20th Meet Up - October 2015

Had a smaller turnout for our Halloween themed book club meeting where we discussed "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink.  We three loved the book and are more than willing to discuss the book again / further at our next meet up in November!

I also hosted a Halloween Party the day of our Meet-Up and met two new people I hope will be joining us in the near future, Brooke and Megan!

 

 

Sam Review's "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink - October 2015

Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way

Part One, Chapter Three
I appreciate the smooth, but not excessive, descriptions of this author.

When did we as a society stop ironing our clothes as part of the laundry ritual?  I know my grandma still does it, but my mom only ever did special items for special occasions.


Part One, Chapter Four
This is the second book in a row that goes out of it's way to describe a female character as "heavy but not excessively heavy" but in a polite and (almost) positive way.

Part One, Chapter Five
The rationale that going and doing the thing you fantasize about is better than just fantasizing so that you don't get stuck in the fantasy is so weird.  Or, maybe it's just the phrasing, since the author is German and this book is translated.  "It is better to go out and do it than you always wonder, 'What if?'"

Part One, Chapter Six
I can't determine the age difference between the narrator and Frau Frau Schmitz.

Part One, Chapter Eight
Okay, so the narrator, Michael is fifteen, but lets Hanna (I had to look up that Frau is the German word for Mrs.) think he is seventeen.  And she is clearly an adult, but still not too weird, for a little while I thought was much younger.


Part One, Chapter Nine
And Hanna is 36, so a 21 year age difference between these two characters.

I like the line when the narrator, Michael is talking about feeling proud of being with the one your with, despite the age difference and the way it appears.

Part One, Chapter Ten
While I understand the gesture is supposed to be intimate, the idea of being bathed by someone has always seemed creepy and awkward to me.

Part One, Chapter Fourteen
I know that there are some theater's where you can drink while you watch the movie, but they are few and far between.  I wish it was more common "Champagne at intermission."


Part Two, Chapter Five
So was Hanna on trial for letting a bunch of Jewish women burn to death in a church where they were forced to work when she, and the other women on trial, could have opened the doors?

Part Two, Chapter Seven
I can't tell if it is creepy or considerate of Hanna to have taken in the weak and delicate girls and treated them well and had them read to her at night.

Part Two, Chapter Eight
It's kind of amazing that after the church fire, these two Jews, who probably looked pretty haggard from the concentration camps, were able to just walk out.  The villagers let go of whatever hate they were supposed to feel and just said "These two are survivors, let's warm them and feed them and let them go on their way."  I also wonder if that story is true.

Part Two, Chapter Nine
Not that I think the people involved in the Holocaust shouldn't have been tried and punished for their crimes.  But it does seem crazy that the trial we're reading about happened 15 years after the fact.

Part Two, Chapter Fifteen
When the narrator is talking about walking through the concentration camps trying to imagine what they must have looked like filled but not being able to, it made me think about 9/11.  How, it's a tragedy and a disaster that happened during my time in this world and, yet somehow, I never think that I feel sad enough about it when it comes around, and it makes me feel really guilty.

Part Three, Chapter Five
It is strange how strongly I sympathize with the narrator about not being able to let go.  And while I didn't expect him to start recording readings and sending them to Hannah in jail, I'm also not at all surprised that he did.

Trying to imagine how it must have felt for Hannah to receive such a random, large, and intimate gift from someone she hadn't actually interacted with for years.

Part Three, Chapter Six
Imagining what Hanna's handwriting must have looked like, and how determined she must have been to learn it just to be able to address a three lined note to the boy who read to her.  So many feels.  (Again with the guilt about not feeling things about the concentration camp scenes, but I feel strong feelings about this bit).

Part Three, Chapter Seven
While I like Hanna's character, the letter from the warden brings up an interesting issue.  During her trial, Hanna was considered a monster due to the fact that she let people burn to death while she heard and more or less watched.  However, 18 years after this heinous crime, she is more than likely going to be released into the world and the jail / community is going to help her get an apartment and a job and they also reach out to other people to help them as well.  I have heard this discussion / debate before in other circumstances (mostly petty drug charges throwing people's lives through the ringer) but it is definitely a topic I'm interested to hear your guys' thoughts on.

Part Three, Chapter Eight
Was reading aloud to people something that was a cultural norm a long time ago?  In "The Book Thief" there is another circumstance where a young person reads to an older person who never either didn't know how or wasn't good at it.  And, I will say, when talking about something I've written I like to hear it aloud, and I like to read aloud to myself (unfortunately I don't have a good voice for recording so I can't do it for anyone else's benefit).  But it always seems strange and awkward to ask someone to read aloud for you.

It is so sad that with every other woman he was with they just didn't "feel right" and when he finally gets to see Hanna again and holds her, she doesn't "feel right".

Part Three, Chapter Ten
I was not expectinf Hanna to kill herself and I was very disappointed.

