Category — Book Club

This is a post for the GRAB(ook) Club. Like the idea of a book club where you don’t have to leave your living room? Then read more about the GRAB(ook) Club which holds the book discussion on blogs, a Facebook group, and a GoodReads group.

July’s Book is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  You can jump into the discussion by clicking any of the blogs below (links will appear when the post goes up), or joining the Facebook or GoodReads group (links to those groups are in the information post).

• Stirrup Queens
• Me Plus One
• Are You Kidding Me?
• The Road Less Travelled
• Adventures in Writing, Reading & Bookcrossing
• Lavender Luz
• Two Bees in Love
• CD1 Again
• Amy (on GoodReads/Facebook)

NEXT STEP: sign up for the August book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (discuss August 15) by leaving a comment below telling me that you’re in, the name and url of your blog, or whether you are blogless and will be discussing on the Facebook/GoodReads groups.

Today we’re discussing Measure of Love as part of the GRAB(ook) Club, and I’m participating too.  You can answer my question without having read the book (though… you know… what are you waiting for?  It’s a great summer read).

Arianna presents a sticky situation in Chapter Two.  She’s at the dry cleaners when an annoying woman holds up the line for twenty minutes, arguing about her missing clothes.  Arianna falls into a conversation with a man standing behind her who turns out to be a writer for a comedy news show.  They end up grabbing coffee together and chatting after they get out of the dry cleaners.  They part ways without making any plans to see each other again; in fact, she doesn’t even have his last name though it wouldn’t be difficult to find it since she knows where he works.

Rachel thinks this crosses a line, especially since Arianna is in a committed relationship with Ethan.  Arianna doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with grabbing a cup of coffee with a stranger.

Which person do you think is correct and would you have gotten coffee with the man if you had been Arianna waiting in line?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for Measure of Love.  You can get your own copy of Measure of Love by Melissa Ford at bookstores including Amazon.

This is the inaugural post for the GRAB(ook) Club. Like the idea of a book club where you don’t have to leave your living room? Then read more about the GRAB(ook) Club which holds the book discussion on blogs, a Facebook group, and a GoodReads group.

June’s Book is Measure of Love by Melissa Ford.  You can jump into the discussion by clicking any of the blogs below (links will appear when the post goes up), or joining the Facebook or GoodReads group (links to those groups are in the information post).

• Stirrup Queens
• Bereaved and Blessed
• Me Plus One
• Are You Kidding Me?
• The Road Less Travelled
• Lavender Luz
• Two Bees in Love
• CD1 Again
• Slaying, Blogging, Whatever
• Adventures in Writing, Reading & Bookcrossing
• The Book Diva’s Reads
• Two Adults, One Child
• Queen of the Slipstream
• Inconceivable!
• River Run Dry
• Sticky Feet
• Better Full Than Empty
• Bionic Mamas
• Pepper (on GoodReads/Facebook)
• Linda (on GoodReads/Facebook)
• Anne (on GoodReads/Facebook)
• Amy (on GoodReads/Facebook)
• Jacqueline (on GoodReads/Facebook)

NEXT STEP: sign up for the July book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (discussed on July 18) by leaving a comment below telling me that you’re in, the name and url of your blog, or whether you are blogless and will be discussing on the Facebook/GoodReads groups.

Welcome to the online book tour for The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption.  Grab a cup of coffee and prepare to think.

We’re here today to discuss Lori Holden’s new book about open adoption.  Below are all the other stops on this tour.  Please click around and read everyone’s thoughts on this book.

There are a lot of children in the blogosphere that I’ve known pre-conception.  I knew their parent(s) wanted to have them, and I read their parent(s) thoughts and feelings during the endless cycles or their adoption plan.  And then their mother was pregnant or she got the call that she had been matched.  Fast forward again and now a child is here, and that child grows up, and that is part of the legacy of being in the ALI blogosphere: we know about children when they are only wishes in someone’s heart, long before they’re here.

This book, Lori Holden’s The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption, is like that.

I’ve known for years that Lori wanted to write a book, a how-to manual that would make open adoption easier for everyone in the triad.  Open adoption is something a lot of adoptive parents and birthparents want to do, but there are few books out there to serve as a guide to the experience.  How do you navigate the relationship in a way that places the child — the only one who doesn’t get a say in the arrangement — at the center?

And then one day she started writing this book, and then she queried agents, and then she got an agent with her book proposal.  Her agent sold the book and she started to write the manuscript.  And now, many years down the road from that first spark of an idea, that book has been born and is in people’s hands.  Isn’t that crazy?  To know about a book when it was only a wish and then to get to hold it.

It’s an important book.  It provides a much-needed panoramic look at open adoption, taking the concept of openness and making it a mindset more than a set of requirements.  And because it’s a mindset, it becomes a way of thinking that provides you with the answer to any unique situation that develops down the road.  I would argue that the ideas in the book are applicable to all parents; not just adoptive parents or birthparents.  But, of course, adoption is the focus of this book.  From choosing an agency that is going to set you on the right course to even building openness in adoption or donor gamete situations where the birthparents may not be known or accessible.

Which is a long way to say that I’m ecstatic it’s here, and I can’t wait to watch it grow up, changing the face of open adoption one family at a time.

Congratulations, Lori, on a job very well done.

Please return to the main post to read more opinions on Lori Holden’s The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption.