Week 3, The RA Conversation

For this role-playing assignment, we were asked to respond to three sample conversations with some book recommendations.

Conversation 1: Something everyone is reading - like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.

Have you already read Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed? It was the first pick for Oprah's Book Club 2.0, the online re-launch of the book club on her show. I've seen it on lots of best-seller lists, too.

I'd also suggest The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. It is both funny and introspective. It is a few years old, now, but is still listed as an Independent Bookseller's bestseller for biography and memoir. It definitely seems like it would be great for discussion.

Conversation 2: I'd like some vampires please, but hold the teen angst.

Have you seen the HBO series, True Blood? It is based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series, which starts with Dead Until Dark. It has some similarities: a mind-reading heroine and hunky vampires, but Sookie is much spunkier and more down-to-earth than Bella and I'd say the series appeals more to an adult audience. It's a good blend of horror, mystery, and southern gothic.
Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series or the Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill are others you might want to try.

Conversation 3: Something along the lines of River of Doubt.
 
Candice Millard is great! I shied away from historical writing until I read her book, Destiny of the Republic about the assassination of President Garfield. I couldn't put it down. If you haven't read that, I would highly recommend it. You might also try Blood and Thunder: an Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides. It's the exhaustively well-researched story of Kit Carson's role in westward expansion, but the narrative prose makes all that research accessible. It's a gripping and compelling read about a larger-than-life American figure.