Hold Shelf #1

If you're like me and like to keep a list of potential books to read, both the WPLC digital book site and the Merlin site allow you to make and keep wish lists. The WPLC site is particularly nice because you can tell when looking at your wish list if the book is available or not.

Here's a list from yesterday. Books I've read have an asterisk by my comment.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Oprah's first choice for her new book club. Non-fiction memoir of author hiking Pacific Crest Trail.

Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. "Snowgirl" changes into a real girl -- or does she? Carm says its a beautiful depiction of Alaska and of love for a child and for one another.

*Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry -- Rachel Joyce. This is one I started. Harold writes a note to a sick friend. He is convinced that as long as he is walking to deliver the note, the friend will continue living.

*Me Before You -- JoJo Moyes & *Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving  -- Jonathan Evison. Have read and really liked both of these books. I've combined them on the list because the basic stories are similar. Both are about a character with a disability and a caregivers. In Me Before You, the main character had been a wild risk taker until an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. His caregiver is a young woman from a lower economic class who makes it her job to show him life is still worth living.

*The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is about a man, Ben, who's lost everything and who signs up for a night course in caregiving just to get back into the work force. His patient is Trevor, a teenage boy in an advanced stage of muscular dystrophy. Ben helps Trevor focus on not what he can't do but on what he can do. Parts of this book are just so funny. I particularly liked Trevor's dad.

The End of Your Life Book Club -- Will Schwalbe. Non-fiction memoir of son and mother discussing books as she undergoes cancer treatment.

A few other books we talked about yesterday -- Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini; The Aviator's Wife  by Melanie Benjamin; The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown and The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg.