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    The Book That Matters Most
    The Book That Matters Most
    The Book That Matters Most
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Book That Matters Most

    Written by Ann Hood

    Narrated by Nina Alvamar

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An enthralling novel about love, loss, secrets, friendship, and the healing power of literature, by the bestselling author of The Knitting Circle. Ava's twenty-five-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group's goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood-one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava's story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man. Ava's mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 9, 2016
    ISBN9781501930249
    The Book That Matters Most
    Author

    Ann Hood

    Ann Hood was born in Rhode Island. She graduated with a degree in American Literature and worked as a flight attendant for TWA for 8 years. Whilst working as a flight attendant, Ann got a Master's degree from New York University. She lived in NYC until 1993 when she re-met and married someone she knew in high school. Ann had a son, Sam, who is now 13. Her daughter Grace died in 2002 when she was 5; as a result, she adopted a baby from China last year, Annabelle, who is now 2.

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    Reviews for The Book That Matters Most

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Just ok. Only one of the storylines was interesting to me, but then that one turns out to be a bit far-fetched and not believable.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This was the type of novel I almost stopped reading because I was getting too depressed about what was happening in the characters lives. I’m glad I didn’t and the ending was worth all the emotional ups and downs. The main character Ava is reeling from her husband leaving her for another woman. She is lonely and seeks company in a book club that her closest friend leads. When Ava was a child, books were a source of comfort for her. Her mother owned a bookstore, but she died after Ava’s little sister died. At the first meeting of the book club everyone picks a book that had the most influence on them, Ava picks the one she read as a child that spoke to her after her mother’s death. As Ava sorts through her life, we are introduced to Maggie, her 20 something rebellious daughter, who is in Paris and continuing to make a mess out of her life with drugs and bad choices in men. Ava thinks Maggie is in Italy, and only finds out about Paris when she gets a phone call saying Maggie’s missing. There are other interesting characters, but I don’t want to give too much away. Be forewarned there is drug use, promiscuity, and adultery.
    • 3/5
      3.5 I love the premise of this book, but felt the execution didn’t quite get there. To me the characters seemed a little one-dimensional and the story got rather complicated, crossing over into mystery. Ava Tucker is a middle-aged French professor whose husband left her for a yarn-bomber (is that a thing?) and in an effort to get a life again, Ava joins her best friend Cate’s uber organized book club – there are only twelve members and someone has to leave (or die) before someone else can join. So the theme for the year (?!) is The Book that Matters Most. Each member gets to choose the book that matters most to him/her for a particular time, place, reason and that is what the group reads each month. Ava chooses From Here to Clare which helped her through a particularly hard time when her young sister died in an accident and her family fell apart. This is where the mystery portion comes in. Meanwhile, there is a parallel story about Ava’s struggling daughter who is living dangerously in Paris. Her saving grace ends up being a bookstore. The parts about books are enjoyable, but the parts about the characters’ lives don’t really ring true. Still, looking forward to the discussion it will generate. It’s not an easy choice to make.
    • 4/5
      Strong beginning and ending. The rest was very enjoyable. It's always hard to read about drug addictions. The strength of the book club was a joy to read.
    • 5/5
      Ava's husband has left her and her daughter is a drug addict. With time on her hands, Ava joins a book group. Their theme for the year is the book that matters most to each person. Ava picks a book that is hard to find.I enjoyed this book. Ava learns about her past, herself, and her mother. She discovers the answers to questions she has had. She also learns the story of the book that matters most to her. This is a keeper.
    • 5/5
      I could not put this one down! Such a complex plot. So many real issues. And tied to a book group. I will reread this.
    • 3/5
      Ava longed for company after her husband Jim moved out to be with another woman. She desperately needed to find a way to fill the empty hours that appeared suddenly when her husband left. When her friend Cate announced an opening in her book club, Ava jumped at the chance to join. As she gets to know the other members she gets the comfort, companionship, and conversation that she needs. The book club filled her with a warmth and comfort she hadn’t felt in a long time. Books had always been a refuge for Ava. “Reading used to bring me such pleasure. And then things happened in my life, and books lost the magic they once held for me. I feel I’m rediscovering that.” Meanwhile, Ava’s daughter, Maggie, is supposed to be in art school in Italy. She drops out of school without telling anyone to move to Paris, following the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway to pursue her dream of being a writer. She spent afternoons/evenings sitting in cafes, drinking wine, waiting for her life to begin, for something to happen, but nothing ever did. She left drunk, disappointed, not inspired, and not alive. She’d been dead inside for a long time. Maggie has a history of falling in love suddenly and dropping everything for a boy. She becomes involved in a very troubling relationship with an older married man and takes part in very dangerous and reckless behavior. Meanwhile, Ava’s book club meets monthly and each member shares with book club “the book that matters most” to them. The books that were chosen were Pride and Prejudice, The great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, One Hundred Years of Solitude, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Catcher in the Rye, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Slaughterhouse-Five. The book Ava chooses was given to her has a child and she begins to hunt down the author after she lies to the book club and tells them the author is coming to their discussion. As her search begins, alot of secrets from the past are revealed. This was a light and heart-warming read about the love of books and the way they affect us and our lives. It made me think about the books I love most and what they mean to me.
