The First Chapter - Pun Intended

As I sat down to work this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that I've had quite a few great suggestions from my family and friends. In all the excitement of starting my blog and thinking about which book will be my first victim, I started thinking about how I will review them. Will I write a post after every chapter? Every day after X amount of reading? Three times a week? And then, what exactly will I talk about? What are the parameters for what I would consider a good book to be? Below are my answers:

1. I will try to blog once a day about what I've read. It could be a sentence, it could be a paragraph. I need to warn you all now, that this will be a spoiler for those of you who haven't read the books. But the people that I do know who are out there reading this will probably appreciate the blow by blow summary- it means they don't have to read the actual book but, while in witty conversation, they can conveniently make an educated connection to the book if it is brought up in said witty conversation. I am nothing if not convenient.

2. I have begun a flexible set of guidelines that I will follow while discussing the book. This will include: accessibility to the masses, style of writing, and entertainment factor. The first three are easy to understand: is the book a people pleaser or is it something that only a few will understand? Is the writing style so arcane and difficult to read that I want to throw the book through a window? Am I laughing outloud on the T while reading, or crying in my bed at night when I have to put the book down?

3. I am also very interested in the connection between the reader and the book that they are reading. When I look at people on the T, I often wonder what makes them want to pick a book with a dead white guy on the cover (JFK, or John Adams) or a book that is so clearly sci-fi related that even the sci-fi geek in me cringes a little. I don't judge these people, but I often wonder: why and how do these books play a role in these people's lives? Are they a method of escape, or simply something to fill in the time so they can avoid looking at people on their commute? This is something that interests me greatly, and I hope to share with all of you my own personal answers to these questions.

So, this being said: I will choose my first book later this afternoon, so please, keep the suggestions coming. So far I have:

A Year of Living Biblically

Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee

The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kinsolver

A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle

A Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood