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.

Reveille Readers February

Reveille Reader:  Hannah Wurzel

Reveille Camper in: 2008

Hannah's Pick: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz'

Hannah's Review: I first fell in love with the author, Junot Diaz' in high school when I read his short stories collection - Drown. He's just so unique. Dominican American guy who writes complicated characters that are sooooo real and interesting. His writing is all over the place with very "real" ghetto language and then super refined and beautiful "author" writing. It is a more "edgy" book and contains some scandalous language and characters.

Book Description: The novel's main character, Oscar de Léon, is an overweight "ghetto nerd" from a family of Dominican Republic immigrants now living in New Jersey. Oscar's dream is to be successful and to find love, but because of the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations his dreams become harder to achieve. 

Reveille Reader: Joan Lunden

Joan's Pick: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Joan's Review: I just finished reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane and loved it. A co-worker recommended this book as "the best book she ever read". Thankfully I picked it right up and was not disappointed. Amazing murder mystery with rich characters and suspenseful plot twists. I seriously couldn't put it down. I'm sad it ended. I'm going to look for another book by this author. He is amazing! I highly recommend this read!

Book Description: A murder mystery novel about childhood friends Jimmy, Sean and Dave who unexpectedly reunite during the investigation of Jimmy's oldest daughter, Katie's murder. Sean's a police detective on the case, gathering difficult and disturbing evidence; he is also tasked with handling Jimmy's (an ex-convict) rage and need for retribution.

Recommendations from my Twitter-sphere...

Reader: Nicole R. Trevino 

Nicole's Pick: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 

Nicole's Review:  The book was made into a movie and is scheduled to hit theaters this June. You will not want the book to end. 

Book Description: The story is narrated by Hazel, a sixteen-year-old cancer patient who is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she meets and falls in love with Augustus Waters. Augustus is a sixteen year old ex-basketball player amputee.

Reader: Steven Sherwood 

Steven's Pick: The Chosen by Chaim Potak

Steven's Review: I enjoyed reading this novel because it was about something completely foreign to me. It takes place during the 1940s in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY and is set against the backdrop of historical events: the death of President Roosevelt, the end of World War II, the revelation of the Holocaust in Europe, and the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. It allows you to see how different worlds exist within just a few blocks of each other. It is one of my favorites.

Book Description: The Chosen is a novel that follows main characters Reuven Malter and his friend Daniel Saunders as they grow up in Brooklyn, NY. Reuven and Danny meet for the first time as rivals in a baseball game between their school teams.The two become best friends over time despite the vast difference in their upbringings.

Reveille Readers January

Reveille Reader: Diana Mihailoff

Reveille Camper in: 2013

Diana's Pick: Encore Performance: How One Woman's Passion Helped a Town Tap Into Happiness by Vicki G. Riordan & Brian Riordan

Diana's Review: An inspiring true story of woman who learned that it is never to late to live the life you want.  As a young girl growing up in the 1950's Vicki idolized stars like Shirley Temple and Gene Kelly.  She soon found her calling as a dance instructor, but like many baby boomers, she put her passion on hold to start a family.  Only when her marriage ended and she was left with little means of support for herself and two young sons did Vicki return to her first true love: teaching dance.  In doing so, she found much more than a way to make a living: she found a way to make a difference.  With her exuberant personality, infectious enthusiasm, and unwavering belief in the magic of movement to make even the darkest of moments better, Vicki has inspired thousands of women to do things they never dreamed possible.  At the age of 62, when her peers were thinking about retirement, Vicki opened the doors to what has become America's largest adult tap dancing studio.

Book Description: Billy Elliot meets The Golden Girls in this inspiring true story of a woman who learned that it’s never too late to live the life you want. As a young girl, Vicki Riordan found her calling as a tap dancer and at eighteen she opened her own studio. But Vicki soon decided to put her tap shoes into early retirement to focus on marriage and start a family. When her marriage abruptly ended and Vicki was left with no means to support herself and her two young sons, she returned to her passion and began teaching adult tap. The Tap Pups program was born and at the age of sixty-two, Vicki opened what has become the largest adult tap studio in America.
Vicki has gone from teaching seventeen adults to 500. Her students range in age from twenty-one to eighty-nine (with an average age of fifty-seven), and thanks to the Tap Pups program many have transformed and reinvented themselves at a point in life when the expectation is that they should be slowing down. Tap has made them confident in their bodies and themselves and has joined the women of Vicki’s community into an unbreakable sisterhood.