--||--

Quotes Worth Mentioning

Part One, Chapter Seven
"Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him.  The dog you take for a walk, the cat you play with and that curls up in your lap, purring, to be stroked - you can be fond of them, you can even need them to a certain extent, and nonetheless the whole thing - buying pet food, cleaning up the cat box, and trips to the vet - is really too much.  Your life is elsewhere.  I wish that we, his family, had been his life.  ...  Why should we children be his whole life?  We were growing up and soon we'd be adults and out of the house."

Part One, Chapter Nine
"I am amazed at how much confidence Hanna gave me. ... The girls I met noticed and liked it that I wasn't afraid of them.  I felt at ease in my own body."  - While I think this is something most people feel when they are happy in their relationship, I think it is more true when you are with someone who is older, or more grounded, than you.

Part One, Chapter Twelve
"I have them [the pictures of Hanna] stored away, I can project them on a mental screen and watch them, unchanged, unconsumed.  There are long periods when I don't think about them at all.  But they always come back into my head, and then I sometimes have to run them repeatedly though my mental projector and watch them."

Part One, Chapter Fourteen
"When an an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.  Airplanes don't fall out of the sky like stones.  They glide on, the enormous multi-engined passenger jets, for thirty, forty-five minutes, only to smash themselves up when they attempt a landing.  The passengers don't notice a thing.  Flying feels the same whether the engines are working or not.  ...  That summer was the glide path of our love.  Or rather, of my love for Hanna.  I don't know about her love for me."

Part One, Chapter Fifteen
"I put my arm around her waist, and didn't care what people might think of us as a couple, and I was proud that I didn't care.  At the same time, I knew that in the theater in our hometown I would care.  Did she know that, too?"

Part One, Chapter Sixteen
"What do you want now?  Your whole life in one night?"

Part Two, Chapter One
"[The memory of her] it's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it.  But why should you?"

Part Two, Chapter Two
"What is law?  Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society?  Or is low what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books."

Part Two, Chapter Nine
"Not that it was impossible to imagine the confusion and helplessness Hanna described.  The night, the cold, the snow, the fire, the screaming of the women in the church, the sudden departure of the people who had commanded and escorted the female guards - how could the situation have been easy?  But could an acknowledgement that the situation had been hard be any mitigation for what the defendants had done or not done?  As if it had been a car accident on a lonely road on a cold winter night, with injuries and totaled vehicles, and no one knowing what to do?  That is how one could imagine what Hanna was describing but nobody was willing to look at it in such terms."

Part Two, Chapter Ten
"Could Hanna's shame at being illiterate be sufficient reason for her behavior at the trail or in the camp?  To accept exposure as a criminal for fear for being exposed as an illiterate?"

"She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice.  Because she always had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle."

"And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal."

Part Two, Chapter Twelve
"With adults, I see absolutely no justification for setting other people's views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves."
"Not even if they themselves are happy about it later?"
He shook his head.  "We're not talking about happiness, we're talking about dignity and freedom.  Even as a little boy, you knew the difference.  It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.
..."If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes.  One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him, to him and not to someone else behind his back."

Part Two, Chapter Sixteen
"I wasn't really concerned with justice.  I couldn't leave Hanna the way she was, or wanted to be. I had to meddle with her, have some kind of influence and effect on her, if not directly then indirectly." - (Even though he didn't actually tell the Judge anything).

Part Two, Chapter Seventeen
"I was sitting in the same place I always sat.  But she looked straight ahead and through everything.  A proud, wounded, lost, and infinitely tired look.  A look that wished to see nothing and no one."

Part Three, Chapter One
"Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it ended.  How could those who had committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen or looked away while they were happening or tolerated the criminals among them after 1945 or even accepted them - how could they have anything to say to their children?"

"Love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible." - I have never really bought into the "You can't choose who you fall in love with".  I have always felt that love and being faithful is a conscious choice that you have to make every day.  I do believe it is not in our nature to be monogamous, not to say we cannot be, but that it will be a constant struggle and a daily choice that we have to make, we are fully responsible for who we love and for making our own happiness.

Part Three, Chapter Two
"The truth in what one says, lies in what one does,"

Part Three, Chapter Six
"[On illiteracy] ... about how much energy it takes to conceal one's inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living.  Illiteracy is dependence.  By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.
"Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her.  I was proud of her.  At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures in life in general.  ... Is there no such thing as "too late"?  Is there only "late", and is "late" always better than "never"?  I don't know."

Part Three, Chapter Twelve
"I think [the story] is true, and thus the question of whether it is saf or happy has no meaning whatever."

19th Meet Up - September 2015 (Pt. 2)

It was fun to talk through "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with Carole.

I wish we had a bigger turnout to see what you all thought of it, too.

I am glad Courtney wants to start being more actively involved again!

