WoWO Book Club Meeting: The Education of Mrs. Brimley by Donna MacMeans

This month was the WoWO discussion of The Education of Mrs. Brimley by Donna MacMeans. We won this book from Author Dianna Love's Website. This is our second book won from this site and they have both made for fun and successful book club meetings. The other book we won was Wild Heart by Lori Brighton, you can read that review here. We obviously think that Dianna Love is Wonderful and We hope to win more from her author giveaways!


Once we won the books, Donna was such a pleasure to deal with. She mailed the books, signed personally to each one of our members, and she sent goodies as well as a VERY nice personal note to the ladies of the WoWO. At our Eat, Pray, Love discussion we gave out copies of The Education of Mrs. Brimley and commenced our reading it for this discussion. As usual this review posting will have spoilers in it to the story.. Here is us reading the note and excited about the book:

Pub. Date: October 2007
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
Series: Berkley Sensation Series
ISBN: 0425218309

WoWO Rating: 3.75/5 Stars (8 ratings)
My Personal Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

In an effort to escape her life in London, Emma obtains a teaching position at the Pettibone School for Young Ladies in Yorkshire. In order to get this position, she had to tell a little lie, that she is a young widow. Little does she know that this lie will come back to get her once she starts at the school: She is expected to teach the young women how to pleasure their future husbands in bed. Being that this is 1876 and Emma has in fact never been married, she is desperate to learn what she is to teach in the class. Emma cannot come clean because she cannot risk being sent back home to live with her uncle and in her desperation she seeks the help of the neighbor, Lord Nicholas Chambers, who is a bachelor with a reputation as "Lord BedChambers".

The WoWo's all agree this was a pretty steamy and very enjoyable book. The writing style was smooth and very easy to read. We all felt that the setting of the 1800's and Yorkshire was important to the story, because this type of story would never work today and the Pettibone School for Girls and Black Oak fit the scenery. The were Vivid and well defined, especially the Black Oak Studio. The only issue we had with the setting was that we had trouble determining the distance between Black Oak and the Pettibone School. Between the walking and the Carriage rides and various back and forth descriptions, it was hard to determine it's true distance. This however did not ruin the story for us.

Our first impressions of Emma were that although she was naive she had spunk and was pretty gutsy to search out the job and then search out help from Lord Chambers. At first it seemed a bit far fetched that she would reach out for help from this stranger, but it worked because she was desperate with no other choices. Our first impressions of Nicholas was that we liked him right from the beginning. We could tell there was something about him when he was "drunk" in the carriage but when Emma got out of the carriage he took a peak at her. Showing he wasn't quite what he portrayed himself to be. The sense of humor written into his character was wonderfully done. A nice mix of sarcasm and wit in a handsome male lead character is always a good thing.

Our favorite character overall was Nicholas with 6 votes and Emma had 2 votes for favorite due to her nerve and spunk. Our least favorite characters were Nicholas' brother George and Emma's Uncle, with the Uncle being slightly favored for worst character. We felt the Primary characters were developed well, but there was not a lot of details to the background characters, but it was enough to keep it well rounded and interesting.

Some of our favorite scenes in the book were:

• "Lunch" Scenes - now this may seem silly if you haven't read the book, but if you read the book, you may know exactly to what we are referring. I wish I could remember who in the group called it that.. but it was hilarious. Hot, Steamy, and well written!


• At the Ball when she steps outside and Nicholas is there waiting for her.


• When Nicholas Rescues her from her Uncle


• The Paint Brush scene - hot hot hot!


• I personally loved the initial scene when Emma tells Nicholas that she's come to get help on how to teach sex to these young women. Nicholas laughs and laughs and laughs at the situation and I just adore a good sense of humor on a sexy man. This endeared him to me immediately.

A few of us were surprised to find that Nicholas was the real owner of Pettibone, but most of us were not. Everyone seemed surprised at the connection between Nicholas and Alice, and how she was his goddaughter and how he promised to watch over her -- and kept the promise all this time. It was a nice little added twist to the wonderful facets of Nicholas' character. We all felt that the title of the book was spot on and wouldn't change a thing. However, the cover of the book to us didn't do the story justice. We enjoyed the story so much but if we didn't win the book we would never have picked it up to read based on the cover. Most of us were happy with the Epilogue in the story and how it wrapped everything up to the point that there would be no need for a follow up story in another book. There was no wondering about their future, it was all right there provided for us.

All in all we really enjoyed the story and would be interested in reading another book authored by MacMeans in the future.

