News. Green Beer. Reading.

Good Evenin' to Ye- said in my best Irish accent, which is actually pretty terrible. Terrible enough that I don't think I'll honor anyone with the sound of it besides my husband, after we've had a few pints tonight.

Happy St. Paddy's!

Book club has long since come and gone so I won't bore you to tears with that story, but I would like to encourage my friends, colleagues, and anyone else popping over here to check things out to jump on the bandwagon with me and read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay- Michael Chabon. I've got it on high authority that this book. must. be. read. by. all. It is big, and it is long, but I won't be intimidated (that's what she said...)!

Maybe I'll even talk someone into having a cup o' joe with me and chatting about it some time in April. Let me know if you're reading along!

Lastly, I'm part of a cool site called www.goodreads.com . You can list all of your books and rate them and make lists of what you want to read and share it with your friends. From what I've heard, there's also an iPhone app that let's you scan all of the books on your bookshelf into the website as well. Sounds fun! Go sign up for your goodreads account and add me as a friend.

Happy reading, and green beering!

GASP. It's a new book club book.

I know what you're thinking. You've been thinking how much you miss being gathered together with all of your favorite book readers chatting about a great read. Well, I've got your remedy right here in my back pocket, and let me tell you right now, it's good one.

I'm reading The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. If you don't know anything about it, click the link and you can read a bit about it, or pick it up through Amazon. From there you can also click through to Amazon and find the Kindle version.

I'm starting this book now and I plan to read it over the course of the next two months. I'm hoping you'll join me.

We'll meet the week of July 26th, either at a coffee shop, a pub, or maybe a pool. 

For now, pick up your copy, let me know if you're interested, and we'll go from there. 

Much love and happy summer to all!

The Abstinence Teacher, and Eat, Pray, Love

Hi everyone, Shylah here. We've been in hiding for a bit while we completely overhaul our lives in the best way possible. You can read more about that at husbands site. We plan to mostly be in hiding for some time, and some of the ways we used to do things are probably gone for good. But one thing hasn't changed, and that's my passion for books.

So I still finished our last book club selection, The Abstinence Teacher, and I did want to take a moment for discussion. I'd like to read your comments on the book below. Comment away. I don't have a lot to say because for me, well, the story lines seemed quite familiar to me. For a good 10 years of my life I was surrounded and enveloped in a very evangelical, christian lifestyle. A lot of that time was spent questioning those ideas, and now I find myself "free" from that and able to appreciate all spirituality. So I have seen both sides of this book played out in a lot of scenarios. Nothing came off as a surprise, nothing seemed shocking, nothing really grabbed me at all. And the ending was a bust. It seemed for me as though the author forgot some pages or got bored and never came up with a good ending.

On the other hand, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert completely took me by surprise. I purchased this book in NYC last July ( at the Strand!). I have picked up and put it down 20 times. There were many moments in the beginning of the book that I wasn't feeling that "tug", you know, the special book tug, that every time you even think of putting it down you read 20 more pages because it's that good. Well, half way through, I felt it. There is much more depth to the author's journey than you would notice at first glance. When I pick up a good book, I am expecting it to speak to me in some manner. This book did. In many ways it has challenged me to let go of things, forgive myself for things I didn't realize were still popping up, and also to take time to meditate and care for the spiritual part that I've been pushing down the last couple of years due to a big heaping serving of what I like to call "Spiritual Shell Shock". I highly recommend it ( the book, not the shell shock).  I don't want to say too much else about it.

I haven't decided what the next book club selection is. It's a tie between The Windup Girl, and Eating the Dinosaur. I'll take your vote, and we can have an online discussion about it if there are any interested parties.

I do miss everyone and I hope we will resurface some time before summer. Just know we are well. We are taking a sort-of 'time out' for 2010. Yes, we'll be around occasionally but we are mostly completely unplugging, getting plenty of sleep, keeping our bodies completely pure by embracing our vegan diet like never before, and trying to be good stewards of all of the gifts we are given every day- good health, good jobs, love, family, and the peace of our home.

My love goes out to all of you. I hope to hear from all my dear reader friends soon.

Peace-

Shylah

p.s.  please add http://tooshyart.blogspot.com/ to your rss feed to be updated on forthcoming art projects.

Meetup Cancellation

Hi Everyone-

With regret I must inform you that our book club meetup will be cancelled until further notice. I have tried to no avail to garner more interest in the club as a whole but with everyone's Spring schedules it's looking quite tricky. Although we do love the pleasure of our friend's company, it has been difficult to put so much effort into the actual meetup without having enough indication of who will actually make it. With all of this said, I will continue reading a new book each month and posting it here, in the hopes that you will read along with us. I would like to keep Book Club going in some form, but I'm unsure of how to make that happen. I am very open to suggestions. We've been reading together for a year. My vision last summer was to have at least a dozen people together once a month, whether it be at our apartment or at a coffee shop. I'd still love to see that happen. Please let me know if you have any questions, ideas, etc.

I've loved getting to know my new friends and I hope to be a part of your 2010. :)

Happy Reading,

Shylah

Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer

For our Book Club, we just read another of Foer's books. I loved it so much and held it so dearly that I knew this book was next. The first 50 pages, just as I was told by others, were very difficult for me to grasp. The book moves in between past and present, and another present somewhere else, and letters. I was worried it would never come together. And then, suddenly, somewhere around the middle of the novel, I was enchanted. The book is incredible. I think I finished it in one week on lunch hours. Pure greatness.

Every time I remember that Foer was only 25 when he wrote it, I'm pretty miffed about my own shortcomings at my "advanced age". I highly recommend it this book.

For a long time I've been hearing what a great adaptation the movie is, and I'm looking forward to watching it, hopefully tonight.

greetings and such.

i used to have a little book club site. no one ever came by to visit me. so i'm moving it into another direction. this site will combine the Geek Chic site that was once found here., and additional thoughts on other books i'm reading, others are reading, and so on. i hope to have other contributors in the near future.

sometimes we hold local events. two dates you should begin to be aware of:

Monday February 15th- we are celebrating my husband's- AKA the Jake- birthday at The Flying Saucer pub at Huebner Oaks.

Tuesday March 2nd- our next book club. We are reading The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta.

Please check back here for updates, and delete the old site from your subscriptions/ rss feeds.

Much more to come here soon.

xxxooo.