Book Club 2008: The Innaugural Review

Mrs. Boss invited me to be part of her book "club," this year. It's nothing so formal as a regular book club. The premise is this, everyone in the circle chooses a book up front and reads it in the first month. Then, on the first of the new month, everyone sends their book to the next reader on the list. At the end of the circle, you get your book back, and you've gotten to read however many books there are in the circle.

I'm psyched!

My book:
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield

It looked like a tasty novel; a mystery, a family secret, a reclusive fictional author... It turned out to be a twisty, sly, gothic thriller of a story. It was an unabashed love song to the Brontes and all their contemporaries. It dug inside a family's secrets, peered behind the social niceties to the human ugliness, and occasionally its beauty. It celebrated the reader, the lover of stories, the book-obsessed. I loved reading it. I stayed up late reading it. Was it an "important" novel? Probably not, but oh, did I enjoy myself. The language and atmosphere conjured "Jane Eyre," which isn't an accident, and the characters were very real, despite their fantastical natures.

Next up:
What Is Mine, by Anne Holt