Shattered Silence

Our January Book

Shattered Silence

By Melissa G. Moore and M. Bridget Cook

We had book club this month at our tried and true Cheesecake Factory! We were all so excited for the great food...but even more for the Red Velvet Cheesecake! I was so excited to get home and break into my dessert! That was the best part!

The book this month was about a girl who's dad was a serial killer. It talks about her life growing up with divorced parents, step-parents, friends, boyfriends. It was a very intense and difficult childhood to say the least. It's hard to criticize someone's life...I think what we disliked about the book was her ability to write about her life and all that she went through. Most of us would have liked more information about her dad. We also felt that sometimes her writing was confusing and other times she spent such a short amount of time on something traumatic. It was poorly written if you ask me. (Plus, there were typos all over the place!) It's an uplifting story about how she prevailed through all the hardships in her life and I'm happy for her...but the book wasn't worth reading.

Here's our beautiful picture...we don't usually get such great pictures in dark restaurants but this one turned out great! Love Cheesecake Factory!

The Road of Lost Innocence

Our August Book:

The Road of Lost Innocence

By Somaly Mam

This book was an interesting look into sexual trafficking of young girls. We were all appalled at this going on in a world that we live in. It seemed like this book became too much of a documentary towards the last half but I think most of us enjoyed this book. It's amazing what the author lived through but then also that she was able to overcome and work as a crusader to help young girls in her country.

This picture turned out grainy because I had to adjust it to get lighting and to zoom in...bummer.

Escape

The May 2008 Book of the Month

Escape

By Carolyn Jessop

The May book of the month was recommended by Veronica.  The other books it beat out were Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos and The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.  We met at Ram to discuss the book over a tall glass of Merrill "Buttface" Jessop beer and a plate of shrimp.  

Escape is the "dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman's courageous flight to freedom with her eight children."  We were all appalled to read about the suffering and abuse women and children had to face within the FLDS cult.  Even more outrageous is to think that this was happening recently and is still going on even today.

We didn't really have focused discussion questions but the discussion kind of just led itself.  Here are some of the topics we discussed:

1. Which part of the story appalled and outraged us the most?

2. How were the men in the FLDS able to totally and completely control the women and children?

3. What do we learn from Carolyn's relationship with her children in regards to mothers?

We all agreed that Carolyn has an amazingly strong will and that she is definitely smart to have been able to carefully plan her escape so she would be successful.  We also discussed our opinions of long underwear.  To end the night, we all shared a mile high mudpie.  Yum!