Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was a book club book and is one of my absolute favorites. Once I started the book, I couldn't put the thing down. The book takes place in 19th century China and is about the friendship of two young girls and their journey throughout life. A girl named Lily is matched up with a laotong or "old same" named Snow Flower. The girls come to think they are alike, but they soon find out they are very different. The book is about friendship, loyalty, secret language among women, footbinding, and love. The story line takes you through years of friendship and many long-kept secrets among friends. The role of women in this time period is fascinating.

Don't we all long for an old same or longtime friend to get through life with??

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a very intriguing book. This was one of our book club selections. This is probably not one of would have selected to read on my own. However, it seems to pop up on a lot of book club selections.

It is about a man who eperiences great tradgedy and decides to run away and ends up on a traveling circus train in the 1920's. It is an amazing story about what this man sees and all of goes on in the circus. The book had some many great characters with great depth. It was had to put it down. Some of the characters in the book were based on real circus characters from the time period which made for an even more interesting read for me. The author of this book did a fantastic job as portraying so many different charcters. It is amazing that a woman could portray an old man so well.