Water for Elephants

I read this book for a couple of reasons. First of all, my best friend recommended it quite highly and reminded me it was only $4.99 on barnesandnoble.com for the Nookbook. Secondly, the movie is about to come out, with Robert Pattinson playing the lead role of Jacob. Inevitabley, my best friend and I will be among the first people with our butts in a movie theater seat waiting to watch this movie, and she is going to want to talk about the book. So I decided it was in my best interest to go ahead and read it, even though I typically prefer to see the movie first, and then read the book.

I have to say that I enjoyed the book, but hope they take some creative liberties with the movie. There were times in the book where I found myself getting a little bit bored. Picturing Jacob as Robert Pattinson usually helped me pull through it though! The last 75 or so pages were great! I just couldn't put it down. I also really enjoyed the note from the author at the end. It's always nice to know what parts of a historical book are real, and where those stories came from.

The best thing about this book for me was that you could actually imagine what it was like to be in a travelling circus during the depression. The details were vivid and I feel like Gruen did a great job at filling in the holes that other authors might have left empty. I do wish we got to see a  little more of the storyline between Jacob and Marlena though. It's nice that we know what happened to them, but I would have liked to read at least some of it from Jacob's point of view, as we did the rest of the book.

In reading the questions for book club discussions at the end of the book, I learned that one layer of the story follows the book of Jacob from the Bible. I am not a religious person, so I did not make that connection, but I'd love to hear from any of you who did realize that. Maybe you can fill me in!