Don't forget to vote for the March title!

Please place your vote for the first book to be discussed on The Reader Board!

Votes must be received by 5 p.m. March 5. That means you have five more days to decide.

The book with the most votes will be discussed in March.

The second runner up will be discussed in April.

Then, I have something fun in mind for May... but I will save that for a little later!

Bronto Eats Meat

Bronto Eats Meat by Peter Maloney and Felicia Zekauskas is one of my children's favorite books. In all honesty, we've probably read it at least 20 times. Maybe more. They've both memorized the words to every page even though it's still well above their reading level.

The story is about a little boy named Billy, his bothersome older sister and a gigantic brontosaurus who learns the meaning of the phrase "watch what you eat" the hard way.

As everybody knows, brontosauruses are herbivores and don't eat meat. Or, at least they're not supposed to! One day, Bronto gets a terrible stomachache and is rushed to the hospital. When the doctor takes an x-ray, it shows Bronto's ribs, his stomach, some trees, and... Billy!

The doctor discusses Bronto's three options for expelling the boy from his stomach. Bronto, with the help of his parents, comes to the decision to drink 100 cans of Slurp-n'-Burp soda to help him throw-up the little boy. He ends up burping and shooting Billy all the way home!

When Billy tells his mother, teacher and friends about his experience, nobody believes him - least of all his bossy older sister. Until... something happens that ultimately changes her mind.

With 32 colorful pages, this wholesome story definitely captures the attention of children.

Highly recommended for boys and girls ages 2-8!

A little bit about me

Let's get to know each other better!

Here are 10 things you might not know about me... Don't worry, none of its too heavy!

1 - I obsessively Google/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram stalk celebrities before I watch a movie they're starring in. I like to know every nitty gritty detail about them before I push play. Height, weight, childhood, romantic interests, scandals... nothing is sacred.

2 - Sometimes I hide in the other room when I eat a candy bar so I don't have to share with my children. If they catch me and ask what I'm eating I stuff the wrapper in my pocket and lie. Yes, I know this is wrong.

3 - I LOVE playing games. Board games, word games, puzzles, etc. I'm a fabulous loser but a terrible winner. This is why my husband adamantly refuses to play games with me. Ever. I'm trying to learn to be a more graceful winner. You know, to set a better example for my children... Blah, blah, blah.

4 - I desperately want to star on the reality show Survivor. And I truly think I could win. Speaking of which, I do believe the new season starts tonight! Woot, woot!

5 - I love writing poetry but I never share it with anybody.

6 - I sometimes dream I was born hundreds of years ago when people traveled by horseback and rode in horse-drawn carriages. I would love living in a small cabin miles and miles away from town and living off the land. I do, however, enjoy indoor plumbing and advanced medicine so all in all I'm OK with the way things are.

7 - I really, really like supernatural books and television shows about vampires, werewolves and zombies. I don't know why.

8 - My husband and I met on a blind date arranged by two UPS drivers. We like to joke about "What Brown can do for you!" (The UPS drivers were my mother and his regular delivery man)

9 - I average about 5 or 5-1/2 hours of sleep a night. I really need to go to bed earlier but there's so much I want to do and just not enough hours in the day.

10 - I'm a compulsive list maker. Can you tell from this post?

OK, enough about me. Now tell me a few things about you!

Happy Wednesday.

March titles under consideration

Please decide which book you would like The Reader Board to discuss first! Place your vote using the poll on the right side of the page. If you choose "None of these. Something else please!" then go ahead and type the title and author of the book you would like to read in the comments of this post.

All votes must be placed by 5 p.m. March 5th to be considered. The winning book will be announced that evening and discussions will take place through the end of the month.

Summaries of the five books under consideration can be found below.

The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Room

by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

The Fault in Our Stars is expected to release as a movie June 6, 2014!

The Best of Me

by Nicholas Sparks

  

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.

Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?

The Best of Me is expected to release as a movie Oct. 17, 2014!

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Wild is expected to release as a movie featuring Reese Witherspoon sometime in 2014!

Story overviews and photos are from Barnesandnoble.com

Welcome to The Reader Board!

Hi everybody! I'm glad you've stumbled across my blog.

If you're anything like me and you love reading then this is just the place for you! Bookmark this page in your browser or enter your email address into the "Follow by Email" link on the right so you don't miss any posts. Also, whenever you comment be sure to check the "Notify Me" box so you receive an email alert when somebody responds.

This is a no-commitment online book club. What that means is that you're welcome to participate as little or as much as you want! You can read the books that interest you and ignore the rest or you can read them all and share what you think.

A book will be read and discussed each month. Sometimes I will just choose one, other times we'll vote on a title from a few I'm considering and other times I will be asking you (the readers!) what you want to read.

For the first month, try to vote on your selection as soon as possible. The one with the most votes will be announced on March 5 and you can start reading as soon as you get the book. An ongoing discussion is encouraged throughout the month as you read the book but please no major spoilers until after the 20th when hopefully everybody has had a chance to finish reading the book. In the future, the book choice will be announced on the 1st but I wanted to give people a few extra days to choose since it's almost March already.

My goal is to offer a lot of variety in titles, authors, subjects, styles, and genres. One month we might read a popular title that's being talked about a lot, the next month we might read a biography about somebody famous, and the month after that we might read a classic. I love reading and welcome all suggestions!

I also think it would be fun to choose a book that is set to come out as a movie (like The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks) and meet as a group at the theater to watch the movie together.

Please feel free to post in the "Comments" section if you have ideas for the club, suggestions, complaints, or if you just want to share about a different book you've read recently! Anything goes!

I'm a big fan of the library and check-out a lot of the books I read (as opposed to buying them) and encourage others to give that a try too. Sometimes I pick books out when I take my boys to the library, other times I reserve them online so all I have to do is pick them up and check them out. I also do some reading on my Nook and can rent titles online through the North Olympic Library System (www.nols.org), the 3M Cloud Library (http://www.3m.com/us/library/eBook/index.html) and the Washington Anytime Library (http://anytime.lib.overdrive.com). When the book is due it simply expires and there are no overdue fees!

I read A LOT and I enjoy talking about what I read with friends. And I always welcome tips on good books or series to read.

Help this online book club get up and running by sharing this blog with your family, friends and fellow readers. The more the merrier!