted within the last month. You like us, you really like us! Shout out to Janna for this recommendation, which also has a gorgeous cover.
Seems like we’re all in the mood for a little YA this month, this time veering toward the fantasy side. I’m going to claim this book is like How to Train Your Dragon, but a little more serious and featuring a female protagonist rather than a doofy pre-teen boy. I could be totally wrong, but I’m never wrong.
My new author crush Tomi Adeyemi gave it a glowing 5-star review, saying, “The most simple thing I can say is this is the best book I have ever read and Kristen Ciccarelli is now my favorite author.” so I’m sold. No pressure or anything… Buy it!
You Want In?
So we won you over and you want to join the club? Easy. Just head over to Facebook, answer a couple of questions to prove you aren’t a book-hating troll person, and ta-dah – you’re in!
It’s up to you if you have the time or wherewithal to read both of our group reads, and if you don’t, there’s no judgment here. We also have 15 million things going on and get that the 500-page historical fiction novel might fall by the wayside (yep, your own moderator didn’t read both books this month! For shame!) Besides our monthly reads, you can participate in our weekly convos about what we’re reading and any interesting book-related things going on in the world. If you’re feeling brave and want to start your own conversation go for it! We’d love for members to talk about what they’re reading and offer more padding for our always growing TBR shelves. The only rules are to be nice to your fellow readers and keep it sort of, mainly, almost book related (pet pictures are encouraged – this is one instance where we don’t even care if there’s a book in the shot).
