Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
July Book Club Vote
Pick your top 3. (I'll give 3 pts for a first choice, 2 pts for a second choice, 1 pt for a third choice. Book with the most overall points wins.) Write-ins welcome.
Title: Then They Came for Me
Author: Maziar Bahari
Genre: Memoir
Quick Description: When Maziar Bahari left London to cover Iran?s presidential election, he assured his pregnant fianc?e, Paola, that he?d be back in just a few days. Little did he know that he would spend the next three months in Iran?s most notorious prison. For the Bahari family, wars, coups, and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar?s father was imprisoned in the 1950s, and his sister in the 1980s. Alone in his cell at, fearing the worst, Maziar draws strength from his memories of the courage of his father and sister, and hears their voices speaking to him across the years.
Title: The Widower's Tale
Author: Julia Glass
Genre: Fiction
Quick Description: Seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. But his routines are disrupted when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. With equal parts affection and humor, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about a man who can no longer remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters, or?to his great shock?the precarious joy of falling in love.
Title: Nefertiti
Author: Michelle Moran
Genre: Fiction
Quick Description: Nefertiti's life is told from the point of view of her younger sister, Mutnodjmet. Prince Amunhotep secretly kills his older brother and becomes next in line to Egypt's throne, and 15-year-old Nefertiti soon becomes his chief wife. He already has a wife, but Kiya is not as bewitching as Nefertiti. As Mutnodjmet looks on (and falls in love), Amunhotep and Nefertiti worship a different main god, displace the priests who control Egypt's wealth, and begin building a city. Things get tense when Kiya has sons and the Nefertiti has only daughters, and they come to a boil when the army is used to build temples to the pharaoh and his queen instead of protecting Egypt's borders.
Title: Alone
Author: Lisa Gardner
Genre: Crime/Thriller/Mystery
Quick description: In a split second of time, police sniper Bobby Dodge takes the fateful shot, killing a husband who appears on the verge of murdering his wife. In the cold light of day, however, it becomes clear there was more to the scene than meets the eye. As Detective D.D. Warren investigates her fellow officer?and uncovers the dirty secrets of a privileged Boston family?the body count quickly climbs. No one is safe, and no one will see death coming until it has them cornered, helpless and alone.
Title: Cloud Atlas
Author: David Mitchell
Genre: Literary Fiction
Quick description: A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan?s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified ?dinery server? on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other?s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.
Title: Moloka'i
Author: Alan Brennert
Genre: Historical Fiction
Quick description: Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, and dreams of seeing the far-off lands that her father, a merchant seaman, often visits. But at the age of seven, Rachel and her dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from her family, she is sent to Kalaupapa, the isolated leper colony on the island of Moloka'i.
Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Genre: YA/Dystopian
Quick description: Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.
Title: In the Woods
Author: Tara French
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Quick description: A 12-year-old girl is found murdered at an archaeological site at the center of a controversial highway construction project.
Title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Fantasy/YA
Quick description: Harry Potter has lived a dismal life with his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. He sleeps in a closet and has never had a birthday party or Christmas presents. Even worse, he has to endure life with his horrible spoiled cousin, Dudley. Then on Harry's eleventh birthday, things change when a letter arrives, (by owl), inviting him to attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Title: The Art of Racing in the Rain
Author: Garth Stein
Genre: Fiction, Pets? Is that a genre? ha
Quick description: From Good Reads - Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life's ordeals. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zo? at his side.
A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it.
Author: Claire Avery
Genre: Fiction
Quick Description: Fifteen-year-old Sara and her beautiful sister, Rachel, are too young to legally drive a car?but are approaching spinsterhood in Utah?s secret polygamist Blood of the Lamb community. Having long since reached the ?age of preparedness,? they will soon be married off to much older men chosen by the hidden sect?s revered Prophet. When Rachel?s future husband is finally announced, violence erupts, and the girls must find the strength to escape the only life they have ever know?before it?s too late.
Re: July Book Club Vote
1st: Harry Potter (I promise guys, it's okay if we don't read this haha)
2nd: Moloka'i
3rd: Art of Racing in the Rain
EDIT: I changed my vote, see below and disregard this one. YOU'RE THE BEST KATE!
(Sorry I threw in a last minute suggestion!)
1. Hidden Wives
2. Matched
3. Moloka'i
1. Alone
2. Matched
3. In the Woods
1. Hidden Wives
2. They Came for Me
3. The Widower's Tale
2. Matched
3. The Widower's Tale
I change my vote now that hidden wives has been added...
1. Hidden Wives
2. Moloka'i
3. Harry Potter (SHAMEFUL OF ME!)
1. Hidden Wives
2. Alone
3. Moloka'i
1. Hidden Wives
2. Matched
3. Harry Potter (My mom and brother have been hassling me to start reading them for years)
::high five::
I kid. I kid. You know I love you, Cole!