This is a difficult book to categorize. It\'s smart and funny and heartbreaking. It\'s rawer in language and content than what I tend to read. There are several references to science fictional works and untranslated Spanish terms, neither of which I could really understand without help (thanks to Google translate, I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'ve learned an awful lot of Spanish insults and swears). About the only thing I had in common with Oscar was a love for Tolkien. And yet, I was drawn into the story of this boy very much unlike me, and his family who could not escape a power-hungry dictator. I cared about Oscar and his sister Lola and wanted to see them make good. It\'s the sort of book I\'m hard-pressed to describe an audience for, but one I would recommend for someone who enjoys unique, inventive fiction.

The best historical fiction, to my mind, teaches you something about a time period, a people, or a culture while telling a really good story. This book does that in spades, giving such information about the Church at that time, medicine, and more. Yet there's no time for an information dump, because the story reads fast, at first because there is a lot of dialog and short paragraphs and, as the story progresses, an ever-faster pace as we draw closer to the conclusion. I have to say, the identity of the murderer was not all that surprising to me (one of a few people I had on my own suspects list), but exactly how it happened and how everything was resolved was indeed unexpected. In this sort of book, you're always on the lookout for glaring anachronisms. Adelia herself is the biggest anachronism of all - not so much because she's a woman doctor, which is handled believably, but because of her modern ideas and practices. The others are dealt with well in the author's note. The descriptions of the dead and what had been done to them was a bit much for the squeamish side of me. Granted, I was reading so fast much of this washed over me and I only noticed looking back.

Elizabeth was a serious young black teen who was one of the "Little Rock Nine." Hazel was the white teen in the iconic photograph shouting racial slurs. This moment would come to define their lives in different ways, and the dual biography of the women, their friendship and their differences gives a very personal take on race in America.

I haven't read King Lear, but it's really not necessary to read first as A Thousand Acres stands on its own just as well. After all the events of the story, Ginny reflects on what happened - what went wrong - after her father's fateful decision to give his hugely successful farm to his three daughters. Because we're in a tight first person narrative, there are so many unknowns and unanswerable questions: What made Larry act as he did? Caroline? Can we ever know or understand another person? The first half of the story is a slow setting the stage, the plotting deliberate, and the writing descriptive. The characters are deeply unhappy. We all agreed that the story was sad and the beginning slow, but in the end we had a wonderfully lively discussion.

Our book club ran the gamut in reacting to this book, which is written in the first-person plural telling the story of the Japanese "picture brides" who came to the United States in the early 20th century, lived in or near San Francisco, and dealt with prejudice and pain. The style of the book is really different; that and the immigrant experience or being the "other" and thought of as a group instead of an individual kept our group talking quite awhile. It's a short book, but very meaty.

The American culture lives by what Susan Cain terms the Extrovert Ideal, where we are expected to brainstorm, work in open office plans, and collaborate with peers on school projects. For the third to half of the population that are introverts, however, these scenarios can be difficult. Cain uses both personal stories and scientific studies to argue that introverts are simply wired differently and can bring a unique set of strengths if given the ability to work in their own way.

The short description of a book is that it's about a boy whose mother is raped, and the aftermath of that attack. But it's about so much more - a son's relationship with his parents, his friends, and his tribe; tribal law and the complicated mess that it can be to figure out jurisdiction; and justice. The characters - and there are many - came alive for me from Geraldine's sister Clemence trying to care for her elderly, cantankerous father Mooshum; to the sex-obsessed Grandma Ignatia; to the military man turned priest; and many, many more. The people and their relationships are complicated and true. This was a great book for discussion because it was so layered and meaty.