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dandj
Love of my life....
Member since 5/05 3687 total posts
Name:
Denise
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Book suggestion needed
I have a $10 gift card for a book through buy.com and need ideas for a book to buy... I read pretty much anything except for science fiction or the trashy romance novels.
Thanks!
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Posted 8/22/05 6:31 PM  |
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Long Island Weddings
Long Island's Largest Bridal Resource |
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Re: Book suggestion needed
How about:
The Secret Life of Bees
anything by Jodi Picoult (so far I've read, My Sister's Keeper, The Pact, and The Plain Truth - all excellent. I'm taking a one book break)
or anything by
Nicholas Sparks (the Notebook was excellent, even a good movie; I'm in the middle of The Wedding, its the book after the notebook.
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| Posted 8/22/05 7:06 PM |
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btrflygrl
me and baby #3!
Member since 5/05 12013 total posts
Name:
Shana
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Re: Book suggestion needed
loved the Secret Life of Bees...read it in ONE DAY
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| Posted 8/28/05 12:22 PM |
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rose825
Best Friends
Member since 6/05 10228 total posts
Name:
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Re: Book suggestion needed
The wedding was very good.
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| Posted 8/29/05 11:30 AM |
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Leeners
:)
Member since 5/05 4898 total posts
Name:
Eileen
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Re: Book suggestion needed
Secret Life of Bees was AMAZING! I also have jumped on the Jodi Picoult bandwagon so I would recommend those too.
I'm also reading a good one now. It's an autobiography called "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by a first-time author (Koren Zailckas). It's gotten rave reviews from everyone from the Times to People magazine.
Synopsis:
FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Perhaps the most cautionary aspect of Zailckas' eye-opening account of girlhood alcohol abuse is the fact that her story is surprisingly common. Like many girls, she took her first tentative sips at the age of 14. Two years later, she would remember few details of the night she landed -- bruised, filthy, and completely spent -- in the local emergency room, a couple of drinks away from death by alcohol poisoning.
Zailckas uses lyrical and often poetic language to narrate her ugly downward spiral. From thrill-seeking teenager to blacked-out sorority girl, she refuses to flinch at the disclosure of the humiliating details of her past. She wants to tell her story, and she wants to tell it honestly, as a warning to those girls who would potentially follow in her footsteps.
This terrible societal trend needs courageous women like Zailckas to sound the horn. Today, young girls drink in greater numbers than ever before, and they often binge-drink. Alcohol does for them what it has long done for others: gives false courage, numbs emotional pain, and provides a few hours in which, against all evidence, life seems to be okay. Fans of Goat and A Million Little Pieces will appreciate the sincerity of this memoir; admirers of Odd Girl Out and Reviving Ophelia would do well to read it, too. (Spring 2005 Selection)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old KorenZailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes “the usual.” With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas's unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye gets to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls' getting drunk. She persuades us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned binging.
Like the contemporary masterpieces The Liars' Club, Autobiography of a Face, and Jarhead, Smashed is destined to become a classic. A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic over-drinking or of someone they love, Smashed is an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping achievement.
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| Posted 8/29/05 12:04 PM |
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dpli
Daylight savings :)
Member since 5/05 13973 total posts
Name:
D
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Re: Book suggestion needed
Posted by Leeners
Secret Life of Bees was AMAZING! I also have jumped on the Jodi Picoult bandwagon so I would recommend those too.
I'm also reading a good one now. It's an autobiography called "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by a first-time author (Koren Zailckas). It's gotten rave reviews from everyone from the Times to People magazine.
Eileen, if you liked that, you might also like a book I read not long ago called "The Only Girl in the car" by Laurie Dobie. I think you also might find it helpful with the work you do (from what I have seen of your posts.)
From Publishers Weekly
Freelance journalist Dobie grew up in a small Connecticut town in the 1960s, the oldest girl in a Catholic family of eight. Her memoir opens when she's 14, sitting on her front lawn, all dolled up in her "candy-striped halter top, bell-bottom jeans, and platform shoes," waiting to get picked up by some guy-any guy-and lose her virginity. She doesn't know much about boys or men, but she's drawn to the bad ones, those who leer, eyeing her sexual possibilities. Before long, she's had sex with a few and acquired a steady boyfriend. While the sex isn't exactly arousing, she gets something she needs more: a crowd, a scene. Kathy has her Jimmy and a backseat full of Jimmy-wannabes, and they're cruising the neighborhood, drinking and smoking dope. Being "the only girl in the car" is a kick, until the night it turns into a gang rape and Kathy's whole world turns on her. She's ostracized so badly, she can't confide in her closest girlfriends, much less her family. Slowly she recovers by "remaking" herself as a loner, as a writer. Like many coming-of-age stories, Dobie's is painful, in large part because of the cultural cusp her generation of women had to navigate. Sexual liberation was celebrated-even the youth center director talked with the teens while she dallied in bed with her boyfriend-but girls with reputations were doomed. Although Dobie doesn't expose a new world, her text is engaging.
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| Posted 8/30/05 12:52 PM |
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