The Help

I just finished listening to The Help written by Kathryn Stockett and performed by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer and Cassandra Campbell. It is a wonderfully written and performed first novel.

Ms. Stockett set her book in Jackson, Mississippi at the beginning of a very difficult time in our history. The stories of two African-American maids and one white socialite were touching, enlightening, sad, joyful and often funny.

The Help left me feeling sad that my time with these women had ended but confident in the ability of the women, both black and white, to overcome the limitations set upon them by the time in which they lived.

Listening to books is a great pleasure and a way to extend my “reading time” and this book is by far one of the best I have ever “read”.

-Audrey

The Wildwater Walking Club

I just finished the Wildwater Walking Club. by Claire Cook.  (It was recommended to me by my mother.)  It is the first book by Clair Cook that  I have  read. 

The main character takes a buyout at work and tries to figure out what to do next with her life.  She starts walking everyday and finally meets her neighbors who quickly become her friends and create the walking club together.  Its deceptively simple story.  The novel explores the concept "investing in oneself" with humor and truth. 

I also loved that it takes place in Massachusetts.

I read it in one sitting.

-Natalie

D-Day: the Battle for Normandy

I am working my way through Antony Beevor's fascinating D-Day: the Battle for Normandy. I am generally not a reader of military histories but was attracted to this by good reviews and a lingering guilt that I should know more about the largest and most impressive -- not to mention, significant -- military invasion in history. I have not been disappointed.

D-Day is constructed as a straight narrative of the events that unfolded between the June 6, 1944 allied invasion of France and the liberation of Paris in August of the same year. Beevor manages the seemingly impossible task of making this approach both informative and page-turningly engaging -- even more impressive given that every reader begins the book knowing the outcome. He does pause now and again to fill in background details, so you can pick D-Day up and start reading even if you know nothing about this phase of the war. Naturally, those readers who are well acquainted with WWII will get even more from this work.

I'll check back in with a complete review when I have finished it. (Of course, at nearly 600 pages, there is always the possibility that I may become distracted by some other shiny thing before then, good as this book may be....)


-Paul

Note: I am embarrassed to say that I never finished this. I did get distracted by other things. Someday I may return to it. What I did read was excellent and I have no doubt that it would have continued to be so had I stuck with it.