We went with a dessert theme this month. Hot and steamy stories go best with Dark Chocolate fountains, cheesecake and cupcakes! Here are some pictures of us discussing and eating the goodies:

WoWOs (left to right): Louise, Tricia, Faith(Me), Linda, Myrta, Karen, Darralyn, Peggy

Peggy, Louise, Karen, Darralyn

Louise, Linda, Karen, Peggy, Myrta, Tricia, Darralyn, Faith (me)

Karen and Louise searching for Steamy Scenes!

We are so happy to have Darralyn as a new member this month! She was a great addition to the group and to the discussion. We have two new members expected next month so that should be great. I love to see the WoWOs growing in numbers! We have changed our nominating procedures recently where every other discussion is a book nominated by one of our members and the other month is one that we won, that way we get to read a book we may not normally choose one month and a book we absolutely want to read the next. This month Linda was chosen to pick the book. She picked Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, we will be discussing this one on October 29th, so check back early November for the review!

Thanks again to Donna MacMeans and Dianna Love (and Cassondra from http://www.authordiannalove.com/) for providing the books and the contest to win the books! We have found so many great books from winning them through authors and sites like these.

This book fits the following Category/Challenges:

• Hogwarts Reading Challenge
• The Romance Reading Challenge
• RYOB Challenge
• Monthly Mixer Mele Challenge
• New Authors Challenge

Panic by Jeff Abbott

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Pub. Date: August 2006
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 416pp
BN Sales Rank: 229,148
ISBN: 0451412222

I listened to this on Audio but since it was borrowed from the library I no longer have the ISBN information.

How is it even possible that it's the end of August and I've finished only 1 book so far and it's an audio book! I thought with my vacation I would get so much read and I did not! Yikes.

Synopsis: Evan Casher is a successful Documentary film maker and has a pretty great life until one morning all of that changes. Evan receives a call from his mother to come home urgently and when he gets there his mother has been murdered and the assailants are still in the house. Evan is quickly thrust into the world of spies where you don't know who to trust and have to be willing to do anything to survive. Evan learns more about his parents than he ever knew was possible and when the assailants take his father as a way to get back what was stolen from them he has to become resourceful to get his father back from the kidnappers.

One of my book clubs had this as a side book club read and since I listened to Fear last year and loved it I thought I should listen to this one as well. LJ Ganser also read this one but it didn't have the same gusto for me. I thought Fear was so much better. This was exciting and well done, but a bit unbelievable for me at times that Evan knew so little about his parents life and yet could jump in so easily and run things so professionally. I will definitely read more by Abbott, he is very good with suspense and thriller - I just found this one a little too over the top for an amature, when professionals are dying left and right in the story. Still 3 stars is nothing to cry about, very good effort and enjoyable to listen to.

This book fits the following Challenges/Categories for me:

• Hogwarts Reading Challenge - Defense against the Dark Arts
• Thriller and Suspense Challenge (This completes that challenge!)
• Monthly Mixer Mele

WoWO Book Club Meeting: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

On Wednesday was the July/August WoWO book club discussion of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I started Eat, Pray, Love in June on my own before it was chosen as the next WoWO, so I decided to review it personally while the book was still fresh in my mind. To see my personal comments/review about the book use this link. We had a full house this month and the WoWO's were back in true form. Our newest member, Rebecca, sadly couldn't be there but she read the book and added her comments, as a true book lover would. In honor of Elizabeth's journey in Italy, we made pizza's and drank wine and a little lemoncello! We had a ball and enjoyed every minute of it. As is normal for WoWO discussion posts, there will be spoilers.

Pub. Date: February 2006
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Format: Hardcover, 334pp
ISBN: 0670034711
Genre: Non-Fiction
Coming to Theaters: August 13th, 2010

WoWO Rating: 3.60/5 Stars (9 ratings)

My Personal Rating: 4/5 Stars

Author Elizabeth Gilbert has been through an emotionally exhausting divorce and the breakup of a tumultuous love affair in a very short time period. After which she realizes, as most women do in relationships, she has lost her own identity and her own way in life. This realization leads her on a year long spiritual journey like no other that she shares with the reader along her way in Eat, Pray, Love. This memoir is written in three sections: Italy (Eat), India (Pray) and finally Indonesia (Love). With raw emotion and a window into her soul, Elizabeth Gilbert shares with the reader her amazing journey to spiritual self acceptance.

Almost Everyone loved the format of the book with 108 short chapters and 3 main sections (Eat, Pray, Love), most of us felt that this format made it easy to stay interested and helped the book flow quickly. One of us felt that the short chapters dampened the flow. We all felt like entertainment and pleasure were on the same level for American's. Music, Food and Art, can all be entertaining, and we can all find pleasure in these. We discussed Gilbert's life before her self discovering journey and felt that in her earlier relationships she wasn't happy with herself and she jumped too quickly into the arms of men, like a lot of us women. For most women, Men seem to fog our ability to make sound and reasonable decisions. We discussed everyone's "word", as in the book - Rome is "sex" and the Vatican's is "power" and Gilbert's is "achieve", Linda's is "compassionate", Faith's is "Angst", Karen is "sensitive", Rebecca's word is "scattered" and Myrta's is "sincere".

