Good reading

Tonight was supposed to be book club night for me. But due to the business of the season, it's been pushed back until January. So I decided that in addition to watching the Glee Christmas special tonight (so fun!) I would share some great books that I've been reading lately, including the one for book club.

Have you ever read Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross? I'm so glad my friend chose this to read for book club because it was fantastic. It's based on an actual person, or legend, it's a piece of Catholic Church history that's not really known. It tells the story of Joan, a young woman living in the Dark Ages, who passionately pursues learning, even though it was strongly frowned upon by those around her, including her family. Her life journey leads her to a point where she assumes her deceased brother John's identity, joins a monastery, and eventually becomes Pope. You can see why the Catholic Church would deny this person's existence, a woman pope? But the story is filled with so many things that I love - history, religion, womens rights, even a little romance. If you're looking for a compelling page turner to read over your Christmas break, this is it.

The other book I just finished reading is The Host by Stephanie Meyer (author of the Twilight series). This was an unusual book for me to not only read but also to love, because I am not a science fiction gal at all, and this book is science fiction. But I think the reason I love it so much is that it's more a story of humans and human relationships set in a science fiction setting. The premise of the book is that the end of the world has come and all humans were taken over by "souls" except for the few that resisted and are in hiding. The story is told from the point of view of Wanderer, the soul who lives in Melanie's body, except that Melanie doesn't disappear, both minds stay active in Melanie/Wanderer's body. Sharing one body joins them together and they embark on a journey to find Melanie's family. In the process Wanderer learns what it means to be a human. There are a lot of great themes in the book, like loving others more than yourself, forgiveness and mercy, and learning to understand a situation from your "enemy's" perspective. This book also showed me that I really like Stephanie Meyer as an author. This book was a fingernail biting page turner the same way Twilight was, as in I hated to put the book down at night and go to bed because I was so engrossed in the story and couldn't wait to read what happened next. Books like that are hard to come by but I love it when I find them and am sad it's over. I'm sure Hubby T isn't sad though, now he's free to talk to me at breakfast again!

And what has Baby B (who is eleven months old today, by the way) been reading? We don't have much of a Christmas storybook collection yet so we've been supplementing with books from the library. Two of our favorites so far are Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear and A Charlie Brown Christmas with interactive sounds. Baby B hasn't quite figured out the sound buttons yet but I think he still likes it. Auntie A bought us a copy of The Night Before Christmas but we have to save that one because Hubby T's family tradition is for the dad to read that to the kids on Christmas Eve. Another first for our family that we're all looking forward to:)