Mama Kat Thursday: Book Review!

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    The Mama Kat question I'm doing is: Book Review! What is your best (or worse read)?

      I joined a Book Club last year. We meet once a month at a local restaurant that allows us to come in at 10 am to discuss our book, then we order lunch. Everyone is 60 or older, I think--who else has free time to do a Book Club at 10 am?
     I joined for 2 reasons:
    1) Social Interaction. It gets me out of the house and around other people.
    2) To Try Out New Books to Read. I'm fairly particular about what I read and the club is reasonably conservative in book choices.
     Frankly, not every book choice has been fantastic, but I have two I consider the "Best Reads" this year. The 1st is non-fiction based on a historical event and the 2nd is fiction based on a historical event. I happen to like history, so I probably enjoyed them more then most of the other ladies, but I highly recommend both:


Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman
It's the year 1889 and two single female journalists, each representing a different news agency, propose to travel around the globe in 79 days or less and beat the record of Jules Verne's fictional character, Phileas Fogg. One goes East and one West, both sending telegraphs reporting their progress periodically back for their publisher's for their readers to follow. The chapters alternate between the two women's adventure and also tells you what happened to them afterwards.
It was a significant event for it's era, one I never heard about in history class, and interesting, too, how these 2 ladies got themselves hired as journalists at a time when women invading men's world of work was a new thing.





  Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan
This fiction story alternates between following a modern marine archeologist, still reeling from the death of a close friend, as she researches the fatal 1838 sinking of a luxury paddle steam-ship off the coast of Georgia as well as following the passengers fighting for their lives to survive on the floating wreckage, which actually happened.
Both grim and fascinating, this tragic sinking in it's era has been compared to being "the Titanic of the South."
Another crisis in history I never heard about in history class. 






Comments

Abby said…
Both sound like interesting books. I think book clubs are good ideas for the reasons you mention, although I've never joined one.
Nov 18, 2023, 10:31:00 AM

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