Book club 2008-09
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The Handmaid's
Tale by Margaret Atwood |
Dreams from My Father
by Barack Obama |
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett |
The UHS Book Club started in November
2004. Our group meets in the high school library and
is sponsored by Matthew Murrey, the librarian at UHS.
This year we will meet on the third Thursday (or Friday)
of the month in the library after school.
At the end of last year, we picked three books to begin
the year with: A Thousand Splendid Suns by
Khaled Hosseini, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret
Atwood, and Dreams from My Father by Barack
Obama.
Due to ordering difficulties, our first book will be
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Copies
are in the library and we will meet on Oct. 16th to
discuss the novel. Our second book will be Obama's Dreams
from My Father. In December we will discuss Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens. To start 2009 we will read and talk about A
Thousand Splendid Suns in January.
On October 16th seven of us met and exchanged views on Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. Reactions were pretty positive, and people noted that the themes of loss of freedom seemed very relevant in our surveillance/security culture.
We met briefly on Friday November 26th to discuss President-elect Barack Obama's memoir. Only two students attended, so we rescheduled a meeting for Dec. 4th. It will be a brief meeting, and copies of the next book, Good Omens will be available. All students and staff of UHS are welcome to attend.
On Thursday, January 8th, 2009 the reading club met to talk about Gaiman and Prachett's Good Omens. The book was praised by everyone in the group, although some liked it far more than others. People admired its humor, wit, and creative twist on the Armeggedon story. We talked about how the novel, though very Monty Pythonish, has some very distrubing undertones: the nature of human folly, cruelty, etc. Most readers found that at times the plot was a bit jumpy, complicated and tricky to follow - probably a result of joint authorship and the many main characters in the book. We debated whether the ending was 50ish nostaligic or was meant that way as a bit of tongue in cheek humor.
Our book for February was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. We met to discuss the novel on February 19th. Praise for the novel was unanimous. All of us agreed that Hosseini is a masterful storyteller, able to inhabit both male and female characters with sensitivity and credibility. We discussed at lenght how Hosseini is interesting in that though the novel is quite disturbing and grim it ends on a positive trajectory - which is more satisfactory than a traditionally happy ending.
Our book for March was Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey. At our March meeting many of us commented on how different the book was from what we expected - especially the romantic relationship between the hero of the story and another young man. We also liked that characterization was strong in the book, and that the plot was not predictable.
In April we will participate in the local "Big Read" by reading and discussing Dashiel Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. We met to discuss teh Maltese Falcon on April 30th, and people generally liked it, but noted that the characters were all pretty unlikeable.
We will finish the year by reading and discussing Tales from the Arabian Nights. Our final meeting of the year will be
Thursday, May 14th after
school in the library.
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| A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini |
Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey |
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett |
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Arabian Nights - Volume I |
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See information from previous years of the UHS book
club by clicking on one the following: 2004-05,
2005-06, 2006-07,
and 2006-07.
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