A few of us did relate to the spiritual aspects in the story but not everyone liked the spiritual elements in India, most keyed on the personal journey of self acceptance to be what they related to. We felt that her journey was less about persistence and more about perseverance: She didn't plan anything and she was also so she had to make her own way. I honestly didn't think about the fact that she's traveling and not having to worry about the money so persistence is necessary if she was to get her money's worth out of her trip. We felt that not everyone's spiritual journey is related to religion itself, but can still be spiritual in it's own way. We learned that Tricia is married to her soul mate (you sappy sweetie you) and she learned this while reading the book. The favorite section of the book for most of the group was Love (Indonesia) with 6 votes, second was Eat (India) with 3 votes (her descriptions of the food were incredible), and no one had Pray (India) as their favorite section. We appreciated it for what it was, but most felt that the details were a bit slow for reading.

Some of our favorite scenes where:

• Pizza Trip in Bali
• The trip with her girlfriend to Sicily
• The Roof Scene (probably the favorite of all the scenes)
• The initial sex scene with Felipe - we felt she earned it.
• Any scene with Felipe
• the banana talks with Wayan. HILARIOUS stuff.

Favorite Characters where:

• Richard from Texas (he gave the best advice!)
• Wayan (she was a hoot)
• Ketut
• Felipe
• Gilbert herself

Favorite Quotes:

• "Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."
• "The best way for a woman to get over a man is to get under another man"
• "She's f---ing with you Groceries" - we just love that Richard calls her Groceries
• "let your conscience be your guide"
• "To find the balance you want, Ketut spoke through his translator, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that its like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."
• “I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed.”

Everyone enjoyed the book for the most part, India was where everyone thought the book lulled but felt restored in the story when they got to Indonesia. If we were able to travel for a year, we would go all over the world: Italy, Ireland, California, Germany, Greece, China, Spain, a tour of Southern Europe, Australia. Everyone thought the cover of the book fit the story, 7 of us liked the original cover better and liked how the words were spelled in ways relevant to the locations. One of us liked the cover with Julia Roberts best. Six of us decided that we would probably like to read Committed and continue on with the story after Gilbert returns to America.

As usual we did something fun to incorporate our discussion with the book, here are some of the pictures:

Tricia, Louise, Lori, Linda, Faith(me), Karen, Myrta, Peggy

Food fit for Queens for the discussion

Myrta, Linda, me

Karen, Linda, Lori, Louise, Myrta

Tricia and Louise

Peggy and Me working on the dough.

Myrta and Lori making their pizzas

Om Namah Shivaya - We tried!

Lemoncello to top the night off!

If we are friends on facebook you can see the rest of the photos there. We had over 60 thanks to Tricia's photography Skills!

I handed out the next book "The Education of Mrs. Brimley" by Donna MacMeans, we are excited to read it and will be discussing it on September 10th.

July Reading Wrap-up

I am pretty behind with this post... July was a VERY slow reading month for me as I had a night class that was Monday through Thursday. Not much free time to read at all.

So this one will be a short one:

• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Racous Year of Eating Locally - Rating: 3/5 Stars
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Rating 5 Stars - Favorite

I also posted about my fabulous book club win of free books for the a year for the WoWO's.. The books have already started pouring in and we cannot wait to dig into those.

In August, I have a week vacation and I plan to veg and read and read and read... so Im hoping for a much better reading month. Some of the books scheduled this month are:

• Finish Fallen by Lauren Kate (my current read)
• Tall, Dark & Dead by Tate Hallaway
• The short second life of bree tanner by Stephanie Meyer
• Club Dead and Dead to the world by Charlaine Harris
• Fireworks over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff
• a soft place to land by Susan Rebecca white
• Still missing by Chevy Stevens

Several of those are ARC requests so I'll be glad to have them read and I feel so far behind right now.

Happy Reading in August!

*picture borrowed from: http://www.lotuslandrealestate.com/blog/2009/02/02/sunshine-coast-poetry-2009.jpg

Make Ahead Meals Cookbook Giveaway from Audrey's Give Aways!

Audrey's Give Aways is hosting a Cookbook Giveaway... this cookbook looks right up my alley and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Im not a mom (unless you count my puppies), but I am terribly busy with working full-time and attending school at night.. so any help I can get in the cooking department I'll take.

Audrey has a review and pictures of some of the meals she made from the cookbook and they all look delicious. If the book interests you, go over to Audrey's site and enter for the cookbook.

Good Luck!