I hope to see a bunch of you at our Halloween themed meet-up in October!

(Don't mind our sass.)

 

Sam Review's "Hard-boiled Wonderland & the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami - September 2015

Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way

Chapter 1:  Elevator, Silence, Overweight

This character is so weird, counting money the way he does, and "taking classes in lip reading".

The part where he's thinking to himself about "inconsequential fat women" and "young, beautiful, fat women" made me confused.  I couldn't tell if he was being rude, or if he was being complementary.  If he was saying "a young, beautiful woman shouldn't be fat" or if he (like me looking for the least attractive man in the room when I'm in a position to look) is looking at her in a way of "she is attainable to me and so now I'm thinking of attaining her".

Chapter 2:  Golden Beasts

Are the "beasts" just horses or unicorns?  Their coats are black, white, gray, or brown in the Spring, and in Autumn they are gold.  They have blue eyes and a single white horn.  They have hooves and are herded.

It does seem strange that they let the beasts "out" at night but bring them "in" during the day.

Chapter 3:  Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry

I would have been freaked out by the random closet that led to nothingness and water, too!  And there's a part of me that hates the vagueness, like what is this "job", I'm sure we'll find out but I hate waiting to figure it out!  I also hate the jumping POV or whatever the jump is, I'm not sure if it's a different narrator or just different area.

Maybe I'm crazy but I could almost feel the anxiety and pressure the main character was feeling subside as soon as the "roar of the river was now the babble of a brook".

It's kind of terrifying but also kind of awesome to think about the ability to pull memories out of our bones or our brains.  I mean, in the idea of "no need for torture cuz the truth is in their bones" is a negative spin, but imagine being able to pull the memories out of someone you lost.

Also, I love how the main character, amidst the scientists babble about his research and how valuable it is, the narrators concern is how he could get in trouble for being here since he was called on in an irregular way.

I don't really understand the "old man's" experiments, and I also am kind of glad such thing isn't real because the ability to affect sound and speech seems like an awful lot of power to have in even the best of circumstances.

Chapter 4:  The Library

I am beginning to believe this is almost like parallel universes.  One is obviously more fantastical than the other, but for some reason the memories of the realistic world seep into that of the fantastical.

I wonder if the author was writing the Old Man's Accent as an American.  Cuz reading it as an American I'm imagining a typical Southern Accent but it could also just be a Japanese's interpretation of American Accents as a whole.

Again with threatening a noise free world, I don't think I could take it.  I mean, I guess if I had to loose a sense I probably wouldn't mind losing hearing as much as seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling.  Then again I'd rather loose smell than sound.

During the scene where the narrator is complimenting the granddaughter's sandwiches and the old man responds with "It takes a special someone to appreciate the child" I kept imagining "sandwiches" as a euphemism for "fat ass".

The scene on the way to the elevator is so awkward, but of course, sadly reminds me of myself in high school.

Chapter 5:  Shadow

Aha!  So it is unicorns!

The statement made about "I called the System to check my schedule" reminds me of 1984 where everything is set a specific way.  Same with the "One person, one job" thing.

Chapter 6:  The Colonel

The idea of having a relationship with your shadow is bizarre.  I don't think I pay attention to my shadow nearly as much as an adult as I did as a kid.

Gastric dilation.  I'm curious as to how that should sound, at first I thought it was a polite way to say bulimia but then she said she doesn't gain weight.  Is this an actual thing or fictional for the book?

Chapter 7:  The Wall

When describing his shadow he says there are "Ill-humored folds about his eyes", which doesn't make sense.  Shadows don't have features.  I let the "talking shadow" go without comment because things can speak in their own way without a mouth, but certainly shadows don't have eyes that you can see.

Finally part of the book title is starting to make sense.  Still not sure about the hard boiled part.

He was stupid to think Junior and Big Boy (a little confused as to who they are) were going to leave his most loved items alone.  But, at least he had taken care of the skull.

Chapter 8:  Woods

Always seems to be in stories like this (fantasy type) that woods are where the bad natives live and town is where the good new people live.

I can't imagine how it would feel to have everything in your place, in your life, overturned or destroyed as precisely as Big Boy went through the narrator's place.  It makes my skin crawl with anxiety just thinking about it.

Chapter 9:  The Coming of Winter

When the Librarian talks about her shadow living in the world beyond and becoming something apart from her, it makes me think of Kingdom Hearts and the dark versions of people and the Nobodies.

Chapter 10:  Dreamreading

I wasn't expecting the Narrator to be so important as to be one of twenty six people to survive the operation and training to be a Calcutec.

Chapter 11:  The Death of the Beasts

The scene of how the Beasts die depresses me, and the number of Bests that die each winter depresses me, too.

