Talk of the Town Tuesday: "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

Greetings everyone!

We are back from a wonderful holiday weekend and we hope that you had a great time with friends and family..we did!  Today's "Talk" was taken from a discussion that was shared over this past weekend and Water for Elephants was mentioned.  I had not heard of this book but decided to look more into it.  Here is a brief synopsis: (from Amazon.com)

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

From the discussion,  it is believed that the author actually was in the middle of researching/writing another book and was so taken with the circus lifestyle that she changed her pursuit and wrote this book instead.  (Now, she must have discovered some very interesting things to change at a drop of a hat....)

After a little more reading, I found out that the author, Sara Gruen, conducted detailed research (investigative like) on the lifestyle of the circus to include the vernacular, the treatment (good and bad) of the animals, and the climate of the industry.  She has infused this knowledge with her love of writing and created her new work, Water for Elephants.

Ok, I must have been hiding under a rock because this book hit the big screen screen April 22!  See the movie trailer below:

If you have read the book or seen the movie, share with us your thoughts about it!  Thank you!
Tasha