The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

This is the sequel to "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory. The story continues from TOBG and explores Henry VIII's relationships with his next two wives: Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard. This was a fun story, but quite long (over 500 pages). Gregory's writing is easy to read and follow. I liked that she explored these three women (I forgot to mention Jane Boleyn who was Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law) and talked about how mad some of them were. It was a fun read, too bad I wasn't at the beach for the last half of the book.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

If you haven't already seen the ads, PBS is airing productions of all of Jane Austen's novels on Masterpiece Theatre on Sunday nights. You'll have to check your local PBS station for times. It inspired me to read the rest of her novels--something I'd like to finish in 2008. I have "Mansfield Park" and "Emma" left now.

"Northanger Abbey" was the first novel that Jane wrote although I think it was published posthumously. It is a fun tale of Catherine Morland and how she falls in love with Henry Tilney. Of course Catherine is from a "lower" middle class family and has hardly any fortune and Henry is very well off, indeed! Catherine is very obssessed with the gothic novels of the era (think "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley) and has a very over-active imagination. It almost ruins her changes with Henry, but alas it all works out in the end.

This book was definitely the most light-hearted of the Austen novels that I have read so far. Definitely worth the time though to read it.

The PBS version of this very fun--so if you missed it, I'm sure it will be out on DVD any day now. The gal who plays Isabella Thorpe was also in the Keira Knightly version of "Pride & Prejudice"--she played Kitty Bennett. (Thanks Jennie for that little fact!)

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

This is the book that Nancy chose for our next book club meeting. I read it when it was first out in paperback so maybe in 2003 sometime. I had forgotten a lot of the plot and all I could remember was that it ended up being Pi and the tiger, Richard Parker on the lifeboat.

I won't go into great detail on the plot just in case someone from book club actually reads my blog and hasn't finished it yet. But, basically Pi and his family are going from India to Canada along with several animals from their zoo on a large ship. The ship sinks and Pi is the only human survivor. He ends up on the lifeboat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan and a Bengal tiger. You can imagine what happens.

The writing style is easy to follow, but some people might find it hard to get going in the book. It was a quick read and interesting, but be prepared for some gory scenes and honest detail about how Pi survives for over 5 months at sea.