Chapter 12:  Gray Smoke

The "old dreams" thing confuses me.  Is he literally pulling dreams from the minds of unicorns, or are the skulls just like external hard drives that the Town puts information into?  Either way, what is he pulling from the skulls that is so important?

The idea of growing up and now knowing what singing is, is scary and depressing to say the least.

Chapter 13:  Shadow Grounds

Even with the Professors's explanation, I am so confused about the procedure the narrator went under and how he has 3 pathways in his brain and how he got sucked into The End of the World.

Chapter 14:  Power Station

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the End of the World is just a perception of the world we are in now.  So it's almost like he's becoming schizophrenic or something where he's seeing unicorns where the rest of us see something else.

And when the Professor says that the narrator's mind won't die, is he implying that this "circuit" that he and the System created is actually going on forever, even when the narrator dies and is buried in the ground, he'll still keep living in this unicorn filled, walled in world?

Chapter 15:  Musical Instruments

I wonder what the Caretaker is supposed to symbolize. His statements about appreciating items for what they are, not for their uses, must mean more than face value.

Chapter 18:  Accordion

I don't understand how the accordion fits in the narrator's pocket.  He says it is a fold-able accordion but I still don't see it fitting in a coat pocket.


Overall, I liked the book.  It was tough to read two very unique and complicated books back to back like this, but I did enjoy the story.  About 60% of the way through I started to understand Carole's "Edgar Allen Poe of Japan" analogy because it was a freaky concept without necessarily being a scary story.  However, I don't full understand everything and so I seriously hope the rest of you can give me some insight on, How the two world's existed, and What exactly happened at and after the end?

--||--

Quotes Worth Mentioning

Chapter 1;  Elevator, Silence, Overweight

"Maybe I'd gone up twelve stories, then down three.  Maybe I'd circled the globe.  How would I know?"

(In describing the elevator) "Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin."

Chapter 2:  Golden Beasts

"'We do it that way,' he says, 'and that is how it is.  The same as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.'"  - I feel like I read something like that somewhere else recently, like, just because that's the way we've been doing it forever doesn't mean there isn't a better way.

Chapter 3:  Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry

"'Got the whale and elephant in the storeroom downstairs.  Take up a lot of space, they do,' said the old man.
"'Well, I guess,' I said.  A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood.

Chapter 4:  The Library

"Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams."  --  This is an interesting line, and I am intrigued, but still aggravated by the vagueness and not knowing what the character's purpose is (or are).

"There's no such thing as happy evolution."  --  Agree or disagree?  Initially I want to say disagree but then again, if you believe that we evolved from microorganisms, wouldn't it also be fair to argue that we were better off that way because there weren't wars and such?

"I withdrew a flex-metal document cache from a pocket behind my left knee, inserted the data list, and locked it."  --  Okay, confused.  Does he literally have a pocket in his pants that is actually a document holder?  Is he a robot and the pocket is part of his robot body?  Is this just a really unfortunate misuse of word(s)?

Chapter 5:  Shadow

"When I came to this town, my shadow was taken away."  --  Curious.  Makes me think of Peter Pan, curious to see where this takes the story.

"By evolution, you wouldn't be referring to the evolving over millions of years kind of evolution, would you?  Excuse me if I misunderstand, but why then do you need things so quickly?  What's one more day?"

Chapter 6:  The Colonel

"No one tells you anything in this Town," says the Colonel.  The Town has its own protocol.  It has no care for what you know or do not know."

"Aesthetically, I remembered reading, the flaccid penis is more pleasing than the erect."  --  Thoughts?  I completely disagree with this statement.

I found the descriptions of the two types of unicorns to be interesting as neither of these are the images that come to mind to me personally.
Greek:  "His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet an elephant, his tail a boar; heloweth after an hideous manner, one black horn he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length:  by report, this wild beast cannot possibly be caught alive."
Chinese:  "It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse.  Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colors, while its belly is brown or yellow."

Chapter 8:  Woods

"Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the costs."
"It's not my war."
"Whose war don't matter.  Whose money don't matter.  That's what war is."

"To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age [15 years] was, by any standard, a tragedy.  It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon.  Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom."

"When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal.  But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything.  Where does a busted videodeck get you?"

Chapter 9:  The Coming of Winter

"Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities.  Kindness is manners.  it is superficial custom, an acquired practice.  Not so the mind.  The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe it is far more inconstant."

Chapter 10:  Dreamreading

"I stopped to take a last look at my scrap heap of an apartment.  Once again, life had a lesson to teach me:  It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.  Sure, I'd gotten tired of this tiny space, but I'd had a good home here."

"But that, as they say, was none of my business, opec would go on drilling for oil, regardless of anyone's opinion, conglomerates would make electricity and gasoline from that oil, people would be running around town late at night using up that gasoline."

"Why do you drink so much?" she wanted to know.

"It makes me feel brave," I said.
"I'm scared, too, but you don't see me drinking."
"Your 'scared' and my 'scared' are two different things."