    • 5/5
      Books about books are nirvana for readers. And this book is one of the next best things to heaven. I could barely put it down.Ava thought her twenty-five-year marriage to Jim was strong. Then she sees a text on his phone from another woman, a woman Jim claims to be in love with, and her life begins to completely unravel.For years, Ava has wanted to join the book club at her local library, but membership is held to ten members, and there is a waiting list. However, the librarian is one of Ava’s best friends. She knows that Ava needs the group, so she bumps her to the top of the list.The book club picks books based on a theme for the year. Each member gets to pick a book based on that theme. The theme for the upcoming year is “The Book That Matters Most.” Each member is to pick the book that has changed his/her life, the book that has had a substantial impact on his/her life.Hood’s story is broken into chapters, each with an epigraph from that month’s book and the theme for the chapter. The titles range from The Great Gatsby to Pride and Prejudice, from The Catcher in the Rye to Anna Karenina.Ava’s life is complicated by her rebellious, just-out-of-rehab daughter, Maggie, who has gone to study in Florence. Along with Ava’s story, Maggie also has a section in each chapter that tells of her decent into addiction at the hands of a much older man whom she follows to France.As Ava tried to come to terms with her new life, a retired detective shows up at her door, wanting desperately to put to the bed, at last, the tragic events of Ava’s childhood that have haunted her.Ever since I first read this book’s title, I’ve been trying to determine which book matters the most to me in my life. Two of the strongest runners are Jonathan Hull’s Losing Julia or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (the book version, not the movie version). But if I had to name just one, could I say, “All of them?” I loved The Book That Matters Most. I give it 6 out of 5 stars.
    • 3/5
      Loved the concept of the book club, but found too much extraneous material to say this was a good book. Contains some nice quotes, but too many characters, too many subplots that fizzled out. If the author had stuck to the title idea it might have been better, but I really didn't like her nonfiction book that was all about the books that mattered most to her, so maybe not. However it was a change of pace to have a lead character whose husband left and money wasn't an issue.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book. Good idea of how to find a book
    • 5/5
      I have admired Ann Hood for quite a few years – way back to the early 80s. For some reason, she fell out of my radar. But I resumed my love for her work with The Obituary Writer and now, her latest novel, The Book That Matters Most. I really enjoy novels set in libraries and bookstores or stories which revolve around a book club. This novel has all that and suspense, as well.Ava and Jim have recently separated, Ava is naturally angry and distraught. They have a daughter, Maggie, who is on a year-long adventure to Florence, Italy to study art. Her father financed the entire trip. Ava teaches French at a local college. Cate is a friend of Ava’s, and she has promised Ava a seat in her book club as soon as one opens. A seat becomes available, and Ava joins the club.Ava recalls Ted, a former partner. Hood writes, “Ted didn’t like books very much. Any books, never mind one about a philosophical seagull. Over a decade ago, when they lived in Manhattan and she was working at the Strand bookstore on Broadway and Twelfth, she would come home excited, a bag full of review copies and hard-to-find used books. She would lay them out on their enamel-topped kitchen table as if they were precious things. They were precious things, she reminded herself now. How she hated the way he shoved them aside to make room for his own textbooks; he was getting an MBA then, poring over facts and figures at that table long into the night” (96). I am glad that “book shover” was quickly out of the picture.The frame for the novel is, of course, the book club. The annual picking books for the next year occurs, and they do something unusual. Cate, the coordinator of the club announces a theme for the next year. Ann writes, “‘Last year our theme was ‘The Classics,’ and Paula’s pick was Remembrance of Things Past. Can you believe that?” // Ah. Proust. Ava thought, remembering that he was the writer whose words her mother had repeated. There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book. She considered reciting the quote to the woman staring up at here to prove herself worthy to be here, in Paula’s shoes” (14). Now that is an interesting idea, and I might propose we try it as our next book selection event nears.Meanwhile, Maggie has grown bored with Florence, and she travels to Paris. She meets an older man, and Maggie’s world begins to fragment. She occasionally emails her mother, lying about her whereabouts and her health. Hood writes, “Maggie stood, her knees weak, and made her slow way outside. It was early morning, and the sky was streaked with pink and red. It would be a hot day, she thought. She looked around, searching for something to orient her. A landmark or a street sign. But nothing looked familiar. She walked to the corner, stopped again to look around, still saw nothing familiar, and kept walking, until finally in the distance she saw the green pipes and blue ducts of the Pompidou Center. Relieved, she walked toward it. Nearby was the café where she had seen Noah, and the bookstore with the beanbag chairs. She would have a big café au lait and an omelet and bread and then she would go into the bookstore and sink down in a beanbag chair, and read” (223).At this point the story comes together with a teary and satisfying ending. Ann Hood is a wonderful writer with lots of talent for drawing her characters, describing their settings, and exploring their anxieties and fears. Part of the story involves the death of Ava’s sister when they barely more than toddlers. Some might call this “Chicklit,” but I prefer to call Ann Hood’s marvelous story, The Book the Matters Most a first-rate read for all adults. 5 stars.--Chiron, 9/15/17
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the story, but the ending wrapped up all the loose ends in a cozy, happy bow. It was telegraphed, but I still hoped for something a little more complex.
    • 4/5
