Friday, November 30, 2012

December - Discussion Questions

I am just really bad at getting these out on time. Here are some discussion questions to keep in mind for our meeting tomorrow. As always, please come with additional questions if you have them!

Questions for Discussion

    1. Did you read the perks of being a wallflower as an adolescent/teen? If so, was it different this time around? In what way?
    2. How did you feel about the style of the story (Charlie writing anonymously to an unknown recipient)? Do you think it lended to Charlie's story or not? How would the story have changed if it was written as a more traditional narrative storyline?
    3. Music was an important theme throughout the story. Did you feel like Charlie was creating a soundtrack to this story? To his life? What songs would you have added or subtracted, if any, from this "soundtrack?"
    4. This story is primarily about relationships. Charlie has many in the story (Bill, his parents, his siblings, Sam, Patrick, Mary Elizabeth, Aunt Helen). Do you think that Charlie's relationships make him the way he is, or are they defined by his character?
    5. Is Charlie's story a universal one?
    6. This book is a new motion picture, written and directed by the book's author. If you've seen it, what did you think about the similarities and differences? If you haven't, what are your expectations?
     Thank you for participating again this month! I look forward to seeing you for the discussion!

    Friday, November 16, 2012

    December - Book Pick & Date

    The theme for December is (unsurprisingly): "winter." Based on the poll, December's book pick is City of Thieves by David Benioff.

    The book discussion will be on December 29th (5pm) at Heavy Seas Ale House. Please let me know your RSVP for the discussion no later than December 26, so I can finalize it with them.

    Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in December!

    Thursday, November 1, 2012

    Choose Your Own Adventure - December


    The theme for December's book is "winter." We will be reading books related to winter, cold, etc.  Please vote by November 16th.

    Here are the contenders, in no particular order (all summaries have been pulled from Amazon & Google Books). Please respond to the poll at the end. Thank you!

    Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (460 pages)
    San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies.  But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.  In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.  Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed.

    The Ice Storm by Rick Moody (288 pages)
     The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cark skid out of control, men and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs, and even suicide. Here two families, the Hoods and the Williamses, com face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of their lives-in a novel widely hailed as a funny, acerbic, and moving hymn to a dazed and confused era of American life.

    City of Thieves by David Benioff (258 pages)
    During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.

    Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg (512 pages)
    In this international bestseller, Peter Høeg successfully combines the pleasures of literary fiction with those of the thriller. Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Her childhood in Greenland gives her an appreciation for the complex structures of snow, and when she notices that the boy's footprints show he ran to his death, she decides to find out who was chasing him. As she attempts to solve the mystery, she uncovers a series of conspiracies and cover-ups and quickly realizes that she can trust nobody. Her investigation takes her from the streets of Copenhagen to an icebound island off the coast of Greenland. What she finds there has implications far beyond the death of a single child. The unusual setting, gripping plot, and compelling central character add up to one of the most fascinating and literate thrillers of recent years.

    Tinkers by Paul Harding (191 pages)
    An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer’s time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.

    The Snow Child by Eoywn Ivey (416 pages)
    Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

    Again, please vote by November 16. Here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BCY9GZJ