Meeting Notes: Ender's Game

At the most recent book club, we had two things to celebrate: book club and Marissa's birthday! Courtney hosted, and she made delicious pizza squares and cupcakes. The cupcakes were homemade banana bread with cream cheese frosting—yummy—and were in honor of Marissa's big day.

She also made a pear vanilla cocktail found on our friend Dulcie's blog. Unfortunately, our book club is cursed, so that even if the days prior to and following it are beautiful, it is always chilly and rainy at our bookish get-togethers. Still, the summery drinks were enjoyed by all.

Here is the gift basket we made Marissa. Because she was so busy with school and work, we wanted to give her a variety of things to help her relax and/or get her mind off things, like (obviously) The Hunger Games.

You see that Courtney had to throw on her fancy rain coat before we went out due to the inclement weather (after the official meeting/discussion portion of the evening had concluded). One of these days, we'll get to have a summery backyard book club.

Review/Discussion
Only one of the Bookworms finished Ender's Game before the meeting. One of us was in the family way, one was finishing up her semester, and the other two were just plain lazy. Well, that and they weren't totally taken with the novel. Ender's Game is a novel about children in a future world where aliens (called "buggers") are a real threat are brought up to be vicious soldiers. It won the Hugo and the Nebula awards, two of science fiction's highest honors. But for whatever reason, it just didn't draw all of us in. Courtney's husband heard what our next read was and said, "Yeah, that's a great book if your a seventh-grade boy." We didn't feel quite that way about it, but still I wouldn't say it was our favorite read. Which brings us to ratings: Kayla gave it 3.8 stars (out of 5), I gave it 3, and Courtney gave it 3.5, and the words we associated with it were "giant," "bugger," and "simulation."

To be more specific, some of us were a little bored by all the mock-battle scenes, of which there are a lot. I personally cannot visualize the battle maneuvers the book describes, so those became a great opportunity for me to zone out. This sentiment wasn't universally felt by all the Bookworms, nor was the next. Some of us had a hard time relating to the main characters, including Ender. I think we found the children's cold intellect, aloofness, and violent tendencies unlikeable. But, we also wondered how much of that was supposed to be due to their society and their experiences at the relentless battle school (nature versus nurture). After all, it was their society that placed such value on those characteristics and their society that created the battle school they attended. On the other hand, Ender's brother never attended battle school, and he was basically a psychopath, and Ender himself killed another child before he ever started serious training. Ender does become more vulnerable at the end and reveals his desire for love and affection, which he's never received. Courtney wondered if there were religious undertones, e.g., everyone is capable of great evil but must fight those tendencies. We weren't sure if the name Peter (Ender's brother) had religious undertones, and a quick Internet search told me that Peter showed a lack of faith or courage on a couple of occasions, but ultimately he never stopped believing in Jesus and was fundamental in establishing Christianity after Jesus's crucifixion ... for what that's worth. On another positive note, there are a few twists at the end that make it more interesting, and we've also heard that the second book is much more engaging.

–Bess

Meeting Notes: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Bookworms were small in number this month; I'd like to say that we were, nonetheless, big on ideas but we had a birthday dinner to go to and were a little distracted. Kayla, Melisa, and I met at Sketch to discuss Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close over sparkling white wine and a plate of appetizers.

The novel, in brief, is about a little boy whose father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and who then decides to piece together clues about his dad's life. The biggest clue is a key inside a vase that he finds in his dad's closet. More myseteriously, the word "black" is written on it in his dad's handwriting.

We started out with ratings, and the novel got 5 stars from each of us. Because of the limited time, we were only able to delve into the book's characters and the author's writing style. We all absolutely loved Oskar. I've heard that some critics found the seven year old "annoyingly pretentious," but he didn't strike us that way at all. We thought he was cute, sweet, and quirky, and we really felt for him as a character because of what he had experienced. We also liked his mom, although at first some of us thought she was a little neglectful. His grandma and grandpa were also really intriguing, likable characters.

I found it interesting—and impressive—that even though very little actually happens, the novel is still riveting. Most novels are composed of scenes that put together make up the plot. This novel was mainly made up of the characters' reflections on things that had happened to them in the past. For instance, it starts with Oskar describing all his new inventions and then remembering the day of his dad's funeral. Maybe because the characters were so well developed and they'd lived through such traumatic events that being in their heads was really interesting. The novel switches from Oskar's point of view to his grandpa's and his grandma's, and we thought the author's efforts at creating unique points of view were very successful. Each section was written in a unique and believable way, and moreover each storyline was compelling.

I thought about the book later, and it struck me that there were some really interesting themes running through it. For instance, there were lots of keys and locks and puzzles to solve. That, put together with the tragedy of 9/11 and the bombing of Dresden (also mentioned), made me wonder if the book is exploring the issue of how an individual ever gets over, or even comprends, some of the terrible things that happen in the world. There were a lot of differment means of expression used effectively and ineffectively, like letters, images, speech, and notebooks. That made wonder if, building on the previous point, there is a question of whether any of these means of self-expression are ever fully effective at expressing the human condition. Finally, Oskar asks all the people with the last name of Black if they know anything about his dad, and it turns out they have almost all been affected by 9/11 in some way. I think maybe the book is also exploring how traumatic events effect not just the individual but a whole city.

Finally, we ended with one word.

Have you read this novel? What did you think of it? Did you have a personal reaction to it? Did you have different ideas about the themes?

Book Notes: Termite Parade

 

Our September book club took place at Melisa's new house last night.  We were all very excited to see it. Her house is gorgeous, the food and drinks were delicious. Lulu was feeling wild and got banished to the back of the house because she couldn't stay away from the drinks.

 

 

 

As usual, Bess put together a write-up summarizing our discussion of the novel:

**Spoiler Alert! 

Bookworms Melisa and Kayla had read Joshua Mohr's novel Some Things That Meant the World To Me and really enjoyed it, which was why Melisa was drawn to Termite Parade. I think they both liked Some Things a little more than Termite Parade, which is saying a lot because we all wanted to give Termite Parade between three and four stars. We all loved how well drawn the characters of Derek, Mired, and Frank were. They felt really distinct from each other and three dimensional, and they were also very interesting. I thought their dialogue was smart and fun to read. We also liked grappling with the questions that the book did: Do people ever really change? If our lives are guided only by chance and randomness, why does anything we do, good or bad, matter? When a relationship gets really bad, can the couple ever grow together, or do they just need to be apart —or, if their identities are so tied to each other, will they be worse off on their own? Another thing we liked was the author's reluctance to answer these questions. Although we had mixed feeling about the "old dog, new tricks" ending, we appreciated the ambiguity. Courtney thought Mired was still considering ending things with Derek at that point and was moving closer to making that decision when the book ended, a reading that most of us liked because we felt that their relationship had gone too sour to be mended and that Mired could only change for the better by leaving him. But honestly, I secretly wanted to believe they could stay —and grow —together, but I know that's an overly romantic and naive sentiment. We were a little confused by the hammer incident and what the violence of that act meant, as we were with both Derek's and Frank's actions in the filming of the Animal Unveiled movie. It made sense that Frank would hide behind his lens while he tried to capture people at their worse (because that was how he acted with his friends and families too), but why did Derek get involved? Was it because Derek wasn't trying to suppress his violent tendencies, while Frank still was? We also weren't sure why Frank got so much more unlikeable as the book ended, while Mired and Derek became more likeable. 

      

*Want to watch our video discussion on the novel? Check it out here.