Father Joe by Tony Hendra

I finished this month's book club book Father Joe by Tony Hendra last night, just in time for tonight's book club. It was good, better than I expected. I found myself more interested though, in the story of Father Joe than I was in the story of Tony Hendra. I've never heard of him, either of them, actually, so I didn't really have any preconceived notions of who Tony Hendra was or what he was like. It was really interesting at the end to find out that Father Joe has had such an influence on so many people's lives. I would've liked to have heard more about that. It was also interesting to read about life at Quarr and I found myself wanting to learn more about how monks live. That's often how I find things to read - I take one aspect of a book I'm reading and want to learn as much as I can about it.

Other than Father Joe I've read a few trashy novels. Nothing I'd really like to report on! I'm betting that we'll pick something on the lighter side at book club tonight. Our last two books have been nonfiction and not exactly happy reading.

In other news, Ryan's really starting to enjoy reading, or at least rapidly flipping the pages of his books. Every morning after I feed him, he picks out a few books and brings them to me and he sits on my lap while I read to him. Some of his current favorites are: I Love you as Much, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Binky, and Blankie. So sweet!

Come Again

Book club was really interesting. We discussed A Million Little Pieces in between James Frey's appearance on Larry King and his appearance on Oprah. One of the women had taped the Larry King show so we watched that. Interesting. Kind of funny that on that show Oprah's still defending him and a few days later is ripping into him on her own show. Hopefully this whole debacle doesn't send James right back to the bottle. Otherwise, he probably shouldn't have made up so much and then tried to peddle it as nonfiction. It wouldn't have been a bad fiction book, but once you know he made it up, it's hard to take seriously. The part that amuses me the most is that he exaggerated how much of a badass he was in rehab. That to me is funny, b/c that really is what he tried to convey. As someone at book club pointed out, once you hear him talk, it's hard to imagine anyone taking any of his threats seriously.

I also finished Party Season which I really liked. Hopefully Sarah Mason will write something else soon since I really enjoy her books. I've also recently reread 2 books that I own - Come Together and Come Again by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees. I liked both of them, but definitely liked Come Together better than Come Again. Come Together is the story of Jack and Amy and how they got together (hence the title). It's the basic plot of boy and girl meet, fall in love, something terrible happens or there's a big misunderstanding so they break up, true love conquers all and they get back together. Cheesy, but I enjoyed it. Come Again is about 4 of Amy & Jack's friends and it's a little harder to follow and as there are 4 main characters, you don't get to know them as well. Also, Jack & Amy are planning their wedding at this point and come across as kind of lame. I didn't like the 2 of them as much in this book.

I just finished this morning a book called The Prince of Central Park about a young boy who ran away from his abusive foster mother to live in Central Park. It was good, if a little unbelievable. Shockingly, I'm not reading a single book at the moment since I finished this last one. Must find something good to read...