Dear Sister Person Book Club: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Dear Sister Person,

At first, when I'd discovered the HusFriend had packed up my original choice for January - Mercycle, in case you forgot - I was excited that I would get to read a book that has been on my To Read list ever since it was released. Then I read the first chapter of Divergent and began to doubt my life choices.

Dear Sister Person Book Club: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Dear Sister Person,

You are welcome. Very, very welcome. I figured that I could only add to the torture for so long before we abandoned our venture to read books together, and Gini Koch nearly made me want to kill you, to be honest. (No matter what you say, the Glorious Darcy books were in no way in the same awfulness caliber that Touched by an Alien was.) So reading Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane was definitely a welcome reprieve for me, as well.

Dear Sister Person Book Club: Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch

Dear Sister Person,

What have I ever done to you? Is it because I chose Beth Ciotta twice? Is it because I once refused to go back into Bruegger's Bagels to retrieve your retainer from the trash (because you couldn't do it yourself, for some reason)? Is it because I "ruined" your childhood by telling you Santa Claus wasn't real? I mean, absolutely none of those - combined even - warrants forcing me to read about Katherine "Kitty" Katt and her misadventures with winged "superbeings."

Touched by an Alien by Gina Koch
Via My Not So Vacant Shelf
Also, it does not bode well for this book if the dude on the cover looks like the least favorite of my exes.

Dear Sister Person Book Club: This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Alrighty, readers, the Sister Person and I are trying something different this month, and I think it's going to stick. Basically, any time one of us picks a book, the other writes the first review to be posted either on the first or third Thursday of the month, and then the picker responds the following week. Since SP chose this month's books, I'll be posting my take on it today, and then she'll post hers next Thursday! 

Dear Sister Person,

To be honest, I was really iffy about reading This Is Where I Leave You because, as I said via text message, "white people problems," but I tried to wipe that from my consciousness when I started reading it. I'm happy to report that I was successful in my endeavors, at least in that vein, but you know what? I still really hated this book.

Dear Sister Person Book Club: His Clockwork Canary by Beth Ciotta

Dear Sister Person,

SO WE MEET AGAIN, BINGHAM. This. Fucking. Guy. How does he even put on pants ever, let alone mastermind a plan to assassinate a monarch? Whenever he enters the scene, all I can picture is Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, only much more inept and skeevy, in a way that only a robot-porking misogynist can. I am really hoping that, in one of the sequels, Renee, his robot sex slave and "confidant" returns to finish the job she started, only this time by sitting on his face and suffocating him.

Excuse me, I believe I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Dear Sister Person Book Club: Her Sky Cowboy by Beth Ciotta

Dear Sister Person,

So when we decided to read this book, I was, admittedly, skeptical. I'm not really a steampunk fan, but hey, the book had pretty decent reviews. Plus, after my encounter with Courtney Milan's work, I was ready to indulge myself with more romance novels, so I started reading Her Sky Cowboy as quickly as I could.

Her Sky Cowboy* by Beth Ciotta

It only took me a few days to complete the book, which isn't necessarily an odd occurrence. I mean, I finished Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code in a day (And oh, what a frustrating day it was. I've only thrown two books in my life, and that was one of them.). Your text message response about what you thought, as far as you'd read - note: I expected you to finish before me - pretty much summed up my overall impression of the book.

Dear Sister Person Book Club

After reading Courtney Milan's The Governess Affair, I went into read-all-the-romances mode. I even went to get a library card for the specific purpose of checking out romance novels*, and I brought home a decent stash for two weeks, one of which was Beth Ciotta's Her Sky Cowboy. When I posted it on my Facebook page (shameless promotion, I know), my sister immediately responded with, "OMG I WANT TO READ THIS WITH YOU."

And thus comes my new feature: Dear Sister Person Book Club. Basically, my sister and I read a book and then write reviews to each other: I post mine here, she posts hers on her blog, and then we link to each other. Voila! I think we, at least initially, decided it was going to be romances, but I might have been able to convince her that we should do other books, too. At least, that's what happened in my head. I should probably make sure that this is the arrangement. 

Anyway, we're going to do two of these per month, on the first and third Thursdays, and, as you probably guessed, our maiden voyage is going to be Her Sky Cowboy, to be reviewed on September 4th. I'm not quite sure if our second is going to be the sequel, His Clockwork Canary, but I have already placed a special request with the Louisville library to send me a copy of the book to the branch closest to me. You know, just in case. 

* Okay, I also checked out Jay Lake's (rest in peace, my friend) Pinion, John Robert Marlow's Nano, and John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but whatever. I have other interests.