Thursday, June 1, 2017

Summer Book Club update!

Happy Thursday all! Our book club poll is closed, and our big winner is The Well, by Stephanie Landsem!

As a reminder, this is scripture-based historical fiction, and our description is thus:

In the rich tradition of Francine Rivers’s Lineage of Grace series, comes a beautiful retelling of the biblical story of the woman at the well—bringing to life this poignant young woman struggling to survive love and heartbreak.

Could he be the One we’ve been waiting for?

For the women of the Samaritan village of Sychar, the well is a place of blessing—the place where they gather to draw their water and share their lives—but not for Mara. Shunned for the many sins of her mother, Nava, Mara struggles against the constant threats of starvation or exile.

Mara and Nava’s lives are forever changed with the arrival of two men: Shem, a mysterious young man from Caesarea, and Jesus, a Jewish teacher. Nava is transformed by Jesus, but his teachings come too late and she is stoned by the unforgiving villagers. Desperate to save her dying mother, Mara and Shem embark on a journey to seek Jesus’ help—a journey that brings unexpected love and unimaginable heartbreak.

This is actually the first book in a series. The Thief (about the Roman centurion, Longinus) and The Tomb (about Martha) also chronicle the lives of figures in Scripture. I'm so fascinated by this concept! And I have heard excellent things about this series.

All right, let's talk timing and spacing. I'm open to starting anytime beginning in mid-June to July 1st. I just downloaded it (the book is $9.99 right now for Kindle, slightly more for a new paperback copy, but keep your eyes peeled, because it has gone on sale recently!), and this book is about 285 pages long, with 33 chapters plus an epilogue. That's a lot of chapters, but they are only 10-15 pages each, and this is fiction pages, not heavy non-fiction/spiritual reading. So, we have a few choices:

If we do a weekly discussion, I'd say we should bite off 4 chapters at a time. I don't want the book club to take longer than 2ish months/8 weeks. Or, we could do a monthly post starting in June and read the book in thirds. That translates to 11 chapters per month. Thoughts?! Leave me lots of comments, please. *beams*

6 comments:

  1. I think doing 4 chapters at a time would be better. I work better with small chunks.

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  2. Just ordered a copy from Amazon. Can't wait to get started -- it sounds super interesting! My vote is for a weekly discussion, mostly because I'd rather read everyone's thoughts/feelings more often than just once a month. But if monthly discussions work better, that's totally cool with me too. Have a wonderful weekend!

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    1. Thanks Kevin! It looks like that's the way we're headed.

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  3. I like the weekly option. Seems like it would work well for fiction. Maybe we could try for a monthly or end of book Google Hangout or other real time option as well.

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    1. Hi Melanie!

      This seems the way we're heading. And yep, love the idea of an ending Google Hangout! Gives me time to figure out how to do that, too. ;-)

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