      Ava's husband leaves her for another woman and in order to have something to do with herself, she joins a book club. The club's theme for the year is "The Book that Matters Most" and everyone names a book that inspired or changed them. Ava chooses a book called "From Clare to Here" and, desparately wanting to fit in with the club, says she'll get the author to come speak to the group. Unfortunately, the author is rather difficult to track down. Meanwhile, Ava's daughter who has had some issues with drugs and men, is getting herself into dangerous situations in Paris. There's also a family tragedy, the death of Ava's sister at the age of 6, and then Ava's mother's death one year subsequent to Lily's, when Ava was still a child. There's a lot of plot to fit into this book, but it's handled well. The switches between points of view are not as jarring as they could be. There are a couple of twists to be revealed, which were easily guess-able in advance, but still pretty rewarding when they came about. My biggest "nitpicky" complaint would be that I haven't read all the books the club goes through-- and discusses the endings of! in detail!--so I feel a little bit spoiled, as I did eventually intend to get to a couple of them. I read this book for book club, and I'm thinking everyone at our next meeting is going to want to suggest this as a theme for our group.
    • 4/5
      Opening scene: yarn bombed marquee. Bombed by the woman who stole the primary character, Ava's husband.To dig out of her humdrums, Ava joins a book club, a tight knit group hard to infiltrate unless happenstance voids a slot. Selecting books for the year, they theme them as "the book that mattered most". Ava's is an obscure novel she read repeatedly the year her sister and mother both died. She was but 12.Sharing chapters with her wayward daughter, supposedly studying art in France, when all she really was doing was skirting a STD & liver damage until becoming a kept woman by a libidinous, married man who expresses her into a junkie.Hank, a detective and foie illicite, also gets to speak his parts as they all twist into a tidy bow at the end. One, I might add, that tho it really held no surprises, was comforting to meet. I'm so glad Ava came out so strong, finally.Ironically, tho not so much, this was our book club selection. I'm glad for that choice.
    • 3/5
      I liked the premise of this book, and I liked the main character, Ava, and enjoyed the chapters that were about her. I did not, however, enjoy the chapters about the daughter. Without giving the book away, I can't say much, but I did think those chapters were unrealistic, especially as the book ended. The book club's way of choosing books for the year that is chronicled in the novel was quite interesting, and it makes me want to read the ones they read that I haven't read myself. I wish some of the book club members had had their stories shared also. Maybe they are in other works by this author. The ending was quite rushed, like a page limit had been reached or the author was just tired of dealing with these characters. I felt like some things were left out.
    • 4/5
      Somewhat of a horror story with a fairy tale conclusion. Completely unreal yet Ava's sudden separation from her husband, along with her drug addled daughter's Paris adventures, make for a gripping story. The book is not without some humor. Having your husband runaway with a yarn bomber seems both humiliating and hilariousI almost threw away the book when Ava who begged to be included in the exclusive book group was unable to read Pride and Prejudice or Great Gatsby. You beg to be in a book group but then can't stomach Great Gatsby? Ava and the book are in a word INCREDIBLE. If you are looking for an escapist fairy tale with literary pretensions this might be a good choice.
    • 5/5
      I'm adding books to my list of things to read! This was delightful and I was in tears at the end. The audio, read by Nina Alvamar, was wonderful.
    • 3/5
      the book starts very promising. Different characters. different views. you start to puzzle it together. but the end is rather abrupt and hollywoodish. Some of the thing the character do is not logical.
    • 3/5
      Chapters in The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood are organized so that we catch up with a different character with each chapter. Ava is both first and last. At the beginning of the book we learn that her husband of twenty plus years has suddenly left her for another woman and she is having a difficult time understanding and accepting his betrayal. At Eva's friend Cate's urging she joins a book club that Cate leads. At the first meeting members are planning the next year. Cate asks the members what book matters most to each of them and those books become the next year's plan. At first Ava can't think of a book but then realizes the book that matters most to her is one that brought her some comfort as a child after a tragedy in her family. From that point the plot revolves around Ava's current condition, the condition of her young adult daughter Maggie, and the tragedy in Ava's past. The book club meetings become the setting for some of the chapters and I was always interested to read the discussion of someone's "book that matters most". Though the plot is improbable and some of the characters are thinly drawn, I never wanted to abandon the book. It's a book that's entertaining. but won't be remembered for long.
    • 4/5
      Loved this book; finished it teary eyed. Besides being a lovely story, it got me thinking of what book I would choose! So many to choose from!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! Ava's husband runs off with another woman (a yarn bomber, no less!) and she can't get over it. She finally is able to join her best friend's book club where they decide to read "the book that matters most" to each member. So, now you can see why book lovers would just love this book! Not only is this a great story but you also get to read about books that mattered most! Also, we have Ava's daughter making very bad decisions in Paris. How the book that mattered most to Ava brings everything together makes for a great read. Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! I could not put it down! The book follows Ava, a woman who is divorced and bitter about the situation who reluctantly joins her friend's book club. The theme of the year is "The book that matters most" to each member of the book club. It was interesting to see which books were chosen and the book that Ava chose for herself which has something to do with Ava's childhood and losing her mother and sister when she was young. Intermingled with the book club meetings is the story of Ava's daughter who has gone off to study abroad and how her life is going with that. I recommend this book to anyone! It kept my interest the entire way through the book! (less)
    • 4/5
      After her husband runs off with another woman (a "yarn bomber", of all things), Ava joins her friend Cate's book club. Each month, they're to read "the book that matters most" to one of them. Cheesy, right?

