Book Club

Our book for book club this month was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. The official summary reads, "An epic novel that spans continents and generations, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, compassion and redemption, exile and home that unfolds across five decades in India, Ethiopia, and America."

I'll get to the actual book in a second, but for starters I want to mention that I wasn't even sure I would actually finish this book this month, but happily I did! It was the longest book we've read thus far, totaling 550+ pages. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but I'm fairly compusive when it comes to starting and finishing books. For example, I read all of this book within the two week time period allotted to me by the library. I had every intention of keeping it for two cycles, giving me a full month to read the book, but when I realized that the book was on hold, no doubt my another book club member, I felt compelled to finish the book and pass it along. I did get a little help from the weather during February in that I had two ice days and one full holiday to spend at home doing nothing but reading. While it is fun for me to read and I thoroughly enjoy full days of lazing around doing nothing but reading, I'm not sure Grayson feels the same. Our house, groceries and sometimes he is often neglected in order for me to complete a book. But complete this book I did!

I would recommend this book to anyone. It started off a little slow for me, probably because I didn't know any background prior to reading it, but about 1/3 of the way through I finally got into it and was hooked. The summary statement above is completely accurate! There are so many plots going on with such a compelling storyline that you can't help but get immersed. It's also full of medical terminology which was fascinating to me. I'm not the greatest when it comes to understanding literature and being able to break it down so I'm fairly positive that some of the writing was lost on me, but I still was able to appreciate this book and the author and wanted to suggest it to anyone out there who enjoys a good read! Just give yourself a little more than two weeks to read it!