The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (#11, Contemporary Fiction)

How can it be that I have never read Toni Morrison? Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, has been on my list for a while. And yes my friends, it is an Oprah Book Club pick. In fact, Morrison is the most recurring author on that list with which I have had an ongoing love/hate relationship with.

My book club voted this one as our April read, but as we all started to read it, we all decided we didn't like it. It is kind of an unpleasant book; there isn't anything in it to lift the spirits and inspire you. It is what Morrison intended; a hard, unflinching look at the wide reaching effects of slavery on into the 20th century. The slaves were emancipated from their physical chains, but what about the emotional ones? The characters in this novel struggle with the paralyzing white ideals of beauty. Pecola is the subject of the novel, the specimen we have to study and watch unravel as she eeks out an existence that can barely be considered such by our modern day standards. It's not a small wonder that none of us particularly like this book. There is incest, child molestation, and other similar horrors. And there is no happy ending here.

On a technical note, Morrison is a great writer and I enjoyed the slow unfolding of the story through multiple points of view. I further illuminated the villainous characters and you couldn't help but be both disgusted by and sympathetic to them.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (#8, Contemporary Literature)

Sometimes I read books and halfway through I start to wonder why it took me so long to find them. How is it that I am just now reading Bernhard Schlink's The Reader? An Oprah's book club book, I read this one fairly quickly even though it was one of those books that makes you want to take your time and savor the writing. I really enjoyed Schlink's style; it is abrupt and brutal and simple, yet almost always beautiful.

This was March's book club pick and probably my favorite book of the year. Controversial and thought provoking, I enjoyed whetting my literary chops on this one. I found myself slipping back into English major mode, questioning everything and trying to figure out my stance on just what Schlink is saying.

Set in Germany in the years following the Holocaust, The Reader tells the story of a love affair between a former concentration camp guard and the teenage boy she helps one day on his way home from school. Part one is slightly unsettling and a little hard to swallow at times but the portrayal of this young boy's love for this older woman is gripping, as is the impending fallout their love affair causes.

Second Chance by Jane Green (#5, Chick Lit)

For the month of February, our book club voted to read Jane Green's Second Chance. We were searching for something on the lighter side of things, something that would allow us to recover from our heavy first read, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Now if you have been reading booknymphs for a while, you know how I feel about chick lit. I always begin these books with such great hope--I always want them to be good, I want them to be satisfying and funny and romantic and overall, a great story. But as we know, good chick lit is hard to find. Aside from reading Jane Austen--who can be credited with the creation of the chick lit genre--it's pretty rare to find a piece of modern chick lit that I actually enjoyed and would recommend to a friend. That said, I started Second Chance with low expectations. I didn't really think it would be that good and I worried how the book club discussion of it would go.

I was right about the quality of the book. It was chinsy and downright annoying at times when the narrative style fell into typical chick lit whiney whiney female babble. That is my number one pet peeve when reading these girly books. I cannot stand a whiney main character waxing about how no man will ever love her or what if he likes me or I don't like him or I really do like him or what am I saying, there is no way he will ever like me etc. You get the picture. It reads too much like a personal diary for me and if I wanted to read something like that I'd read my own journals from high school.

I was wrong about the quality of our book club discussion. I thought the six of us would have a hard time finding things in this book to talk about but apparently our abilities to relate to the themes of Second Chance made for a long, interesting discussion. The subject matter (the death of a close friend bringing the group closer together) really sparked an intense discussion as we all could better relate to the characters. Compared to our stilted and mostly quiet discussion of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Second Chance inspired a vibrant conversation that had us all sharing stories and laughing uncontrollably. And the funniest thing is that only two people actually finished the book! Sadly, I must admit I had fifty pages to go when we met to discuss but I finished it afterward, I promise!

Our pick for March is Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. Sarah is hosting and it will be interesting to see how our discussion of another heavy themed book will go.