February's Meeting: Next Book and New Stuff

Pizza, salad, gourmet popcorn, cookies, brownies and lots of laughter...oh, and we talked about books, too, at the NPBC February meeting.

Actually, nobody had finished reading it. But I'm glad we met anyway! We discussed the club and tossed around some ideas for 2011. Every year, we make adjustments to NPBC to try to make it better. Here's what we came up with:

-Always skip November-January. We never actually meet during these months anyway; we always cancel because everyone is just too busy. So, we are making that official.

-Mix up holding meetings at members' houses and at restaurants.

-See the movie. Some of the books we read end up in the theater. Why not go see it as a group?

-Continue with a book every other month.

-Choose books for the entire year up front.

These are all good things! In the next few days, I will post a big list of books. We will vote on them in order to determine our NPBC 2011 Book List. That way we will know what we're reading far in advance!

APRIL'S BOOK
We actually took it upon ourselves to choose April's book at the meeting. We felt we needed to get things moving.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sarah Gruen.

We will read the book and then see the movie in theaters April 22! I'm thinking maybe we even meet on April 22 and see the film on the same day. What do you think?

2011 BOOK LIST
This is your chance to throw out ideas for the books we will vote on! Please leave them in the comments! (I heard some of you were having difficulty commenting because it asks you for a "profile." You should be able to choose "Anonymous," but also if you have a Google account, you should be able to enter that information, as well. If you can't comment for some reason, just e-mail me.)

Future Book Suggestion: Room

I just read an interesting Q and A conducted by Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes, Good in Bed) with Emma Donoghue about her new book, Room, which sounds really good. Here's the Q and A. Synopsis below from Amazon:

"In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue's Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time." --Lynette Mong

The reviews are really, really good. Here's the Amazon page.

Book Suggestions

Hi everyone! Maybe I had too much of my peach margarita, but I forgot to ask you all to send in new suggestions for November's book. We still have some left over, but it's always good to get more.

Please leave a comment if you have a book suggestion!

Happy reading!
~Kerrie