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

Stargirl: Video Discussion

This time we did a lot of our discussion before turning the camera on, but we did catch a little bit on camera. Here are our recorded discussions:

Termite Parade: Video Discussion

Our September book club did not end in a dance party. I'm not sure if it's the fall weather, the fact that school has started for two of us, or the flu bug that's been going around, but last night was definitely a tame one for the book worms.  We still had a lot of laughs and some really interesting discussion.  Here are the portions that we got on tape:

**Spoiler Alert! 
Introduction, ratings, and first discussion question:

Second discussion question:

One Word!

*Stay tuned. We'll be posting our next book choice soon. And it's a good one.

Before I Fall: Video Discussion

We've videotaped small segments of our book club discussion of Before I Fall. We're still trying to get the hang of doing this on camera, but this is only our second try. Hopefully, we'll improve with time.
**Spoiler Alert!!! We explicitly discuss the ending of the book in the video segments below. Please stop viewing if you haven't finished the novel.
Here's the first segment, our introduction and ratings, on a scale of 1-5 stars:

Second discussion question (Thanks, Tammy).

One word!

Thanks for viewing! And check back soon for Melisa's announcement of the next book.

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

Discussion of Impossible on Video

Rather than doing a podcast, we decided to go with some video segments of our first book club meeting.  We didn't get everything on camera; we figured it might get long and tedious to watch. We also didn't do any editing, so apologies in advance for the initial giggling and other awkwardness.  But we are bookworms, so I suppose we are naturally a little awkward and weird. I don't think any of us was completely comfortable being on camera... Actually, Marissa looks pretty comfortable, but she's a born performer. So here are some highlights from our discussion of Impossible. Feel free to respond to our questions or to give your reactions in the comment field.  We want to hear from you! We really do.

Assuming you read the book, you know how important this song is to the plot. As I said, Marissa is the performer in the group.

**The rest of these clips contain spoilers! If you don't want to know what happens in the novel, stop watching/reading here.

In this clip, I introduce our discussion, and we each give the book a rating on a scale of 1-5.

Bess asks the first discussion question regarding the issue of date rape in the novel.

I ask an additional question, and we discuss...

Some conclusions...

We are big fans of the Name Game, so it only made sense for us to go around and say one word to sum up the book.
Our words: Fable, Impossible, Fenella, Rosemary, and Flat.

We really had fun last night. As the evening progressed, we moved away from "serious" topics and did a little bit of dancing. We then took a cab to a nearby bar.  The cabbie thought it was "hot" that we were book clubbers going for drinks.  If he saw all of these nerdy videos, I think he'd change his mind. At the bar, we had a Padraig sighting, and I believe someone actually informed this stranger that he looked exactly like a character from our book club book. His response? "How do you know what a character in a book looks like? Especially if there is no movie..." Umm... has this dude ever read a book? Because often times those things are described... Like in words...

So, all silliness aside, please join in on our discussion of the novel. What were your thoughts on our questions? What question would you have asked? What would your "one word" be? Is there anything else you'd like to see in our next video discussion? This was only our first one, so we are trying to come up with an organization that makes sense and is enjoyable to watch. Feedback is much appreciated. Just keep it nice :) It was a little nervewracking for us to put this out there. Happy reading, bookworms.

Oh! We will announce the next book shortly, so please check back.