"Grand father says schools are too inefficient to produce top material.  What do you think?" she asked.
"Well, probably so," I answered.  "I went to school for many years and I don't believe it made that much difference in my life.  I can't speak any languages, can't play any instruments, can't play the stock market, can't ride a horse."

"Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at.  It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it?  But school doesn't know how to draw it out.  It crushes the gift.  It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be.  They just get ground down."

Chapter 12:  Gray Smoke

"[the operation done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty] They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness.  They had stolen my memories from me!  Nobody had that right.  Nobody!  My memories belonged to me.  Stealing memories was stealing time.  I got so mad, I lost all fear."

Chapter 13:  Shadow Grounds

"You got to know your limits.  Once is enough, but you got to learn.  A little caution never hurt anyone.  A good woodsman has only one scar on him.  No more, no less.  You get my meaning?"

Chapter 15:  Musical Instruments

"Genius scientist or not, everyone grows old, everyone dies."

"Wasn't much of a life anyway.  Wasn't much of a brain."
"But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?"
"Word games," I dismissed.  "Everyone army needs a flag."

Chapter 17:  Skulls

"I never trust people with no appetite.  It's like they're always holding something back on you, don't you think?"

Chapter 18:  Accordion

"I located a Schick razor and a can of Gillette Lemon-Lime Foamy with a dry sputter of white around the nozzle.  Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used."

Chapter 19:  Escape

"Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations.  Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase.  From snails to hardware stores, to married life.  Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love.  What is given has nothing to do with what we seek."

18th Meet Up - September 2015 (Pt. 1)

Even though it was a small turnout I had a good time.

Thank you for hosting us, Donnia, and letting us see your adorable place.

I hope the rest of the group gives "Still Life with Woodpecker a Try" because it was definitely a unique book that was worth reading.

It's looking like our second meet-up this month is gonna be a small turnout, but I hope to see more of you in October.

Sam Review's "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins - August 2015

Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way

Gotta love a book that starts out with a drinking author.  My favorite kind of character.

Are the parts of the book called "phases" to represent the four primary phases of the moon?

I really love the story of Gulietta and Prince Charming.  Up until this point I was having a difficult time putting all the names and characters together but this set of chapters helped me out.

The bit where the princess is explaining how no birth control works for her, and how she was beginning to feel that the world's attempt to prevent what is natural (child birth) almost feels like it is also taking away from the romance that is love and sex - made me think of Jessica so much.  Just up until the Princess decided celibacy was the perfect life choice.

I went through a phase like the Princess did, trying to be overly mature as if to prove something.  Didn't work well for me - I expect it won't work well for her either.

Is it true that you can't bring anything to Hawaii that might affect the natural ecosystem?

I find it funny that a Blonde was telling a Redhead that Redheads are evil and get their read hair from sweets and lust.

I feel like I read to fast to appreciate the turns of phrase and wit that are in this book.  At least, I think it's meant to be funny.  The language reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, kind of hard to grasp English humor.

I am both impressed and deterred by the honestly blunt sex scene on the boat.

Boo to killing to dog.  Not just the act but also the how.

I love the idea of the blackberry ceiling over Seattle.  I don't know how realistic it would be, but if it could actually be something I think every city should find a bush plant like that and invest in it.

The Princess is crazy.  I don't think I could ever love someone enough to imprison myself in my own home until they were released.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Gulietta was the King's half-sister and ended up taking over the throne.

Is the idea of being a "genuine" human such a big thing?  Is it the opposite of "basic"?  Cuz this is the second book that hangs on that phrase.  The first being Casual Vacancy.

Is the only reason they didn't try to blow up the door on the first day because they wanted to spend time together?  To make up for the time they'd lost?  Even though they didn't plan to be together after?

I find it interesting that the Princess says "I found a way to make love stay," in reference to sacrificing herself for him.  Because, it's true, it's substantially harder to move on from someone when they've died, especially if you are the cause of that death.  Not to mention our tendency to romanticize a person once they're gone regardless of our relationship to them.

I do believe that 2 people can have the same exact dream.  I've had it happen at least once, Jessica and I and the Coo Coo Flumes.

I'm glad The Princess and Bernard ended up together, it wouldn't have made sense otherwise.  Even if I feel like I didn't comprehend half of this story, I'm glad that part of it ended the way I wanted it to.

I love the ending.  Maybe if had written the story in shorthand he wouldn't have lost me with all the weird jokes and turns of phrase and unique way of spelling things.  I wholeheartedly concur with the idea that love is not what we crave buy mystery, something new, and if we stand still and stop finding mystery in our lives, that is when people crave the mystery of other/new people.  So we must always search for the mystery in ourselves, in our partner, and in our life to keep us from looking at strangers, in order to make love stay.

