Young Adult online bookgroup anyone?

I sort of want to try having a few bookgroups going on with different themes so that if one book doesn't interest someone maybe another one will. So, I thought I'd start one in the Young Adult theme because I recently have been reintroduced to YA and really love reading these books.

I have heard about this book called Twilight by Stephenie Meyer - hopefully I spelled her name right. Anyways, it's supposed to be pretty good. I'm on LibraryThing - mostly for ideas of what to read and what's popular (if you're not on it you should be!) and I was checking out some YA groups and this book came up a few times. The rating amongst readers of the book on Library thing is 4.42 out of 5 - pretty good rating. And it's a vampire/love story type book - never read one of those, I'm thinking it's time to spread my wings! There is a saga - something like 4 so far and Twilight is the first of the saga. It looks pretty long - around 550 pgs I think.

So - I think I'll start doing posts for this book as well - it'll probably take me a week to get organized and get another post out about this with a plan and the idea will again be to post questions throughout the reading of the book. So if you're interested check it out at your local library! And the great thing about these posts is you can read at your leisure and read the post as you've read the section :) Feel free to comment whether or not you like YA books and are interested in reading this one!

Eat,Pray,Love - Italy, 13-24

Finally, a post! You know the drill - if you haven't read thru tale 24 in Italy you won't want to read what is below - it may have spoilers! And if you've read past tale 24...don't reveal anything!

So we're in Italy, the Eat part of the book and it has become very aparrent in these middle tales that Gilbert (author) has some major issues...depression and loneliness are constant companions. She attempts to go off of her anti-depressants (because she's in Italy and feels this will solve everything) and finds herself in desperate need to go back on her medication.

I really see the meaning of Eat - food, nurishment, eating is afterall a basic need and we see that Gilbert has often set aside her basic needs in life. Either for men, work, etc. She explains how she often disappears into the man in her life...becomes like him...changes to be more of him and less of her.

Question 1: Going to Italy, is Gilbert attempting to escape her depression...runaway from the choice she made to get divorce or is she facing her depression and divorce or face it all? And how so (in regards to whichever option you chose)?

Question 2: How do you think eating in Italy, enjoying the pleasures of Italy, will help Gilbert deal with her depression, loneliness, choices she has made in relationships(i.e. divorce, David)

Busy Weekend

What a lovely weekend I just had. I traveled up to Duluth with two of my dearest friends, Kris and Megan...both from college. (megan I have actually been friends with since high school). We had a great time exploring Duluth. What did we do?

Well...we visited the Glensheen Mansion, The Duluth Zoo, An Aquarium, Gooseberry Falls, The Tweed Art Museum at UMD, The Depot, shopped a little in Canal Park, and ate great food!
We stayed in a lovely B&B called the Olcott House, had a fabulous and elegant hot breakfast at 9am both Sat and Sun morning prepared by David one of the owners of the B&B. And at night settled into our carriage house and watched a little t.v. or dvd's.

It was such a nice weekend, and of course I'm a little behind now on the Eat,Pray,Love discussion questions because of the weekend getaway. But the questions for tales 13-24 will be up soon! Probably later tonight :)

I advise anyone who has a free weekend and lives in this area to visit Duluth for a weekend, it is so much fun!

Eat, Pray, Love: Italy, 1-12

This is the first post with the hope that a discussion about the book Eat, Pray, Love will evolve. A warning: there will be spoilers (comments that will disclose portions of the book we are discussing) so if you have not read the portion this post is discussing and don't want to know what's in the book then read no further!

Enjoying the book? I am, I really like her style of writing. It is as if she is in the room with me, telling a story, or we're having a conversation. Yet at the same time she has these moments in her writing where she goes into a "descriptive tangent" that are beautifully structured and creative.

This post is only about tales 1-12 in the first book on Italy. If you have read further please do not discuss past tale 12 of book 1!

Question 1: Do you have a favorite "tale" out of the first 12?


Question 2: I think this will be a highly spiritual book, What do you think of her relationship with her God?

I'll leave the questions at those two...feel free to comment or add your own discussion questions. I will have more on Monday about tales 13-24 from Book One Italy. Ciao!

