Dracula

I have the privilege to have wonderful friends. In June we all decided that while we all live throughout the city and are busy with our lives we needed to find something to give us all an excuse to all get together and hang out since we don't get the chance to as often as we used to.

On of my friends suggested a book club since several of us liked to read and she wanted to get into reading. So we all decided yes! We get together once a month for dinner/appetizers or something of that nature and then discuss the book and other things. It really is an enjoyable experience!

Being that I am in school I don't always find the time to actually sit down and read the books we choose. I am a frequent amazon.com user because I can always find anything I need for about 1/2 price of most places. I am an Amazon prime member so most of the things are also free shipping. One day while I was on there they had an advertisement for their new sister company audible.com. You could join for 30 days free and get 2 credits. A credit equals 1 book. You can also just buy books off their website without being a member. Once my 30 days was up I became a gold member and for 14.95 a month I get 1 free credit which is perfect. So I tried the audio book for our 3rd book and I LOVED it. It was so nice since I spend so much time in the car, going from home, to work, or clinical or to our site. I'm a BIG fan!

Each month someone picks a book and the first month which was July was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. You can see my book review in this post.

August was my choice and I chose My Sister's Keeper by Jodie Picoult. I had read this book the previous January while on vacation and while it was a hard book to read I felt like it was thought provoking and overall I would give this book a 7.

September's book was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson. This was the book that I first tried the audio book with. I had to do this simply because it is an almost 500 page book and with clinicals twice a week, working twice a week and an exam once a week, it didn't leave much time to be able to sit down and actually read a book. But I have to say I loved this book. It was thrilling, and an enjoyable read. The characters were fun to follow and you really could feel for the characters. It is the first book in a trilogy, and over Christmas break I read the second one, The Girl Who Played with Fire. It too was a great book even better than the first and I just downloaded the last book The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest  yesterday for audio since it's not out in paperback yet. Over all I would give the first book and 8.

October's Book was White Oleander By Janet Fitch. It was a hard read. I had seen the movie and always wanted to read the book but never got around to it. Again with clinicals I was forced to listen to it vs. read it and there was quite a few things that by reading the book made the movie a lost clearer. but I was till not a fan of this book in the slightest. It was just hard to read and relate to the characters and the mother was just pure evil! This book got a 5 from me.

November's book was In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alverez. This book is about 4 sisters who take a stand agains the regime of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. This was a beautiful book that was hard to put down. It's a fictional story based on the lives of 4 real women. The overall story is true but the details were from the author. The author was a Dominican American who got the idea for the book while she was visiting the Dominican one year. She tried to stay as close as she could to the true characters but also let the details take them where the were going. This was by far my favorite book we have read. I give it a 9. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It is truly and enjoyable read!

Finally I come to December/January. We had decided to give ourselves a little extra time with the December book due to the holidays and we didn't want to stress about it. The choice for December was Dracula by Bram Stoker. The person who chose it wanted a classic book and many people she talked to pointed her to this book. I have to say after trying to read this book for about a week I broke down and had to buy it on audio because I just couldn't bring myself to sit there and read it. It was HARD to get through mainly I think because of the language. The book was written in the 1890's and the language they used is incredibly different from how books are written now. There is an extensive amount of detail and to be honest it is beautifully written it was just hard to get through. Overall I am really glad I was "forced" to read it because I enjoyed the storyline. I think it is amazing to me how similar all the vampire stuff is now to the original Dracula. Because while the lore about vampires had gone on for some time this was the first book to really put it into print. It almost amazes me how other authors really stuck to Stoker's version of Dracula when it comes to how vampires operate. I think this book deserves almost two scales to judge it on. The storyline gets a 8 from me because it was quite fun when thinking back on it but the literature and the amount of detail and how it was hard to follow at times gets a lower score which brings it to about a 5 or 6 for it's over all score. I am sure glad we had 2 months to get through this one!!! I recommend it to anyone who likes vampires and older literature!

My goal is going to be to write a book review for each future book. I want to be able to have my thoughts on these books down in print, even if it's in blog world. The book for Februrary looks like a fun one it's The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.  If anyone wants to follow along I will post the future book on here so you can read along too and let me know what you think.
Here's to Happy Reading and Enjoying expanding our Horizons!