News from Duck's Cottage

I'm in the middle of Beside a Burning Sea for our February book club discussion. John Shors has crafted a fast moving story about a WWII hospital ship (carrying munitions in its belly) that is torpedoed leaving only a handful of mismatched survivors on a remote Pacific Island. I'll be compiling a list of questions from our discussion this week and forwarding them to Mr. Shors. His responses will be posted on our blog at www.duckscottage.blogspot.com. Our group recently picked our next six months of reading and in addition to the above title the list includes The Yacoubian Building (Alaa Al Aswany), A Mercy (Toni Morrison), The Reader (Bernhard Schlink), Unaccustomed Earth, (Jhumpa Lahiri) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz). Our January book was Kabul Beauty School by Barbara Rodriguez. General consensus decided it was a good story, but easier to swallow as a novel versus memoir. Rodriguez' naivete and impulsiveness did not lend to making her a sympathetic character and the controversy garnered post publication also detracted from her claims of honest intent.

Book Reporter Network's Carol Fitzgerald popped in last month raving about two recent releases- The Help by Kathryn Stockett and Still Alice by Lisa Genova. Both titles have been receiving a lot of media attention as well. I really enjoyed Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone- a terrific novel with a superb story. This is definitely my pick-of-the-month. I'm going to be searching out some of Verghese's earlier work as well. Penguin was johnny-on-the-spot with its new release The New York Times: Obama, The Historic Journey. A gorgeous coffee-table size book featuring lots of pictures, articles, editorials and speeches. Over on the kid's side of things Carl Hiassen is back with a new YA novel- Scat: "How could a teacher disappear on a field trip? What is going on in Black Vine Swamp?" Charlie just read and did a project on Cormac McCarthy's The Road proving it is teenager worthy. Sarah just read Eggs by Jerry Spinelli and is begging me to read it so I'm going to hit it this weekend.

Coming up soon on my list is Roanoke by Margaret Lawrence- a novel of Elizabethan intrigue highlighting the forever unsolved mystery of the Lost Colony.

We've been getting inundated with a lot of advances for summer reading and I have to say it looks like its going to be a good summer! (Unfortunately it will be a longer wait for Pat Conroy's new novel- South of Broad which is due in September.)