Encore Performance is ripe with themes that readers everywhere can relate to: love, family, friendship, living your dream, keeping hope alive in difficult times, and so much more. Vicki’s story celebrates the importance of remembering your true passion, going after it with courage, and proving that it’s never too late to live the life you want.

Reveille Reader: Riselle Abrams

Reveille Camper in: 2007 - 2013

Riselle's Pick: The Crypt Thief: A Hugo Marston Novel by Mark Pryor

Riselle's Review: This book is an inspiring true story of a woman who learned that it is never to late to live the life you want. 

Book Description: It’s summer in Paris and two tourists have been murdered in Père Lachaise cemetery in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. The cemetery is locked down and put under surveillance, but the killer returns, flitting in and out like a ghost, and breaks into the crypt of a long-dead Moulin Rouge dancer. In a bizarre twist, he disappears under the cover of night with part of her skeleton.

One of the dead tourists is an American and the other is a woman linked to a suspected terrorist; so the US ambassador sends his best man and the embassy’s head of security—Hugo Marston—to help the French police with their investigation.

When the thief breaks into another crypt at a different cemetery, stealing bones from a second famed dancer, Hugo is stumped. How does this killer operate unseen? And why is he stealing the bones of once-famous can-can girls?

Hugo cracks the secrets of the graveyards but soon realizes that old bones aren’t all this killer wants. . . .

Reveille Readers December

Tis the season for holiday traveling which means it's the perfect time for a great new book!  Whether you're headed to grandma's house for the weekend, taking a family vacation to paradise, or if you're just taking some "me-time" with some hot cocoa by the fireplace - our Reveille Readers have new recommendations for you to pick up.  And don't forget - these make great holiday gifts too! 

Reveille Reader: Susan Wood 

Reveille Camper in: 2012

Susans's Pick: My Story: Elizabeth Smart

Susan's Review: The maturity with which she handled her situation, her strong faith, her unwavering hope, her willingness to share her experience for the benefit of others... she is an amazing woman. Also a very well written book. This book inspired me.

Book Description: For the first time, ten years after her abduction from her Salt Lake City bedroom, Elizabeth Smart reveals how she survived and the secret to forging a new life in the wake of a brutal crime.

Now for the first time, in her memoir, MY STORY, she tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convinced them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Smart explains how her faith helped her stay sane in the midst of a nightmare and how she found the strength to confront her captors at their trial and see that justice was served.

Reveille Reader:  Cheryl Oakes

Reveille Camper in:  2011 & 2012 

Cheryl's Pick:   The Plain of Jars by N. Lombardi Jr

Cheryl's Review:   The story of a 60 year old woman from the mid west who starts a journey into Vietnam nam to find out how her son died.

Book Description: What would you do if you found that the bones and ashes you were given by the Air Force were not the remains of your loved one?

Dorothy Kozeny, a 64-year-old widow from a small town in Ohio, after getting no answers from the relevant authorities, decides the only thing to do is to go to Laos herself to search for the truth concerning her son's fate. In 1990, accompanied by a trusted Laotian called Kampeng, Dorothy travels deep into the mountains of rural Laos, attempting to trace her son's path through inhospitable terrain, an unforgettable trek that provides her with a rewarding, often humorous, and at times frustrating, cross-cultural experience. All clues lead her to a mysterious figure, an alleged CIA operative left over from the war, living in a remote and hostile area deep in the jungle. The second part of the book traces the life of this enigmatic character hiding in Laos, the two main characters linked through Dorothy's son.

Happy Holidays & Happy Reading!  

