April's Group Read

I realized, I never posted on the blog what April's pick was, I just mentioned it on twitter.  Of course the results are on the side bar, but I should probably let you in on that, huh? ;)

We will be reading Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.  Discussions will happen on April 13th and April 30th.

I do not have the book in my possession at this point, so I cannot let you know chapter break downs.  But the first half will be discussed on the 13th and the second half / rest of the book on the 30th. ;)

Thanks for joining us!

The One That I Want - August's Blogger Book Pick

Tilly grows up in Smalltown USA and finds it comforting and everything she could want. She marries her high school sweetheart, Tyler, and they live a 'perfect' life in their hometown. She is the guidance counselor at their old high school and Tyler, a former baseball standout, works at a sporting goods store and they live in a house that Tilly's dad bought them as a wedding present. Do you sense a problem yet?

Tilly runs into an old friend Ashley at the town fair and she wants give Tilly a palm reading. Tilly refuses but Ashley insists on giving her 'clarity.' The clarity is the beginning of the end of Tilly's perfect life.

Tilly starts passing out and dreams about things happening to her loved ones. She has a dream her dad is drinking again after spending 10 years sober. She dreams her husband is moving out of their house and she dreams her best-friend who is separated from her husband has a new boyfriend.

How could this happen? Why is her life spinning out of control?

Tilly is a complete control freak about having things like they have always been and not rocking the boat. But the clarity that Ashley has given her has turned her into an angry and rude person she never knew was inside of her.

I really enjoyed the book and the small town drama. I grew up in a small town and still live very close to it and have worked in it. You know everybody's business 24/7. It is sooo hard living in the same place you grew up in, especially if you hit your peak at 17.

The whole 'clarity' thing though was wtf. I just didn't get that and I thought it was a lot of whack. However, Tilly needed a whack on the head to see things clearly. She was a little dense, but it was definitely a coping mechanism that she had put in place after the huge disruption her childhood had.

I also really really really liked the growth that she experienced as a character through the book. I like that she took back a hobby that interested her and got brave and ventured out.

I liked it more than I thought I would after I got 8 pages in and realized it was about someone working in a school and trying to have a baby and those are all topics that make me a little moody these days.

What did you all think about the book? If you wrote a review and want me to link it up let me know, or if you want to write your own guest post here about the book, let me know!

I will post discussion questions in the next week!

Discussion Questions: Firefly Lane

First off, thank you so much to Lisa, for actually partcipating in the book club activities the last couple of days! Sometimes, I really think I am just picking a book for myself to read and discuss with myself. And Lisa. ha. (and kelly, when i wrote this last nite, i hadn't seen hers yet either!)

If you actually DO want to partcipate in next month's selection and reading, go back to Monday and put in a suggestion for May's group read.

Now here are some discussion questions for Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah.

1. From her earliest memory, Tully feels abandoned by her mother and father. How does this sense of being unwanted influence her life? How does her troubled relationship with her mother lead to the decisions she makes in her life? Do children have an obligation of some kind to forgive their parents, even inthe face of repeated disappointment? How much do you think childhood heartaches make us who we are?

2. The Kate-Johnny-Tully triangle is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the novel. How does Johnny really feel about Tully? How does Tully feel about him?

3. When Chad leaves Tully, she rationalizes away her broken heart by saying,"if really loved me, he would wait for me." What does this reveal about Tully's perception of romantic love? How do these perceptions setthe stage for the rest of her life? Do you believe that Tully will ever fall in love?

4. Under what circumstances do you feel a betrayal is unforgivable? Do you feel that any of these characters crossed that line?

5. What role do you see Tully playing in Mara's life, after the pages of the novel are closed?

Leave your comments, and I will be back later to comment back!

Review: Firefly Lane

Wow. This was probably my favorite book so far in 2010. I flew through it and I have only done that with one other novel this year, 13 reasons why.

Firefly Lane covers the 30 year friendship of Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart. Absurdly different, they take on the world together. We enter their lives in 8th grade when Kate is a loner and Tully has moved to town with her stoner mom. They start off their relationship with Tully, in Tully form, being an awful bitch to Kate, and Kate being the friend Tully needs after a devastating experience. Tully's mom gets sent to jail and the two must rely on letters through most of high school.

Tully has decided they are going to be TV Reporters and Kate is easily manipulated into that dream as well. They are roomies at the University of Washington where they blossom and bloom in their own ways. Kate is a hopeless romantic and Tully the driven pessimist. After college they move into an apartment and get a job that Tully got for them and where they share Johnny as a boss.