--||--

Quotes Worth Mentioning

"IN THE LAST QUARTER of the twentieth century, at a time when Western civilization was declining too rapidly for comfort and yet too slowly to be very exciting..."

"...the last quarter of the twentieth century was a severe period for lovers. It was a time when women openly resented men, a time when men felt betrayed by women."

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
"Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
"There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
"Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
"Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.
"Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon."

"...'an American house, a house without frills,' and got just that. It was a barn, a box with a peaked roof."

"Leigh-Cheri eventually named it Prince Charming after 'that son-of-a-bitch who never comes through.'"

"As Queen Tilli put it when Max asked her what she thought their only daughter wanted out of life,
"'She vants to buy zee vorld a Coke.'
“'Well,' said Max, 'she can’t afford it. And the world would demand Diet Pepsi, anyhow. Why doesn’t she buy me a martini, instead?'”

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

"...how can men be such lummoxes, such wads of Juicy Fruit on the soles of our ballet slippers and still feel so good?"

“Who does have a love life anymore? These days people have sex lives, not love lives.
Lots of them are even giving up sex. I don’t have a love life because I’ve never met a
man who knew how to have a love life. Maybe I don’t know how, either.”

"If smiles had addresses, Bernard’s would have been General Delivery, the Moon."

"we can never alter the ratio of good to evil. All we can do is keep things stirred up so neither good nor evil solidifies."

“I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how
to make it stay. Now that I’m in love, I haven’t a clue. Now that I’m in love, I’m
completely stupid on the subject.”

"...to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one’s palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without
knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay."

"The Red Beards would have been a lunar people—mystic, occult, changeable, feministic, spiritual, pacific, agrarian, artistic, and erotic. While the Yellow Hairs would have been solar: abstract, rational, prosaic, militaristic, industrial, patriarchal, unemotional, and puritan. It’s a conflict that goes all the way back to the riff between Lucifer and Jehovah. The sun is Jehovah’s, but Lucifer rules dat ol’ debil moon.”

“Don’t let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It’s not the times that will bring us down, any more than it’s society. When you put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the solution. There’s a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It’s not men who limit women, it’s not straights who limit gays, it’s not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.”

“The most important thing is love,” said Leigh-Cheri. “I know that now. There’s no
point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.”

“'I’ll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed.
"Yes, darling. But the earth doesn’t have any ends. Columbus fixed that."

"She did know that once tattooed one could no longer expect to lie for all eternity in an orthodox Jewish cemetery. They wouldn’t even bury women with pierced ears. A strange theory of mutilation from the people who invented cutting the skin off the pee-pee."

"Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home.  We smoke to capture the power of the sun, the pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano ... Does that mean that chain smokers are religious fanatics? ... The lung of the smoker is a naked virgin thrown as a sacrifice into the godfire."

“Once in Hawaii, before I hardly even knew you, I thought you’d been arrested, and for some reason I went running to your boat in a panic. Tonight, I thought you were dead. There wasn’t any boat to run to.”

"Somewhere between champagne and tequila is the secret history of Mexico, just as somewhere between beef jerky and Hostess Twinkies is the secret history of America."

"It's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the Camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smiles at us.  We glimpse it when we stand still."

Sam Reviews "The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey - July 2015

Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way

Part One:

I was instantly hooked from the first paragraph.  One of the major bonuses to "action-type" books.

Okay science-people:  give me the true definition of a star; because I pretty much think of Pumba's explanation from The Lion King.  In the book the narrator says the stars are suns.

I find it funny that both of Tyler's book choices have been "end of the world" "clearly written for boys" however "narrated by a girl".

Has anyone else heard of the "Grandfather Paradox"?  Whether you have or not, have you read "All You Zombies"?  If not, you should - it's a short story.  In fact, I might share it on the group page and the blog here since it's brought up here.  And if you find the short story interesting, then you should certainly read Chuck Palahniuk's book "Rant".

I hate the silence.  I never realize how used to the Hum I am until we loose power at the apartment and it's deafening.  I remember the first time it went out without a reason (no storm) it was later at night and I opened the door to the hallway and the complete darkness and complete silence made my brain go into panic mode like I had just opened the door to let in demons or something.

I think it's interesting how the "matter of fact" style of this book makes me more interested in it.  There isn't pages of description but I feel so enthralled and intrigued with the story, and it makes the book go by faster.

Wouldn't the sudden "technology" make you leery of thinking good things?  Like was there not one piece of technology that the "camp" had that they could have checked on to see if it was working?  Just reading through the part where they saw the helicopter and then the buses, it just makes sense that the aliens were lulling you into a false sense of security.

The part where Sammy tells Cassie to make sure she doesn't forget and leave his teddy bear behind definitely pulled at my heartstrings.

When Cassie is looking back at the moment when all the "military men" had the guns, she's calling her dad an idiot for not figuring it all out sooner.  But did she know at the time?  If she did, why did she rat out Crisco?

