answer to a question

Hey girls! I saw that a few of you asked if Ape House is a sequel to Water for Elephants. It is not a sequel, so you can read Ape House without having read Water for Elephants.

I also wanted to point out that we are going to try very hard not to compare Ape House to Water for Elephants. It's hard when an author writes an amazing book and everyone compares the second book to the first. I can't imagine that Ape House will be better or even as good as Water for Elephants.

I just wanted to point out those two things before we get started.

But... seriously, if you haven't read Water for Elephants, you simply must!

a new year, a new book!

Welcome back, book clubbers! Happy New Year to all of you.

After a two month hiatus to breathe during the holiday season, Rachel and I are ready to start reading and discussing great books again with all of you. We both have lists of books we'd like to read in 2011 and have come up with a few books that we think will be great for this great community of readers.

Rachel and I both loved Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. If you haven't read it, you should do it. Now. It's a wonderful book and the movie will be coming out soon. The movie trailer looks absolutely wonderful, but you know the book is always better than the movie.

I digress. Because we loved Sara Gruen's talent so much, we decided to go with another of her books for our first Book Beginnings and Bookends Book Club book of 2011.

We will be reading Ape House by Sara Gruen.

For more information on Ape House, click here.

To purchase Ape House, click here.

We won't start reading the book or doing the discussion posts until February, so you have the next few weeks to get the book. But don't start reading yet because we'll be posting a reading schedule. We'll also continue to set up the Linky tool for you to post your answers to the discussion questions on your own blog if you'd like.

Happy reading in 2011!