Love her or hate her?

Well....I love her, but I know at least one of our little club members that can't stand her! So ignoring this friend, I am excited to write that I saw Lauren Conrad on Rachel Ray after work a couple weeks ago and have been meaning to write every since. She's got another book coming out called "Sugar & Spice" and was promoting her "Style" book as well. Has anyone in our club read any of her novels yet? (L.A. Candy or Sweet Little Lies)? I am ashamed and surprised that I haven't, but am ordering them online as I write this!!!

She's so cute and has amazing style (in my opinion of course - I'm excited to check out her line at Kohl's when I head to the States for Christmas. How cute is her little boyfriend blazer?)...But I really can't wait to hear back from those that disagree...I can take you on! hahaha

Night night,

xoxo

Questions to ponder...

Hello BFABers,

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Nat B's on Tuesday night. Can you believe it's been a month already? She said that she has some great, but long winded questions...so I thought I would post a few to get us thinking about the book (especially for those who read it months ago and need reminders of the story)!

There are so many great reflection/ discussion questions out there, but here are some of my favourites:

1. Kavita faces a difficult choice at the beginning of the novel. Did she make the right decision? What would you have done if you were in Kavita's place? What would the repercussions be of making a different choice?

2. Both families in the novel leave their home in search of better life --- the Merchants leave their village for Bombay, and Krishnan leaves India for America --- and this act of migration creates longing for home and feelings of displacement. Do you think their migrations were driven more by wanting to leave home or being attracted to a new place? Would the characters have made different choices if they knew what the consequences would be?

3. The novel explores the issue of how gender affects one's role in society, both in India and the United States. Despite much of the obvious discrimination women face in India, Sarla Thakkar believes, "you can't always see the power women hold, but it is there…" In what ways is this true? What are the benefits and drawbacks of being a woman in each of these countries? Are there any similarities in the female experience across the two cultures?

4. What do you believe Kavita and Jasu are feeling and thinking at the end of the novel? Were you surprised at the ending? Did you find it satisfying? How did your view of Jasu's character change from the beginning, and why? What do you imagine happens to these families next?

So as I was searching for questions, I came across this. If only we had been more organized, we could have had Shilpi Gowda chatting with us on Skype while holding our own autographed books!! How cool would that have been? Then, we would be forced to stay on topic for longer than 20 minutes!!!

See you on Tuesday,

xoxo

Welcome Erinn!

I figured it out...so now you lovely readers will get to hear from both of us! Erinn is now co-author extraordinaire. No pressure or anything Erinn, but we hope you entertain us regularly...hahaha! And you are very welcome for finding this gem of a picture from days long gone...oh the memories (Who's parents kitchen are we in here? And why are my arms the size of eggplants?!!!)

xoxo

New Blog Author!--TESTING 1-2-3

Thanks to Renee's wizardry with the blog I think she has enabled others to post as well. Just what I need to encourage procrastination!!

Oh baby!

So I'm supposed to be writing my student's progress reports right now...but what that really means is...do anything else!!! This is the time of year when the house ends up super tidy, clean and organized! So, to further my procrastination efforts, I thought I would share the names of my fave baby naming books since we now have a beautiful preggo in our BFAB club.

The first book "A is for Atticus" was introduced to me by Katie O (again...and yes she's got her Masters in English!) and this book is amazing because it contains baby name ideas from the great literature of our time: from Shakespeare to Lucy Maud Montgomery. So if you have a connection to a particular story or character, their details are in there, and there are so many great books that we forget that we have read that we are reminded of in reading this one. No, I'm not preggers too, I'm just obsessed with names I guess!

The second I happened to check out at Chapters because the title made me laugh. It's called "Beyond Ava and Aiden". Being a elementary school teacher, I really get a sense of what the name trends are and I have had an Ava, Ella, Abby, Isabel, Aiden, Jackson, Nathan and William in almost every class for the past 5 years!

I like sensible names, but getting out of the top twenty list is my recommendation! So, feel free to pass these titles on to your expecting girlfriends.

xoxo

Agree or disagree?

So we all survived our first novel and first official club - I think we did pretty well discussing and analyzing our pick for a good 40% of the time, wouldn't you say?!! There were some definite mixed opinions on our choice of "Little Bee," but many similar thoughts as well. Here's what I can recall from our club night at this point...(it had been a rough day and the bubbly went down real smooth!!!):

Unsure of:
- the way the author wrote in the voices of Little Bee's girlfriends from the refugee centre
- whether her situation was true to real life (being held in the centre for over two years with no sense of when you are to be freed)??
- many mixed feelings on the characters of Sarah, her husband Andrew and her son Charlie...are we supposed to like them, pity them, have any feelings towards them as a family?
- the viability of the part where Little Bee admits to having spent days/weeks in their back garden, frightening Andrew and being there when he hangs himself, able to help, but choosing not to

Consensus:
- we all loved whenever Little Bee spoke about her friends back home and how they would react when she described her new life: "Weh!?" (We all did pretty awesome "weh" imitations, if I recall correctly!)
- almost anything that Charlie said sounded annoying, not endearing!!!
- most preferred Little Bee as narrator over Sarah...her chapters seemed richer
- Almost everyone agreed on the probable outcome never mentioned at the end of the novel - the end of Little Bee after being taken from the beach by the police in Nigeria
- nobody liked the creepy other man in Sarah's life - yuck!
- as much as we dislike Sarah's character, most felt that they would not have been able to do what she did to save Little Bees life...my fingers hurt again just writing that

Anyways, I loved the first review on this site (Tell us what you really think lady?!!!): of course being the blogger of this site allows me the bias of looking for content that suits my opinions, so feel free to comment back ladies!

Nighty night xoxo

P.S. Did you know that that UK edition of the novel is called "The Other Hand"...thoughts?

A beautiful story

I finished our second novel "Secret Daughter" last night and was a little sad that it was over...can't you just imagine a second novel picking up where we left off? I don't want to spoil anything for the BFABers that haven't quite finished it yet, but it truly was a beautiful story, and one I couldn't put down, unlike "Little Bee."

I looooooved Asha/Usha and her Dadima...maybe I biased by the grandmother-granddaughter thing considering I just spent Thanksgiving weekend playing "Carotte" (basically French euchre) with my grandmaman as my teammate!!! hahaha I loved when Dadima agreed to wear Asha's running shoes on their morning walk instead of her chappals, but made sure that her sari covered them so that no one would notice. So cute!

Oh...I want to write so much more about it, but will hold back until the week preceeding our next club. Hint, hint: read read read ladies!

In the meantime, I'm switching between a non-fiction that Nat B loaned me called "The Omnivore's Dilemna" and a memoir that Katie O loaned me called "Summer at Tiffany." I'll keep you posted on these two as I get further along.

Where have I been?

I know how disappointed you all are since I returned to work and no longer keep this updated with anything and everything I read and find!!!

It's been one crazy busy month, but I hope to keep the posts coming more frequently now. I think I may even have found a way to get the other BFABers posting as well, so stay tuned.

Thanks for your patience,

xoxo