Submit your Reveille Reader Recommendation by clicking here: Reveille Readers

Reveille Readers

The weather is getting chilly and it's the perfect time of year to bundle up with a good book.  We are very excited about all the book recommendations you've been sending to us for Reveille Readers, so keep 'em coming!  We will continue to share your favorite picks, we look forward to hearing what you think of these books, and we can't wait to read them too! 

Reveille Reader: Joanne Notman from Ontario, Canada 

Reveille Camper in: 2012 & 2013 

Joanne's Pick: An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff

Joanne's Review: If you want a Feel Good Book, this is it!  A true Story about a hungry 10 year old in New York City and a Busy Advertising Executive.  I have passed this book to everyone I know and they all love it!

Book Description: 
An Invisible Thread tells of the life-long friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy, and how both of their lives were changed by what began as one small gesture of kindness.

When Laura Schroff brushed by a young panhandler on a New York City corner one rainy afternoon, something made her stop and turn back. She took the boy to lunch at the McDonald’s across the street that day. And she continued to go back, again and again for the next four years until both their lives had changed dramatically. Nearly thirty years later, that young boy, Maurice, is married and has his own family. Now he works to change the lives of disadvantaged kids, just like the boy he used to be. 

An Invisible Thread is the true story of the bond between a harried sales executive and an eleven-year-old boy who seemed destined for a life of poverty. It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has spanned three decades and brought meaning to an over-scheduled professional and hope to a hungry and desperate boy living on the streets.

Reveille Reader: Bonnie Breuer from Greenville, North Carolina.  

Reveille Camper in: 2009 & 2010

Bonnie's Pick: Home Front by Kristin Hannah

Bonnie's Review: This is a book about an exceptionally strong woman who is a wife, Mother, and in the military reserves as a helicopter pilot. It was eye opening because I had never really focused on or even known about what our service women have to endure.  It will make you laugh and cry.  If I tell you more, it will spoil it!

Book Description: 
In her bestselling novels Kristin Hannah has plumbed the depths of friendship, the loyalty of sisters, and the secrets mothers keep. Now, in her most emotionally powerful story yet, she explores the intimate landscape of a troubled marriage with this provocative and timely portrait of a husband and wife, in love and at war. 

All marriages have a breaking point. All families have wounds. All wars have a cost...

Like many couples, Michael and Jolene Zarkades have to face the pressures of everyday life---children, careers, bills, chores---even as their twelve-year marriage is falling apart. Then an unexpected deployment sends Jolene deep into harm’s way and leaves defense attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene to leave her family, but as a solider she has always understood the true meaning of duty. In her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of her life on the front lines, shielding her family from the truth. But war will change Jolene in ways that none of them could have foreseen. When tragedy strikes, Michael must face his darkest fear and fight a battle of his own---for everything that matters to his family.

At once a profoundly honest look at modern marriage and a dramatic exploration of the toll war takes on an ordinary American family, Home Front is a story of love, loss, heroism, honor, and ultimately, hope. 

Joan's Pick: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Joan's Review: This came highly recommended and I wasn't disappointed, I absolutely loved this book!  It's a suspense mystery but also filled with real history and to top it off it really makes you think about life and our world.  I remember being a little girl and watching television on the day of JFK's assassination and the ensuing hours and here we are, 50 years later and I found this book... it was completely riveting.  I would love any recommendations that would take me into a book like this one. 

Book Description: 
If you had the chance to change the course of history, would you? Would the consequences be what you hoped?

Jake Epping, 35, teaches high-school English in Lisbon Falls, Maine, and cries reading the brain-damaged janitor's story of childhood Halloween massacre by their drunken father. On his deathbed, pal Al divulges a secret portal to 1958 in his diner back pantry, and enlists Jake to prevent the 11/22/1963 Dallas assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. Under the alias George Amberson, our hero joins the cigarette-hazed full-flavored world of Elvis rock'n'roll, Negro discrimination, and freeway gas-guzzlers without seat belts. Will Jake lurk in impoverished immigrant slums beside troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald, or share small-town friendliness with beautiful high school librarian Sadie Dunhill, the love of his life?

Have you read any of these books? Let us know what you think! Have your own book to recommend? let us know!