Airborn Discussion

June 9, 2009 at 1:45 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
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As I’ve mentioned before, this month’s book wasn’t a typical book club book. My husband suggested it after he read and enjoyed it on our honeymoon.

At first, I was a little sceptical. Generally our tastes tend to differ as he enjoys denser, more historical based texts and I tend to be a little more into contemporary fiction, but he was so sure I’d like it that I felt compelled to check it out. After all, what’s the worst scenario in reading a book? Even if you don’t like something, you at least exercise your brain for a few hours.

Anyway, fortunately for me, not liking it was not a problem as I made it through the book in about two days. It was a bit slow-going in the beginning as they explained a lot of the technical ship stuff, but once it got into the meat of the story, it was a pretty easy and quick read.

I think the thing that struck me right away was that it seemed very much in the vein of a sort of Jules Verne/Robert Louis Stevenson type adventure story what with the island, the pirates and the crazy airship technology.

Speaking of the airship, I was actually quite pleased with how solid and relatively realistic the setting was to me. I’m not sure if it was because I’ve been on a cruise ship before, but I very much felt as Matt Cruse described his surroundings that I was able to visualize them, to imagine the layout and the feel of it all as he ran, climbed and dodged his way through its inner workings. It truly seemed to me to be a living, breathing character in the story.

But the strongest part of the book to me was the characters. I enjoyed Matt and was interested in watching his struggle to become a man while tightly holding onto the image of his father. In so many adventure books, it seems like the defacto leader is this smart, no-nonsense, self assured guy, but I liked how, while Matt seemed assured to his friends, he did have moments where he second guessed himself or wondered what his father would have done in the situation.

I also really enjoyed Kate and the fact that she was a second banana without feeling second class. One of my major pet peeves about Young Adult fiction is when a female character is shoehorned in to appeal to a demographic, only to become a flat, weak and flavourless damsel-in-distress who’d rather flit around helplessly waiting to be saved by a man than to take any initiative of her own (paging Bella Swan!). In this instance, while Kate and Matt did work together to track the cloud cats (along with poor Bruce at the end), it actually felt like a solid partnership, and I definitely felt that, had Matt been removed from the story, that she would have been just as smart and determined.

It also said something to me that, while it was obvious she liked Matt, after their kiss in the forest, the whole book didn’t suddenly become just about their “relationship” and that they both remained resolved to accomplish their original goals – Matt to save his beloved airship the Aurora and Kate to concluding her expedition and proving her grandfather right in the eyes of the scientific community.

They say that a good way to judge a book series is whether or not, after you read the first volume, you are compelled to read the following books and I think that this first story was enough fun that, even with a busy summer ahead, I’ll be making time to polish off Kenneth Oppel’s other two.

Anyway, these were my basic impressions of the book – what were yours? Did you like it? Did you feel attached to any particular character? What parts of it stood out in your mind?

Comment below and we’ll get a dialogue going!

(I’m a little bit behind because I was deathly ill last week but I’ll be putting up the poll for the next book tomorrow!)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Discussion

May 5, 2009 at 2:47 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments
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Welcome again everyone! I am happy to begin the second meeting of the book club, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Just to bullet point it, I liked the book. It was a harder read for me than last month, but it was probably just because I found the subject matter grimmer than our previous title with the main plot revolving around the September 11th attacks. Even though the attacks don’t take place over the course of the story, they are still in focus in that the story takes place in 2003 when emotions were still high and of course because the main character, Oskar, lost a family member and spends the majority of the story trying to make sense of the loss.

In some pieces of literature, using a relatively contemporary historical event to lend emotional weight to the story could feel kind of exploitive, but in this instance, it actually didn’t bother me because it probably made me more sympathetic. As a journalism student at the time, I have vivid memories of that day as I spent it in a newsroom with my peers. As we listened to the news, we talked and dissected every little piece of information and, much like Oskar, we tried to piece together what had happened in an attempt to make sense of it.

Also woven into the book was a counter plot, told via Oskar’s grandparents, about the bombing of Dresden during World War II in which they lost their families and loved ones. This was an interesting way of tying the characters together as well as splitting them apart as you see the differences in how the two generations of family dealt with similar tragedies.

The older generation seemed to all but shut down (Oskar’s grandfather would no longer talk and Oskar’s grandmother would not write) because they felt that reliving things in an attempt to move forward would be too much.

However, Oskar seemed to go almost in the opposite direction. True, he did have some communication problems (the whole thing with hiding the phone) but he went out of his way to try to learn what had happened. He went all around the city talking to people. He channelled his hurt and confusion and frustration into inventions, art and performances.

