Archive for December, 2010

Our 2010 Favorites: Commencement

December 31st, 2010

To celebrate the close of this year and the beginning of the next, we’ve decided to take a look back at our reading family’s personal favorites of 2010. Enjoy!

I read J. Courtney Sullivan’s Commencement just a month after my college graduation in May 2010, and I found it to be a rich, hilarious, and absolutely convincing book about friendship, feminism, and growing up. The four main characters — Celia, Bree, April, and Sally — come gloriously to life as they follow their own unique paths in the four years following their graduation from Smith College. By the end, they felt like friends I had known forever, and they reminded me of my own close friends from college: women who are ambitious, passionate, excited, and flawed, who are dealing with changes in their lives with grace, style, and the occasional breakdown.

Commencement deals with universal and fascinating subjects — mother-daughter relationships, the difficulty of transitions, the role of feminism today — that raised questions for me about my own identity as a woman and my relationships with my friends. Months later, I continue to think about the book, to find parallels between its plot and my own life, and to recommend it to all of my friends.

–Allison Z., Editorial

Click here for a Reading Group Guide.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Click here to buy the book.

Was there a particular book that you or your reading group couldn’t stop discussing this year? Let us know in the comments!