I decided to choose this book for our club after seeing a preview for the movie that I watched a few years before and thoroughly enjoyed. I had wanted to read this for some time and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

After starting the book, I immediately fell in love with it. I was able to relate to this book personally and also see the fellow members of our book club portrayed in the characters as well. When I finished the novel the only word I would say was wow. The feeling I had can only be described by saying its how you feel after a great discussion with a great friend or how you feel after finishing a great book.

I recommend this book (in whatever language you can find it since bookmovement doesn't have the English version available as a choice) and sincerely hope that everyone can get just a portion of the excitement I did from reading it because that would be enough for anyone to be pleased.

Words that our book club chose to rate this were actually as follows: Weird, Depressing, Enchanting, Finite, Strange, Enlightening, Thought-Provoking, Sensitive and Mystical.

We each rate our choices and use the 1 word description before any discussion. As you see, there was a different range of words from positive to negative. Overall our club rated the book a 3.38 on a 5 point scale.

Discussions led most toward the \\\"what if\\\" type. \\\"What if you knew when you were going to die?\\\", \\\"What if you could control time?\\\" and things of that nature.

One common discussion point was the dislike for Sarah and how disapointed we were on her character. Unfortunately we did realize though, that young people do think this way, but looking back and from an outsider\\\'s perspective we would definitely want to \\\"Tell her the truth about life\\\".

None of us would want to \\\"live forever\\\" as noted by the other character (for some reason i can\\\'t remember the name....so that tells how memorable the book really is right?!) and we posed the question \\\"What if he would have been frozen, a cure was found, and then he was \\\'thawed\\\' and cured of that disease but then died a short time after because 1. he was already old and 2. who\\\'s to say there wouldn\\\'t be \\\'new\\\' diseases in the future his body wasn\\\'t equipped to handle.\\\"

All in all it was a good choice for our book club and we do reccommend because even though there were low points that we disliked, the number of highlighted \\\"one-liners\\\" and the ability the book had at making each of us think of our own lives in the perspective Dor had out weighed.

Mixed emotions came from our book club when we met to discuss Kitchen House. We all agreed however that this novel was a must read. It was entertaining and kept everyone\\\'s attention. Specific words that were used to describe this novel were: melodramatic, predictable, unfortunate, familiar, abrupt, realistic and sorrowful.

Bookaholics discussed in length the relationships between Lavinia and Miss Martha, Lavinia and Marshall as well as all of the other intertwined relationships. As it was most likely the author\\\'s intent, everyone wanted to hate Marshal and wanted to make Lavinia come to her senses and stop being so naive to life.

A great decription posted on goodreads by one of our members was the following \\\"heartfelt, emotional, suspenseful. a true realistic adaptation of what really happened during slavery times.\\\"

The Kitchen House is a must read for book clubs and for those who just want to have a realistic view on what might have actually happened.

The Martian takes a tale from all walks of life and all generations in history and brings it to the current technological day of today. We have all seen and read the stories of survival of the fittest. We have all known about stories of the hero overcoming nearly impossible odds. This novel brings all of those raw, general, simple ideas and puts them into the 21st century. Technology on Earth is beyond where it has ever been before but on Mars, the same cannot be said. Using the knowledge of Earth, and the extremely limited resources available, our protagonist is able to thrive and survive in a desolate, nearly prehistoric environment.

This novel is definitely not for the weak minded. If a person is able to look beyond the science, the math and the technology, however, he/she will see that this is just a simple story of survival and of basic human nature.