Maybe it had to do with the generation he was part of or maybe it had to do with the fact that he was younger when such a huge moment in his life occurred or maybe it was just because the people he surrounded himself with didn’t have the means to communicate (I found it interesting that they fixated on his letters to Stephen Hawking, a man who no longer capable of speech). Whatever the case, it was an interesting contrast and one that made me root for Oskar because he was striking out, determined to not repeat the destructive patterns of his grandparents.

Speaking of Oskar, I found him to be a solid main character. While there were occasionally moments where I questioned whether or not he would know or be aware of something, he also had moments where his sad, crazy or silly kid logic felt pretty real and got me involved in what was happening. I don’t know if it was just me, but there was even a part of the book where I temporarily wondered if perhaps history was repeating itself and that his dad had taken off like the grandfather and was still alive somewhere out there.

Anyway, these were my impressions of the book – what were yours? Did you like it? Did you feel attached to any particular character? What parts of it stood out in your mind?

Comment below and we’ll get a dialogue going!

Water For Elephants Discussion

March 31, 2009 at 12:54 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments
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Welcome everyone. I am happy to be able to kick off the first book club discussion ever for our first book Water for Elephants!

I enjoyed the book and finished it about two days after I bought it, which, even though I am a fast reader, is definitely something.

I have never actually been to a circus but early on in reading the book, I got pulled into the crazy setting of the book. At first, it did seem a little strange to me that the main character would immediately think to drop out of school and hitch a ride with a travelling show, especially since parents just died, but upon reading further, it made sense as the circus was basically a home for the misplaced and exiled.

Kinko/Walter was sold to it as a young child because he was probably considered a freak to his mother.

August probably joined with them as a way to more easily mask his mental illness since being a temperamental artist would be more accepted there.

Marlena was added to the acts after she was disowned by her family.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but pretty much everyone associated with the circus seemed kind of like the scavenged and damaged animals Jacob described – trapped in virtual cages of circumstance.

Sure, as people they did have the free will to leave, but when it was pointed out to them that they could (at least in the cases of Marlena and Walter), they hesitated and held themselves back from escaping out of fear that the world outside of their captive lifestyle might be too hard or too cruel.

These kind of thoughts seemed to me like they were no doubt encouraged by the duplicitous Uncle Al. In the beginning, I was convinced that August was set up to be the villain because the story focused a lot on his poor relationships with Marlena and Rosie the Elephant, but as time went on, I became convinced that Al was much more sinister. He may have pretended that the show was a family, going so far as to adopt the moniker “Uncle,” but he manipulated everyone. He somehow convinced people to work for no money. He tried to convince Jacob to get Marlena back together with August after his violent outburst. By the time he’d redlighted Walter and Camel from the train, I was sick of him. Being outright dangerous is one thing because at least people know to avoid you, but putting on an “It’s all for the greater good” attitude with everyone while you do truly heinous things is, in my opinion, worse.

The big thing that I was wondering however when I finished the book was how much of it was supposed to be true. It’s often brought up in book discussions about whether or not the person telling the story is a reliable source and I found myself wondering whether or not old Jacob was reliable.

As much as I did like the story, I questioned parts of it for three reasons:

1) During the prologue, it seems unclear as to exactly who was August’s murderer. When I first read it, all the action was a bit disorienting and I thought that Marlena might have been responsible.

2) Pretty much right from the beginning he admits he has no idea what age he is which to me signaled that he was at the very least, forgetful.

3) At one point during the book, Jacob’s nursing home nurse, conveniently named Rosemary says “Sometimes when you get older […] things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they’re a part of your history […]”

Perhaps this was not the author’s intention, but it did definitely leave me wondering if perhaps Marlena or Jacob had had a hand in the violent conclusion of things or, more towards the end, whether or not Jacob was actually running off to join the circus again. As he had been talking about his previous time in the circus as though it was one of the highlights in his life, it made me wonder whether or not the kindly circus man to take him on was actually doing so.

Could he have just been a byproduct of a disappointed elderly man’s dementia, or, taking it one step further, had Jacob died and this is what he was imagining as he shuffled off his mortal coil?

Anyway, these were my impressions of the book – what were yours? Did you like it? Did you feel attached to any particular character? What parts of it stood out in your mind? Did anyone else question the story of the narrator?

Comment below and we’ll get a dialogue going!

P.S. I will be checking back during the day to respond to comments to keep the discussion going, so you might want to keep tabs on the thread after you comment. Also, I will be putting up a poll for the book club’s next book either later today or early tomorrow.

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