It's awful, but also really clever, to have Crisco's character be so obsessed with the treasures and then to have him die in the ash pit.

Part Two:

I'm not a fan of jumping POV without explanation.  If you're going to jump narrators throughout "Parts" then you should introduce them somehow so the reader isn't confused.

Was there a "1st Wave" book?  I feel this book explains what happens well enough that you wouldn't need previous books.  But if there are other books, why did Tyler have us start with the 5th?

I think it's sick that they made the narrator in this part kill his friend, Chris.  Even if Chris was always a puppet to The Others, they could have had someone else kill him.  But I guess that's war.

Okay, so Ben Parish is the narrator for part two, now I'm a lot more intrigued.  I guess that's a type of literary technique - to keep you obsessed with the unknown so by the time you figure out who you're reading about you're so hooked it doesn't hardly matter.

Also, I appreciate the parallelism that both of these kids / teens have lost younger siblings they cared about.  But of course, that also makes me sappy and want them to find each other and heal each other's wounds.

I am very confused as to if the people that are about to train Ben are "good guys" or "bad guys" or just "better of two evils".

Part Three:

I find it funny how the first bit of this book is all about how "we got it wrong" with all of our "fluffy alien movies", and yet in this chapter you're hearing the thoughts of an "Alien" who is "not like the others" and "for some reason can't do what he was put here to do - kill this female human".

Why aren't the "Aliens" concerned about the animals?  Is it because animals are actually essential to the ecosystem of the earth while humans aren't so much?

Did anyone else get some "Host" deja vu when talking about The Awakening?  Or is it just me?  Is this a common theme in Science Fiction stories, where 95% of the Aliens are anti-human but the other 5% are either sympathetic or the human's the inhabit are just too strong to be overpowered?

Part Four:

I'm glad Evan Walker explained the possibility of the humans working with the aliens under certain circumstances.  I still find it dumb because the chances of the aliens stabbing humans in the back doesn't seem too far fetched.

I'm glad Evan Walker is hopeful, yet smart.  I didn't like how cynical Cassie was, how you couldn't trust anyone - even if you can't.  I'm glad Evan actually does still have his humanity intact, not just pretending to.

I really love the Evan Walker bit.  I love that he brings her back to reality and that she's not the only one with loss.  I love that he accepts her "purpose for life" as his own and make a plan to help her, even if it ends in their deaths.  I'm glad The Others didn't get to him before Cassie met him.

Part Five:

Just curious, since this part is narrated by Sammy, did you guys ever have a specific thing as a kid that made everything better?  I remember, I had Duckie - this off brand beanie baby duck that I took with me everywhere.  And one time we had a really bad tornado and I was pretty sure I had left him outside and I cried and cried until my dad left the crawl space to go get him for me so I would relax.

Part Six:

"Zombie" is a super lame nick name - especially when you're referring to yourself, Ben Parish.

Correction - all of the soldier names are ridiculous:  Flintstone, Tank, Dumbo, Poundcake, Oompa, Teacup, and Nugget.

Okay, now I'm upset.  Why would they take kids younger than 10 to train for battle?  I don't remember how young the Hunger Games went but I know there was a cut off.  Although it does make sense to finally tie the multiple narrators together, now Sammy is with Ben Parish.

Since Vosch is apparently a "good guy" then I don't fully understand why they killed everyone in Camp Ashpit.  They didn't test them for "green or red" to see if they had aliens in their brains, they just took the youngest kids and blew up the rest.  Is it simply that they assumed the adults would rebel against "the man" while the kids would not?  And, even if that is the case, Ben and Cassie were the same age and so it doesn't make sense that Ben/Zombie was taken to Camp Haven and Cassie was left behind.

I love that the "code" for a soldier going rogue is "Dorothy" or "off to see the wizard" or "on the yellow brick road".

What's up with the "vivid description of something physical on a person" followed by the phrase "not that I'm noticing these things" in both Cassie and Ben's POV.

Was Ben 15 when Cassie was 16?  Is that why Cassie was sentenced to die?  Or was it just a matter of them being in different places where different people called the shots?

I love and hate the parallelism of "“No matter what happens out there, I’ll come back for you,” I promise him."

Part Seven:

I can definitely relate to the feeling of being able to tell when a certain person is walking around - and hoe unsettling it is when that person walks or sounds different than normal.  Used to happen all the tie at my mom's.  And even now, in my apartment, I can usually tell who's here by the heaviness of their steps outside in the hall.

I'm a total dunce for not putting it together than Evan might be The Silencer.

Part Eight:

I know that a part of what makes the book good and interesting is that it twists and turns but I hate feeling like I don't understand what is going on.  I agree with Ringer, that it makes more sense that the infested are actually the ones running the Boot Camp Base while the non-infested are running around being gunned down by trained alien pods.  Green light and red light - which is actually the enemy?  Ringer is Green after getting her Wonderland Pod removed.