Johnny like most people are drawn to Tully's personality and he is bewitched. Kate is equally bewitched with Johnny she falls head over heels with him and never breathes a word to anyone. Which, she should have because that would have saved her the heart ache of her BEST FRIEND SLEEPING WITH JOHNNY before they got together. Cuz that would have been nice.

Anywho, Kate the good Catholic girl, gets knocked up and marries Johnny. Tully can't understand marriage and tying yourself down and losing your dream. Which, Kate IS living her dream, but Tully is too stubborn to realize that HER dream isn't the same as Kate's.

Long story short, they grow up and older and Tully becomes hugely successful and Kate enjoys her life in her own way. They fight, they make up and they are always there for each other. Until they aren't after a horrendously bad decision on Tully's part. And that is alll of the spoliers I shall retell here.

My view: I LOVED IT. I adored Kate, flaws and all, and Tully was okay but she needed to be smacked. I couldn't stand how she always ran to Kate's mom to tattle. Dude, fight your own fights and realize the world is not all about you. Kate also needed to speak up for herself more. I could totally picture Johnny has incredibly handsome. Kate's daughter needed a serious attitude adjustment and I loved Mrs. Mularkey. It was such an awesomely written story that had me up way past my bedtime with tears dripping down. It probably wasn't the best book for me to read given how easy it is for me to cry about people dying lately, especially moms, but I adored it.

This was such a great book about enduring female relationships and mother daughter relationships.

What did you think? Who did you relate to the most? What part of the book made you want to throttle a character?

Book Blogger April Book Activities

Hello one and all. I finished Firefly Lane by Kirstin Hannah on Monday night and while reading the back section of her book was directed to her website http://www.kristinhannah.com/content/index.php . While there I found some interesting book club suggestions and wanted to let you all know about some exciting events coming next week on my blog and I hope you all will join in!

On Monday, April 26th I am going to share my review of Firefly Lane. If anyone else would like to also post their review on their blog that day, that would be awesome, and we could all compare what each other has to say!

On Tuesday, April 27th, it is Music of Your Life Day! Come up with a playlist spanning your life. So I will be sharing 12-20 songs that have had special meaning in my life. It would be awesome if you would ALSO like to host this on your blog that day as well. Or you could share in the comments. This is one of the ideas I gleamed from her site!

On Wednesday, April 28th I will be posting Discussion Questions for Firefly Lane. If you have any you would like to include in the post, respond here or you can email me at pinkflipflops44 at gmail dot com. Or you can pose them in the comments of the post next Wednesday!

That is all I have planned now, but I may or may not have a few more ideas up my sleeves. If you have any suggestions, comments or whatever let me know. I really hope everyone who reads the book will participate in one or all of next week's book club festivities!

Teaser Tuesday - Firefly Lane

When I started reading this I realized I had gotten the first couple chapters in my email about a year ago from the online book club my local library hosts. They send snippets of a book every day for a week and if you like it, they assume you will go to the library and check it out. I thought the beginning sounded awfully familiar, but I could NOT think of how it ended.. so glad that mystery was solved!

"Something was wrong, a wave of dizziness struck her so hard and suddenly
that she stumbled.
"Hold on honey," Tully said, moving her gently toward the door. "We
need to get to a phone." - pg. 246

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah is our Blogger Book Club selection for the month of April. Who is reading?

I'm back!

We had soooo much fun. It was definitely a needed break and it also brought up once again, how pretty Tennessee is, and how much I want to move there! I have some photo's I will share and some adventures that I will share, but today I am going to be busy enjoying the 80 degree weather that we are being blessed with, oh and catching up on all the blogs!

I am just into the third book of Middlesex. Bad, bad I know. But I will finish it. Just was too busy having fun on vacation to read ALLL the time! Though, I have to say the incest stuff is a bit much for me. Like, there aren't enough people in Detroit that you have to marry your cousin? UH NO.

In other news, our April's Group Read will be Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah.


Goodreads.com descrpition: From the New York Times bestselling author of On Mystic Lake comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship...

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success...and loneliness.

Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her...how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend...

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart...and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you...and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget...one you'll want to pass on to your best friend

Have a fabulous weekend! Hope you are doing something fun!

April Book Club suggestions...

I am doing this early because I am going out of town next week and want to put the poll up before I leave. (Don't worry I have a Middlesex post coming up later this week!)

So, what book would you like to read together next month?

I don't know about you, but I need something light!

Here is a link for April themes if you are so inclined to check it out!

I will post the poll Thursday, March 25th or early Friday, March 26th (my 26th birthday eeeek!).