I love reading. In fact, I spend most of my time reading: non-fiction work or yoga-related mostly. And blogs. Lots and lots of blogs.
Part of the reason I became a teacher is so I could get paid to read. Seriously, I don’t get people who don’t read. It’s weird.
Anyway, lately I’ve been so busy reading for work, yoga teacher training, and keeping up with all the blogs I follow, I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading fiction. The feeling of falling into a world that is nothing like your own and developing real feelings for characters that only exist in the imagination of the author and cheering for your favorites to overcome the obstacles in their lives.
I decided to revisit this long-lost love while I was traveling and had some good old-fashioned uninterrupted reading time flying across the Atlantic.
Remember earlier this summer I wrote about the adult summer reading program through the Sacramento Public Library? In order to win prizes (!) you must fill in a bingo card. I chose the line where you get to choose 3 books of your choice and a biography.
I went on vacation without my laptop and very limited access to the internet. I brought 3 fiction books and breezed through them in the first 5 days of our trip.
This is the first in a series about the books I read while I was on vacation. {You will have a chance to WIN THIS BOOK!}
Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi
Characters: Abileen, Minny and Miss Skeeter
Synopsis: Abileen and Minny are domestics and Miss Skeeter is a young, white frustrated budding writer that has just graduated from college. Over time, the women develop a secret friendship and decide they are going to tell the truth about what it is like to work for the white families in Jackson. Risky at best and potentially deadly at worst and yet they risk everything to tell their stories.
My thoughts: I had vaguely heard about this book. I had no idea what it was about so when I came upon it in the only English bookshop in Munich I immediately picked it up.
I was intrigued. A Southern white woman writing from the perspective of pre-Civil Rights African-American women? The author herself had grown up with a domestic and I was definitely curious to find out more about this author and her first novel.
I was hooked from the first chapter and despite my best efforts to pace myself I finished reading the entire novel the day before our endless travel back across the Atlantic. I just couldn’t put it down!
Want to win this book*?
4. If you use GoogleReader or another RSS Feed Service, put my blog in it (and send me a message you subscribed)
5. Add my Blog to your Blogroll (and send me a message)
6. Follow Me @tamihackbarth – on Twitter
Teacher Goes Back to School 
I RTd your contest as @ContestQueen and @Lucky_Yogini
@luckyyogini: thanks for entering to win THE HELP. i appreciate the RTs, shoutouts and follows. i hope you keep reading. =)
I LIKE you on Facebook :)
I already follow you on Twitter
(@Lucky_Yogini)
I can always use a great book. I seem to go through them so quickly!
I already like you, too (on FB and otherwise), but this is on my must-read list. Now that I have a brief break from reading work/life books, this one really intrigues me (although I think it is work/life-ish, from a different perspective). I need yoga today!
@hollee: thanks for all your support!
Hi, Tami!
Welcome back. I’d love to read this book and then pass it on to the next lucky reader!
Finished two [auto]biographies this summer that were completely ridiculous but at times highly entertaining:
Sarah Silverman’s “The Bedwetter,” and Tracey Morgan’s “I Am the New Black” (the covers alone are worth having around for a while). For a more serious read, I enjoyed “The Passionate Nomad,” a bio of adventurer Freya Stark (who I had never heard of) by Jane Fletcher Geniesse.
I already like you! (on Facebook)
cheers,
Alicia
@alicia: thanks for the great biography recs! i can’t wait to read them.
thanks for the support!
I want to win it and read it because I’m something like 456345029341 on a hold list of 65345332341241234 at the Sacramento Public Library for this book. And because I’m impatient and finding it difficult to be fiscally responsible and to not just buy it.
For biographies, I’d recommend Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis. It’s an awesome book.
And you’re already on my blogroll. :-)
@ryan: at least the book is still local. hook up with amanda and see if you can borrow it from her.
thanks for the rec and the support!
Thanks for plugging our reading program here at the Sacramento Public Library. We’ve linked to your blog. Please check ours out at http://www.altlibrary.com
@alt.library – thank you for reading! as you probably figured out, i’m a HUGE fan of the library and am lucky enough to live within walking distance of a branch. as a kid, i always participated in summer reading programs and loved it. i was thrilled to see an adult reading program.
i am still in need of a good biography – know of one?
thanks again for reading. i appreciate the support.
also – you are entered to win the book for adding TGBTS to your blogroll. thanks!!!!
I was to read it because it sounds fascinating and unique!
Amy S.
artsyrockerchick at aim dot com
P.S. You should read the memoir SON OF HAMAS.
@amy – thank you for reading, your comment and suggestion. you now have 2 entires!
I want to read this. It isn’t something I would generally pick up. What better reason to read it?
@amanda – thank you for your comment. you are now entered to win!