https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sun, 03 May 2026 02:11:02 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1507291 Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:13:46 +0000 MediaNaranja 1507291@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Bumping this for anyone who hasn't seen it. The winner at the end of tomorrow will be the book! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1499212 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 16:07:35 +0000 winniebee 1499212@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@MediaNaranja: great! I voted for the second choice :) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1499203 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 16:01:26 +0000 MediaNaranja 1499203@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@winniebee: Yay! If you haven't yet, vote for the book you'd like to read for book club. At the end of this week, the winner of the poll will be the book we'll discuss in April. It's up to you to find a copy of the book, whether through the library, or purchased, or downloaded to an e-reader.</p> <p>I'll post a reading schedule next week. It will depend on the book, but probably 4-5 chapters a week. Starting the 2nd week of April, I'll post some discussion questions, and when you find time feel free to post your thoughts! I'll continue doing it until the book is done :happy: </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1499000 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:58:03 +0000 winniebee 1499000@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I'm going to try to do this in April! How does the book club work? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1498439 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:14:23 +0000 plantains 1498439@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@mrsjazz: I love that all the authors are Latin American too. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1498409 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:03:32 +0000 mrsjazz 1498409@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@MediaNaranja: Great choices! These all sound interesting but I voted for At Night We Walk in Circles.</p> <p>@plantains: Same here. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1498399 Mon, 17 Mar 2014 11:59:42 +0000 plantains 1498399@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>These all sound amazing and just might draw me back into book club! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/hb-book-club-vote-for-aprils-book#post-1497475 Sun, 16 Mar 2014 21:31:12 +0000 MediaNaranja 1497475@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Alright, Bees, it's time to pick April's books! I've taken a few months off from the Book Club, so I'm excited to get back into it by leading the discussion! I don't have a theme, really, except for they are all written by Latin American authors. I'm excited about all these books, and I'm sure I'll read them all at some point. Here are the books, as well their descriptions from Amazon. I know I've seen all of them at the small library where I work, so they are hopefully available at yours, too! All page lengths refer to the hardcover edition.</p> <p><b>The Sound of Things Falling</b> by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, 288 pages</p> <p>* National Bestseller<br /> * Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review<br /> * One of NPR’s 6 Best Books of the Summer<br /> * Esquire recommends The Sound of Things Falling “if you read only one book this month”<br /> * Starred early reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus<br /> * Lauded by Jonathan Franzen, E. L. Doctorow and many others</p> <p>From a global literary star comes a prize-winning tour de force – an intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia.</p> <p>Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South America’s greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia. </p> <p>In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare. </p> <p>Vásquez is “one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Sound of Things Falling is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing—and will take his literary star—even higher. </p> <p><b>At Night We Walk in Circles</b> by Daniel Alarcon, 384 pages</p> <p>*NPR “Best Books of 2013”<br /> *BookPage Best Books of 2013<br /> *Bookriot “Best Books of 2013”<br /> *San Francisco Chronicle Favorite Books of 2013: Francisco Goldman<br /> *Flavorwire 15 Favorite Novels of 2013</p> <p>The breakout book from a prizewinning young writer: a breathtaking, suspenseful story of one man’s obsessive search to find the truth of another man’s downfall.</p> <p>Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson’s hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins.</p> <p>The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape he’s never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos.</p> <p>Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices. </p> <p><b>The Barbarian Nurseries</b> by Hector Tobar, 432 pages</p> <p>*New York Times Notable Book for 2011<br /> *Boston Globe Best Fiction Book of 2011</p> <p>The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves—a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity</p> <p>With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions. </p> <p>Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household—one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing—unless you count Scott Torres, though you’d never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central L.A. in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn’t hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house—except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she’s never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Señor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew . . . </p> <p>With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience—as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno—to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself. </p>