June Reveille Readers

We've been catching up on our reading over here, have you?! We have collected some great books from past and future Reveille campers and we are excited to share them with you just in time for summer poolside weekends!

Future 2014 Reveille camper!: Linda Sherwood

Linda's Pick: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Linda's Review: The summer is the perfect time to wrap yourself up in Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins. This novel begins on the rocky coast of Italy in 1962, spans 50 years and two continents with dozens of interesting characters, both real and fictional, who are star struck, love struck and sometimes just stricken…You’ll be engaged by the creative style and this engaging story from beginning to end. 

Book Description:  Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962...and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.

Reveille Camper: Carla Slater Kettrick 

Camper in: 2013

Carla's Pick: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Carl's Review: I would recommend The Happiness Project by Gretchen Runbin. It is a very good launch pad for people who are looking to add a little more happiness to their lives.

Book Description: Ranked #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, Author Gretchen Rubin, chronicles her life adventures during a year period to study scientific research as well as popular culture on ways to be happier. What she discovered will change the way you view "happiness". It is the little things that matter most.

Reveille Camper: Riselle Abrams

Camper in: 2008-2014!  

Riselle's Pick: Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama 

Riselle's Review: This book was of an historical nature taking place in rural China in the 1920's and 30's follows young women in a silk factory. Reminds us of the hardships in life that we all have the courage to overcome.

Book Description: Back in rural China in 1926, a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines of a silk factory where they work from dawn to dusk. The young women use their strength and ambition to achieve freedom they could never have hoped for on their own.

Reveille Camper: Ali Barrella 

Camper in: 2013-2014

Ali's Pick: The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun 

(This book is also highly recommended by Joan! She recently interviewed Adam at an event and you can hear the interview here!) 

Ali's Review: If you're looking to be inspired, this is the book for you! Not only does The Promise of a Pencil make you want to help create extraordinary changes throughout our world, but it is a self motivational story that will make you appreciate the little things in life. Items we take for granted could be considered delicacies to someone in another country. Author, Adam Braun, asked a little boy in India what he wished for and wanted most in the ENTIRE world, his shocking response was....a pencil.

Book Description: The Promise of a Pencil is the story of author Adam Braun and his journey to creating his own non-profit (or as he would call it, for profit) organization, Pencils for Promise. The riveting story of how a young man turned $25 into more than 200 schools around the world and the guiding steps anyone can take to lead a successful and significant life. 

The Things They Carried, Orphan Train, and 2030... Reveille Readers April

Spring has FINALLY arrived and there is no better way to welcome the warm weather than with a good book! We have three great recommendations for you this month and Joan was eager to share one of her new favorites! And don't forget - we love receiving new book suggestions, so click here or email us here to submit recommendations for next months Reveille Readers!

Reveille Reader: Salie Fraenkle

Camper In: 2009, 2010 

Salie's Pick: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Salie's Review: One of the best books ever written about Vietnam. I’ve read everything that Tim O’Brien has ever written and this is my favorite.

Book Description: The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories about a platoon of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. The stories catalogs the variety of objects Tim O’Brien (the protagonist) and his fellow solders keep with them while at war, objects like a rifle, morphine, and M&M candies. Among other things, it deals with the surreal and ambiguous nature of war. 

Although this is a fictional story, O'Brien wrote parts of The Things They Carried from his memories of real life experience as a Vietnam solider. Twenty years after his service in Vietnam, forty years since the war, he still carries parts of it with him....


Reveille Reader: Ellen Shapiro 

Camper In: 2013, 2014

Ellen's Pick: Orphan Train By Christina Baker Kline

Ellen's Review: Orphan Train opened my eyes to a time in our history which I knew nothing about. In a compelling story, this book describes and details the lives of homeless children who were orphaned and abandoned from the mid 1800 to the early 1920's. They were transported to foster homes on "Orphan Trains". The story is told through the relationship that develops between 2 women...a young girl and a 91 year old woman who had been one of those Orphans and is the main narrator of the story.

Book Description: Orphan Molly Ayer is close to “aging out” of her foster care physicality. When Molly is assigned a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be...  Read more

Joan's Pick - 2030 The Real Story of What Happens To America  by Albert Brooks 

Joan's Review: This is a funny, eye opening, and jaw-dropping look into what life could be like in America in our near future. As the medical world advances with findings such as cures for cancer and technology continues to develop, humans will be able to live longer and longer.  The older population could grow to reach unheard of numbers as the dwindling younger population bears the burden of trying to care for them. I finished this book as I was landing in San Diego to attend the Aging In America conference, which was pretty ironic!  While there I heard the astounding statistics that I had just read in this book, only without Albert Brooks' comedic sensibility! I highly recommend this one!  

Book Description: Is this what the future holds? June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years earlier, America’s population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond. Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward “the olds” and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents’ entitlement programs.

But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond. Read more..

Reveille Readers: March

We've got three great books for you here and we can't wait to hear what you have to say about them!  We love receiving Reveille Reader recommendations, so keep 'em coming! 

Reveille Readers: 

This one has been recommended by MANY camper including Jamie Krauss Hess (camper in 2007 - 2013) & Ashley Sabia (camper in 2011 - 2013). Our Reveille staff Joan & Lindsay also read this book and highly recommend it!

Their Pick: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Book Description: On Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears from the happy couples McMansion on the Mississippi River. Under extreme pressure from the police, a growing media frenzy and Amy’s very worried parents, Nick parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior which leads him to be a suspect in his own wife's murder case. Nick becomes oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter, but is he really a killer?

A New York Times Bestseller, Gone Girl is in the process of being made into a motion picture that will star Ben Affleck as Nick, due out October, 2014. 

Reveille Reader: Sue Gilmore

Sue's Pick: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Sue's Review: This book is an inspirational true story of based on a true story of Joseph Tamborini, and his life as an Olympic athlete and WWII aviator who is shot down and taken as prisoner of war by the Japanese. The trials he endures are almost unimaginable, but through it all, he never loses his remarkable attitude and positive spirit. If you haven't read "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand yet, you definitely should.

Book Description: WWII Lt. Louis Zamperin, a teenage Army Air Force bomber finds himself stranded, floating along a tiny raft after his aircraft went down in the center of the Pacific Ocean. An athlete before the War, Louis is faced with thousands of miles of exposed ocean, aggressive sharks, thirst and starving, and the ultimate test of endurance.

A New York Times #1 Bestseller and soon to be a motion picture, Laura Hillenbrand's (also the author os Seabiscuit) Unbroken is a World War II story of survival, Resilience and Redemption.

Reveille Reader: Carolyn Glassford Drew

Carolyn's Pick: Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life By Dr. Henry Cloud, Dr. John Townsend.

Carolyn's Review: As women we tend to extend ourselves to the limits that totally exhaust us emotionally and physically. Reading this book and putting the writers suggestions into play has given me permission to say "no" in business and family when it comes to being the one that does everything and fixes everything.

Book Description: Boundaries help us define who we are and who we are not. This book discusses how to acquire responsibility for our actions, and hope that we cannot only pull through, but thrive to create a healthy, balanced lifestyle.