You're never too old to run away with the circus!

I just finished Water for Elephants and absolutely, positively, thoroughly and completely LOVED it!  I was wary going in, as the reviews all seemed to be in a love or hate camp, and the hate charged it with being boring and fizzling out after a couple of chapters.
This was not my experience at all.  Yes, it opens with a bang, then going back in time to bring everything back to that point, so naturally the opening is more momentous than the subsequent few chapters.  While it did take me a chapter or two to really feel immersed in the younger Jacob's world, becoming acclimated to the circus lingo and getting the gist for the 1930s, depression-era circus world, it did not take long at all before I found myself feeling completely in that world, having difficult to put the book down and never wanting it to end.  
There was a good amount of animal cruelty documented in the book, so animal lovers/activists beware.  As a hard core animal lover myself, though, I did not find it to be enough to turn me away from the book.  It served its purpose to the story, to reveal this element of that world and develop one of the main characters as well.  
The story is told in part from the narrator's younger self's perspective (the one in this world of the 1930s train circus) and his older, 90 (or 93) year old self's perspective.  At first I found myself enjoying the chapters told from the older point of view, but once I was hooked into the younger perspective's world I found myself enjoying both points of view equally.  I loved all of it!
So, to summarize, I am all in 100% on the love side of the spectrum for this book and will surely read this one again.  I'm finding it hard to want to dive into my next book because of how much I enjoyed this one and not wanting to let go of the feelings I had after reading it.  
Next up, though, is The Giver, which seems to have a strong following behind it and hopefully won't disappoint (though I must remind myself of the wisdom from my previous post and not go in with too many expectations, unless looking for certain disappointment).
I will start that one a little later tonight and let Ilya write a post with our completed daily progress report.