Every so often, it seems you hit a string of books that you just don’t find interesting. My recent list:

1.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain Library) : Last month’s book club book (the yearly classic). I think this was a case of expectations set too high.    It was interesting from the historical perspective, but really, quite unbelievable at the end.

2. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage) : The book starts by trying to explain statistics without math, which is impossible. Personally, I would enjoy working through the equations more than slogging through this book (no, I didn’t finish).  To top it off, the anecdotes about how people don’t intuitively understand statistics is very similar to another  book (that I also thought was awkwardly written) I did slog through a couple of years ago.

3. Also somewhere in this mix was In the Kitchen: A Novel, a fictional story about a chef in England who’s life is clearly going get very very ugly, and I just didn’t  care. 

For the last couple of months, several people at book club have recommended The Help by Kathryn Sockett.  I was hoping it would snap me out of the string of boring reads; and it delivered!

The story is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 – 63 during the height of the civil rights movement.  It’s the story of young white women (mostly Junior Leaguers), and the story of African-American women that work for them.   It’s funny, well written, educational, and makes you think.   It’s a real Pageturner!