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!