I was invited to join a Book Club … so happy because I love to read … and love to discuss the books I read. Last month we had to read Girl with a Pearl Earring (which I talked about here) and Mao’s Last Dancer … and I’ve only just finished … and really enjoyed.

I loved this story … it really gave me an insight to to the family life in communist China … I especially loved the stories that were shared … like the story of the frog in the well … he knew nothing but the world he lived in … he meets another frog from outside the well and discovers that the world outside is enormous … but now the little frog spends his life trying to escape the dark, cold well. But he couldn’t. The big world above remained only a dream. For the first eleven years of his life in China, Li Cunxin was like the frog in the well .. but then he discovered America ..

“In a small poor village in China, a young peasant boy sits at his old school desk, interested more in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao’s Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day some strange men come to his school – Madame Mao’s cultural delegate looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao’s great vision for China. This is the true story of how that chance moment in time changed the course of a small boy’s life in ways that are beyond description. One day he would dance with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world, be a friend to a president, movie stars and the most influential people in America. One day he would become a star: Mao’s last dancer, and the darling of the West.”

And then I bought Room for my Kindle … have I mentioned that I love the Kindle? I love that I can buy books cheap ($6.66 AUD) .. it downloads within a minute and I can start reading straight away!!

It took a while to get used to the percentage tracking but now I really like it … I read 62% in one day and was able to finish the book the next day.

I really loved this book … the perspective from Jack is amazing … and I have a five year old boy so I could really relate to the language. The book had similarities to Mao’s Last Dancer .. Jack was like the frog living in the well …

“To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world….
It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination-the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma’s clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held since she was nineteen-for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside her own desperation—and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely….
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience-and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.”

I’ve just finished reading Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier … and I loved it!!

I had seen this book and knew that I would read it one day … but I really didn’t have any clue what it was about. I loved reading the fictional story about the Dutch Artist, Vermeer, in 1666 … and because I went to Amsterdam last year I had a real understanding of the environment.

“Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer’s household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet’s eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high.”