Meeting Notes: Delirium

Marissa hosted our January book club. She made baked brie, a delicious fig salad, and a fancy homemade lavender cello drink. Everything was perfect... Except for our response to the book. Definitely not one of our favorites. In other news, I created these little star icons (Kayla's good idea), so that you'd be able to see our individual reviews.

Do you love Bess's new glasses?

 

That's me drinking the lavender cello and champagne concoction. 

And Marissa played a prelude to our videos on her piano.

A brief summary from the bookworms:
[SPOILER ALERT]
I know a lot of people five-starred Delirium. And the bookworms nearly unanimously loved Before I Fall. However, we just didn't feel the same way about Lauren Oliver's second novel. As Courtney said, "It was hard to believe it was her second novel, after she'd already written Before I Fall." What we praised in her first effort was the characterization, emotional resonance, and carefully placed lyricism. Delirium had two great characters in Hana and Alex, but unfortunately, Lena, the main character, didn't seem that alive. It could be that the author wanted her to be an unlikely heroine, or maybe she just didn't fully figure Lena out. Also, Lauren Oliver is talented at writing descriptively and poetically, but in this case, we think she overdid it. The drawn-out descriptions pulled us out of the story, and sometimes they were a tad corny or just didn't work. I would also say we were a little disappointed in the storytelling itself. The novel sounds so exciting, but it just doesn't end up being as thrilling as it promises to be. One last little note, I think Delirium might have been shaped and pitched in a way that made it lose complexity. It sounds like it's a novel about a world that bans passionate love, and much of the society literature the author includes focuses on that. But really it's a world that forbids all kinds of love, even between a parent and a child. While the first concept is maybe more intially intriguing, the second is a little more interesting because it's the kind of thing a society would do if it was trying to control it's citizens. On that note, if the world itself had been a little more fleshed out, the threat might have seemed more pressing.
-Bess

Next Pick: Delirium

 

January's book is Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I hope you are reading along with us. If you have a Kindle, it's only $2.99. We'll be meeting to discuss it on January 21st.

Meeting Notes: Before I Fall

Our second installment of book club was another success. We are still trying to work out the kinks of videotaping our discussions (see next post for video segments), but we had a great time talking about the book, eating, and even dancing together. That's right. We danced.

Marissa hosted this time. We listened to music, sipped delicious drinks made with peach vodka & real peaches, and ate Marissa's yummy Mediterranean tapas.

Marissa made tortilla Española (delicious) and a chilled tomato cream soup. And, as I mentioned, the book club discussion was followed by dancing in Marissa's living room to YouTube songs that reminded us of high school. It was very nostalgic, very silly, and very fun. In all of these respects, it seemed like an appropriate way to finish off our discussion of Before I Fall.

Bess has summarized our book discussion below:
*Spoiler alert!!!

We enjoyed this one, and we especially liked how realistically the author portrayed the teen voice and lifestyle. The dialogue was fresh and the characters used some cute slang and nicknames, like calling the sophomores s’mores because they stick together and are so sweet. As Christina said (see comments in post below), the author also artfully wove in moments of lyricism.

Although we didn’t all give it a four, we also thought the way Sam Kingston (the protagonist) slowly changed over the course of the novel, from a selfish girl who is more worried about conforming than about the consequences of her actions, was very believable. On the day that Sam must live over and over, she is forced to watch those consequences play out again and again. (Now that I write this, it does seem a little tidy that her last day was such a consequential one in that way.) It really felt like Sam developed and matured over the seven days, but her actions never seemed out of character. The other characters were really well drawn too, except maybe Ally. The themes of loyalty and friendship resonated with us as well, for instance, how they would tell little lies to each other to protect themselves from ugly truths. If those lies paint over the consequences of their bad behavior, though, maybe that isn’t such a good thing.

We weren’t all totally satisfied with the ending, for various reasons. A couple of us thought Sam saving Juliet’s life (the girl her best friend Lindsey nicknamed Psycho) by sacrificing her own was the only way it could have ended. It was the action she needed to take to get out of purgatory, and her remaining alive would have been too convenient. But others of us wondered what the rules of this purgatory were. Why did Sam experience it and not Juliet? If Sam had kept Juliet from killing herself without sacrificing her own life, could she have stayed alive? I had a hard time caring about Sam knowing that she was dead the whole time and would never get to reap the benefits of the lessons she learned. And others of us (including Scott, again see comments below), were a little offended by the author’s treatment of Juliet. Sam got to play a role in ruining Juliet’s life and she also saved it, making Juliet nothing more than a device. The author dealt with that a little on the fifth or sixth day by having Juliet call Sam out on her patronizing behavior. But it may be that the author didn’t deal with that issue fully. We were also surprised Sam never thought about how dying to save Juliet would affect Juliet, or Kent for that matter (who we all thought seemed really cute). But in short, we liked this one and it generated some good discussion.

P.S. The bolded words are the “one words” we all chose for Before I Fall.

*Want to watch the video segments? We've posted them here. 

*Check back soon for Melisa's announcement of our next read (exciting)! 

Are you reading with us?

Next book: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, due August 13th.

Our second book club meeting is quickly approaching, but there is still plenty of time for you to pick up the book and read through it. So I hope you do. It's a quick one. At least that's what I'm told. And it better be true because I am desperately trying to finish some of the books I'll be teaching this fall that I've never read including The Book Thief, Life of Pi, and Fahrenheit 451. This means I'm going to have to wait until the last minute to read Before I Fall.

We'll be selecting our third book at our next meeting. The decision is ultimately up to Melisa, so if you have a suggestion, feel free to post it here. You can also look at our list for ideas or suggest something totally different.

Due date for Before I Fall is August 13th. Shortly after the 13th we'll post our meeting notes, some photos, and some videos of our discussion.  We don't have the time or the skills for any high-quality production, but if you've got suggestions for our post-meeting blog posts, (videos, photos, meeting notes, ratings), please let us know.

Happy reading, bookworms!

Next Pick: Before I Fall

Our next book is Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall, due August 13th.  Read along with us! We'd love to have you.

Here's a brief synopsis from Amazon:

In this Groundhog Day meets Mean Girls teen hybrid, Sam Kingston is pretty, popular, and has a seemingly perfect boyfriend. But after a late-night party everything goes terribly wrong, and the life that she lived is gone forever. Or is it?
At the start of Before I Fall, Sam is self-consumed and oblivious about the impact of her actions on others. But as she repeatedly experiences slightly altered versions of the hours leading up to her death—and her relationships with friends, family, and formerly overlooked classmates bloom, end, or shift—it’s impossible not to feel for the girl whose life ends too soon. Oliver’s adept teen dialogue and lively prose make for a fast, page-turning story in which the reader is every bit as emotionally invested as Sam. --Jessica Schein