      Meanwhile, Ava's daughter Maggie is in Paris making bad relationship choices and developing a major heroin habit. Her storyline is really what keeps the book from veering into overly safe, boring territory.

      Ava tries to track down the author of her selected book, and that journey leads her to discover things about herself and her family.

      This book wraps up a little too neatly and many may find it hard to suspend their disbelief. It has plenty of entertainment value, but it's not great literature.
    • 5/5
      Author Ann Hood has written a remarkable novel, telling a story of past and present lives and using the framework of a book club to voice it. Anna, whose marriage is falling apart and whose grown children are far away, is welcomed into this limited-membership book club. She almost views it as a lifeline to reconnect to people and to restructure her life in a new direction. Anna lost her sister and her mother when she was just a child. Now, her own daughter is on a path of self-destruction. Hood has done a marvelous job of setting up the divergent story-threads and then drawing them together at the end. If you have ever worked a jigsaw puzzle, you know it is slow going at first, then as the puzzle progresses, each piece falls in place quickly. That is the feeling I had reading this tale: everything fit together perfectly at the end. An engrossing tale, filled with complex and likable characters, encompassing other books, intricate in structure, and entertaining in the highest degree, this book comes highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      After Ava's marriage falls apart, she joins her best friend's book group, which has decided to read the book that most influenced each member during the coming year. In the meantime, Ava's daughter, who has had a troubled past, is studying abroad and putting her life back on track--Ava hopes. Told from several points of view, chiefly Ava's and Maggie's, this is a story of losses and betrayals, new strength, and mysteries solved. The month by month highlighting of each book chosen by Ava's book group gives added structure and meaning to the plot's progression. This is a quick yet thought-provoking read.