Timeline of posts for eat, pray, love

As promised, I have taken a peak at the book eat, pray, love...here's a little about how the book is set up. There are 3 sections to the book, and each section has 36 tales. My initial thought was to write a discussion post every week but because of the amount of tales in the entire book (108) I think I'll do two discussion posts a week.

Every Monday and Friday I will write a post with a few thoughts and discussion questions based on 12 tales. So this means it will take us about a week and a half to get through each section. I'm not sure how this pace will work for everyone so we'll try if for the first section and see how well it works. So here's the plan for the first section titled:

Book One Italy or "Say it Like you Eat it" or 36 Tales about the Pursuit of Pleasure (seriously...that's the way it's written in the book!)

Friday (15th) post on tales 1-12
Monday (18th) post on tales 13-24
Friday (22nd) post on tales 25-36

And if you plan on reading the book and possibly joining in on the discussions please feel free to comment on this post and introduce yourself! I'd love to know who I'm reading with :)

Online Bookgroup - Eat, Pray, Love

Okay - Let's give this a try! I have a couple of friends who are planning on reading Eat, Pray, Love and I want to join in on the fun but find it difficult to travel to be in their bookgroup! So I'm going to read the book and then write entries into my blog with my thoughts or questions - basically a post that will be a "discussion thread." And I would love to invite anyone who reads to join in on the fun!

So here's the plan...I'm going to get the book this weekend and create a timeline (based on the contents of the book and my schedule!) of when I will be posting "discussion threads" about the book. I will post this timeline this weekend and don't worry I won't start posting "discussion threads" right away, I'll give you all enough time to go check the book out at your local library :)

Here's the book info:
Title: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Wondering if your library has it? If you're on Facebook and are friends with me you'll notice I have WorldCat just above my wall...feel free to use it to search for this book in your area. Type in the title and search.
When you see the title click on it.
On the next page that opens scroll down a bit and enter your location information.
Then Boom! Libraries (hopefully close to you) that have the book you're looking for, amazingly easy :)

I'm excited to read with you all!

The New Job

I promised I would write a little about how the new job at Capella is going and I try to make do on promises. Here goes!

My new job is only part-time - mon-thurs about 25 hours a week and it is temporary. I'm helping out while a librarian is on maternity leave. I love librarians who go on maternity leave - it provides great opportunities for future librarians like me.

It's different working downtown again, I used to work in downtown mpls as a manager of a Payless...this was about 4 years ago. Downtown mpls still feels the same but I feel different - my environment is so different. I have a cubicle that I can decorate if I want! I always had a desk when I was in retail but I never used it because I was never sitting! So it's fun to think of which pictures I should put on my desk. There's a kitchen on our floor and in the kitchen there's coffee all day long - whenever I want it - this is probably my favorite thing about Capella :)

In fact, one thing that I've especially enjoyed the last 2 weeks is all the free food...Capella is celebrating the start of a new program so they brought lunch in for everyone the 1st week I was there and breakfast for everyone the 2nd week. And our library staff went out to lunch this week at a very nice restaurant - I love food...especially free food! I'm sure this kind of fun isn't always going on but it is so much fun!

And of course I love being around so many librarians. There are 9 of them and I've had a chance to listen and watch them in action! And it makes me feel like I am really ready to graduate and be a librarian. There's always this fear that you didn't take the right classes and aren't as prepared as employers and patrons expect but now I really do feel ready and confident.

Thanks for the responses!

Thank-you to all that filled out the survey I had posted on my blog. I've taken it off because I'm all finished with the presentation. It didn't go as well as I had hoped, I often forget information,etc. but it was great that I had responses to show the class...and to show them how to retrieve reports and all that jazz! I may actually start an online bookgroup - the responses were too few and varying to come up with a consensus of what the majority of responsders would enjoy...so I may just give every genre a chance and maybe it'll reach new people...that I haven't even met! How fun would that be :) I think it would be in the form of a wiki so that people can interact more easily with one another online. So many ideas :) Right now, project runway is calling my name so I must flee...