That's awful that the Wonderland program goes through every single memory, not just key ones.  Although I guess the memory of realizing the truth would be pretty key.

Part Nine:

Weird that Cassie told Evan that she suspected something less than good about him.

I agree with Cassie, Evan shouldn't have burned the house down, to keep hope alive.

Did Evan end up killing the squad Ben left behind?  Or a squad sent to find Ben's squad?

That seems really torturous to have Sammy be in boot camp for damn near 3 years while other people are only in for 6 months.

I agree that it does seem way more realistic that aliens are really just a "concept" more than a physical being that's going to appear in front of us one day.

So Cassie must not have been infected if Evan was able to "enter" her.  But then she glowed red.

Part Twelve:

I love that Evan (I'm assuming) hacked the system and made the "kill" button read "oops" instead.

I think it's great that Evan knocked the cockroach corpse through the grate and that was what Cassie noticed and proved that Evan was alive.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this novel.  I always say I hate Science Fiction but this book club has proven that I'm just picky.  The story was swift but still not predictable which is great.  I don't like the jumping narrator, even if it did make sense at the end, I don't prefer it.  I'm a little unsure how I feel about the end.  I want to know if Evan made it, I don't really want Cassie and Ben to be too friendly, and I want to know what the next step in the story is.  But, I guess that's the sign of a good book because I want to go look up the next book in the series (if there is one).

--||--

Quotes Worth Mentioning

Part One:

"My parents didn’t know the first thing about that myth. They just thought the name [Cassiopeia] was pretty."

"It’s been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope."

Part Two:

"One in ten? And here I was thinking the plague was a death sentence. I couldn’t be happier."

“God doesn’t call the equipped, son. God equips the called. And you have been called.”

Part Three:

"A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn’t cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost."

Part Four:

"Are pervs only pervs if you don’t find them attractive?"

Part Five:

"All that he has experienced, all that he remembers, and even those things that he can’t remember; everything that makes up the personality of Sammy Sullivan is pulled and sorted and transmitted."

Part Six:

"It isn’t up to me to break his heart; that’s time’s job."

"...he [Tank] will be consumed in fire, his ashes mixing with the gray smoke and carried aloft in a column of superheated air, eventually to settle over us in particles too fine to see or feel. He’ll stay with us—on us—until we shower that night, washing what’s left of Tank into the drains connected to the pipes connected to the septic tanks, where he will mix with our excrement before leaching into the ground."

Part Seven:

"I touch his knee, then pull my hand back quickly. After the first touch, touching becomes too easy."

"“I think that’s the way it is,” he says after a minute. “When you love someone. Something happens to them, and it’s a punch in the heart. Not like a punch in the heart; a real punch in the heart.”"

"Watching him step lightly off the back porch and trot toward the trees, heading west, toward the highway, where, as everyone knows, fresh game like deer and rabbit and Homo sapiens like to congregate."

"In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for the things you don’t know you’re looking for and always regret finding."

Part Eight:

“I lit up after you pulled out the implant. The eyepieces don’t pick up infestations. They react when there’s no implant.”
“They lit up on those three infesteds. Why would the eyepieces light up if they weren’t?”
“They lit up because those people weren’t infested. They’re just like us, the only difference being they don’t have implants.
"Take us in. Tag and bag us. Train us to kill. Anyone who isn’t tagged will glow green, and when they defend themselves or challenge us, shoot at us like that sniper up there—well, that just proves they’re the enemy, doesn’t it?  Until we’ve killed everyone who isn’t tagged. Ben, we’re the 5th Wave.”

"It’s a lie. Wonderland. Camp Haven. The war itself.  How easy it was. How incredibly easy, even after all that we’d been through. Or maybe it was easy because of all we’d been through.  They gathered us in. They emptied us out. They filled us up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance.  So they could send us out again.  To kill what’s left of the rest of us.  Check and mate."

Part Nine:

"A flower to the rain."

Part Eleven:
"If the world breaks a million and one promises, can you trust the million and second?"

Part Twelve:

"Here, in this place. A thousand years later and a million miles from the halls of George Barnard High School. Here, in the belly of the beast at the bottom of the world, standing right in front of me.  Benjamin Thomas Parish."

"Ben like a doctor. Me like a soldier. Like two kids playing dress-up. A fake doctor and a fake soldier debating with themselves whether to blow the other one’s brains out.  Those first few moments between me and Ben Parish were very strange."

""The minute we decide that one person doesn’t matter anymore, they’ve won.”
Beneath a sky crowded with a billion stars. I don’t care what the stars say about how small we are.  One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters."
--Makes me think of the Doctor Who Quote "900 years of time and space and I've never met anyone who wasn't important."