New Leaf Welcome to the New Leaf Book Club

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by issybird

Has she read Island of the Blue Dolphins? I loved that. If you don't know it, it's a survivalist novel based on a true story, about a Native American girl/woman who lived on her own on an island off California. There's the west coast connection for your daughter, too.

I don't know but I will find out. Thanks for the rec!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Island of the Blue Dolphins is one of my favorite and most memorable books from childhood. I didn't know that it was inspred by a real person until a few years ago when I toured the Old Mission at Santa Barbara where she was taken after discovery.

Here is the story of Juana Maria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juana_Maria

[Bookpossum]

That is such a sad story - thanks for the link, Bookworm_Girl.

The books I read and loved as a child were pretty well all English - Beatrix Potter and the Little Grey Rabbit books when small, Kipling's two Jungle Books, the two Alice books of course, and then later the Famous Five and the books of Violet Needham. Probably because my parents were both English, books from North America didn't come my way, and nor did one of the great Australian classics, The Magic Pudding, which is hilarious.

[Dazrin]

Yay! Love the new tag!

[gmw]

Enid Blyton was a big part of my early reading, later on it was Elyne Mitchell with her Silver Brumby series and all things animal - Joseph E. Chipperfield was a favourite author. The Narnia books (mainly I remember my Dad reading these too us kids after dinner). We had some of the Tarzan stories abridged for children, and they were good fun. There was lots of other stuff but those are the ones that have stuck in my mind. I could easily be persuaded to give the Mitchell or the Chipperfield books another try to see how they look after all this time.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Yay! Love the new tag!

...

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Yay! Love the new tag!

WOOT! I'm so glad we were able to get that. And a bright green -- perfect!

[Bookpossum]

Yes, it is eye catching! Great work to get that issybird. Thank you.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'd imagine everyone here would have been a childhood reader. It would be fun in any case to find out the books people loved as kids and which still resonate. Duly noting the suggestion of kidlit as a theme, I think it might also be a good discussion for the welcome thread. (How many threads can I chase you to, Charlie? )

And you've now chased me to an entirely NEW thread.

[issybird]

I am fascinated by Dazrin's stats, tables, and graphs and look at them regularly. One thing I just noticed is that so far, the NLBC's six selections have had authors who are 33% women and 33% PoC. This is far ahead of the three clubs as a whole, where it's 24% women and 10% PoC. Granted, early days and each NLBC choice has a lot of weight in the percentages, but I shall be watching with interest over time.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

I am fascinated by Dazrin's stats, tables, and graphs and look at them regularly. One thing I just noticed is that so far, the NLBC's six selections have had authors who are 33% women and 33% PoC. This is far ahead of the three clubs as a whole, where it's 24% women and 10% PoC. Granted, early days and each NLBC choice has a lot of weight in the percentages, but I shall be watching with interest over time.

I am also somewhat data-obsessive (though I use excel, not google) and I love the stats as well. Darzin has a really cool map chart, but I wanted to see the balance a bit better, so for anyone curious, attached is a pie graph of where the readings have come from. We are incredibly US-UK centric. I set myself a goal of reading at least 50% non-US authors this year, so this stat is particularly interesting to me.

[Bookpossum]

I have an Italian one in mind for the War theme.

[Bookworm_Girl]

A Hundred Days by Beatriz Williams was a nomination this month. She has a new book coming in July called Summer Wives. Catlady, I think you might like this one better with the mystery aspect.

New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season—a spellbinding novel of romance, murder, class, power, and dark secrets set in the 1950s and ’60s among the rarified world of a resort island in the Long Island Sound . . .

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

A Hundred Days by Beatriz Williams was a nomination this month. She has a new book coming in July called Summer Wives. Catlady, I think you might like this one better with the mystery aspect.

Thanks--I've added it to my wish list.

[CRussel]

I mentioned this in the nomination thread, but I thought I'd bring it over here where we could possibly chat about it. I'm really, really liking how the move to topics has worked out. Virtually every month there are multiple books I end up buying or getting from the library based on the nominations. Or simply the poking around I (and others) do to find interesting books to fit the topic. Genre based nominations virtually never had that effect. This month is a perfect example -- I was not looking forward to it. I hate war books in the conventional sense and didn't see this group being interested in any of the MilSF books I do sometimes enjoy. But as I started poking around looking for something to nominate, I found a book I really want to read (The Great Halifax Explosion), and as others nominated or suggested books, I came across three others that I've already either bought or put on hold at the library. NONE of them are conventional war books, though I'd guess Station X is the closest to that. So, overall, a very successful month (though y'all are not doing my TBR a bit of good!)