January Recap: Omaha Bookworm's

Thank you to Robyn for hosting the Omaha Bookworm’s last night! As always Robyn is a wonderful hostess, we drank wine and had so much food to enjoy as we mingled and discussed books. I swear we could talk all night! My book club friends keep my energized – they hold a special place in my heart.

Since we didn’t have an author discussion this month we discussed the book (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society) for about 30 minutes – We all enjoyed the book a lot but I’m sad to say that most of us read this book over a year ago so we didn’t remember a lot of the details. We did however discuss the German occupation, horrible food situation, the letter writing process and the struggles parents must have had when making the decision to send their children to safety.

In addition to discussing the book I asked everyone to share their internet habits, what they are currently reading and a recent favorite book. I think this will be a ‘feature’ for us, so next month I will write down the book titles to pass along to everyone.

Internet Habits: Most of us visit the internet several times a day. We check email and visit our trusted news sites, some of us admitted we like to visit Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn (can you blame us?).

- A few mentioned visiting Facebook and getting caught up in conversations from time to time.
- No one uses Twitter (other than Lisa from Lit and Life and me).
- I think it’s a safe conclusion to draw that we each spend about an hour a day on the internet, sometimes more and we all feel the internet has had a direct impact on our reading. We are reading less than we did a few years ago.

Since blogging about a year ago I have spent too much more time in front of my laptop. It’s so easy to sit in the family room with my laptop on my lap while my husband watches a movie I’m not interested in watching. I need to find a better use of this time so it’s time to break a bad habit - no computers after 9PM.

Books we are reading and books worth recommending to others: Thank you Ellen for recommending Zadie Smith’s new essay collection titled Changing my Mind. I have reserved a copy at the library and can’t wait to read it.

Lisa shared a book that she read recently and enjoyed a lot, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Wait Till Next Year. Kearns Goodwin writes in a way that makes you feel like she sitting chatting with you. This book is about her childhood in the Bronx right after WWII through the mid-1950's. I wanted to live in that neighborhood!

My recommendation was The Weight of Heaven, which I recently reviewed and enjoyed very much.

Book ratings: The last topic worth sharing is our personal rating system. We are a tough group and it takes A LOT to get 4 stars from us, much less 5 stars. While discussing this I mentioned that I have noticed a few people on Good Reads who give 4 or 5 stars to every novel they read. It was interesting to hear how each of us defines 4 stars (we discussed this briefly last night). If a book is enjoyable but not wonderful I will give the book 3 stars. If I feel a book is compelling/interesting/discussion worthy I will give it 4 stars. I seldom award a book 5 stars, just a few a year.

We are going to discuss this more next month, I’m curious now… what is your definition of 4 stars – what makes a book great to you? What is most important to you, the writing style, character development or the story line/plot?

Next month: We are reading The Day the Falls Stood Still, written by Cathy Buchanan. We will be discussing this book with the author. If you have read the book and have a question for us or the author, please leave a comment.