Here's the rest of summer and fall book reading schedule for our club. Thought it might be good just to have it posted for easy reminders.
August book: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
September book: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrns by Chris Crutcher (in honor of banned book week at the end of September - Crutcher is a frequently challenged author and a huge proponent of Freedom to Read.)
October book: Clay by David Almond (one line sentence to describe it... The author sets a Frankenstein monster story in a small, contemporary English town. Guess what we're honoring this month? Trick or treat anyone?!)
November book: Anahita's Woven Riddle by Megan Nattal Sayres
December will be a break - no book
January book(s): American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang AND Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa. (We're doing two this month to make up for our December hiatus.)
Monday, July 16, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
June/July Meeting Recap of BOY MEETS BOY
We finally had our June meeting in July due to schedule conflicts and class demands, but it was worth the wait. In honor of Pride Month (June) we had selected Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. This is a book that we all felt was an important book for any teen.
Although the main character has known that he was gay since kindergarten and was the first openly-gay third-grade class president and has a truly accepting family, many of the other characters have deeper struggles. Paul, our main character, does have the one thing that is new to him, his first serious feelings for a boy named Noah. What starts out seeming a little too "perfect world" ends up being an uplifting and fun story with some very real moments in the book. One of the thoughts about the "too ideal" beginning was that the perspective of the book is told from Paul's perspective and for Paul, up until he meets Noah, things have been very easy and ideal. Even the character of Infinite Darlene, who seems over the top and in no way a possibility, develops into a real person, although a few of us still had a hard time wrapping our heads around her being both the Homecoming Queen AND Quarterback since we wondered just what kind of a body it would take to be both. The most grown up perspective comes from Tony who needs a huge amount of support from his friends but also needs to have a super amount of inner strength to deal with his parents, who don't accept him being gay but do really love him. His understanding of his parents actually gives him the courage he needs and the parents are not portrayed as terrible people. Kyle is probably the most confused of the characters and the one thing that seems to capture the essence of anyone coming to terms with their sexuality when they realize that they may not fall conveniently into a socially-acceptable norm.
The book deals with some very universal truths that anyone can understand and connect with... mainly, "The Crush". Who hasn't had a crush on someone? Who hasn't wanted to be with someone or been with someone that made their mind and heart race? Especially during the teen years? We all connected with this book on that issue alone.
Older teens may find it a bit to young for their reading level, but the enjoyment of a quick read is still worth offering this book on a reading list. Plus it remains one of the stronger GLBT books out there with a positive outlook. There is a lot to consider and think about within the mere 185 pages of this book!
Our leader for our book discussion actually developed a wonderful set of discussion questions that we hope to post soon.
Ok, fellow bookclub members... that's my wrap on the book. Have anything else to add? Please do! See you at the next meeting...
Next book: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
Although the main character has known that he was gay since kindergarten and was the first openly-gay third-grade class president and has a truly accepting family, many of the other characters have deeper struggles. Paul, our main character, does have the one thing that is new to him, his first serious feelings for a boy named Noah. What starts out seeming a little too "perfect world" ends up being an uplifting and fun story with some very real moments in the book. One of the thoughts about the "too ideal" beginning was that the perspective of the book is told from Paul's perspective and for Paul, up until he meets Noah, things have been very easy and ideal. Even the character of Infinite Darlene, who seems over the top and in no way a possibility, develops into a real person, although a few of us still had a hard time wrapping our heads around her being both the Homecoming Queen AND Quarterback since we wondered just what kind of a body it would take to be both. The most grown up perspective comes from Tony who needs a huge amount of support from his friends but also needs to have a super amount of inner strength to deal with his parents, who don't accept him being gay but do really love him. His understanding of his parents actually gives him the courage he needs and the parents are not portrayed as terrible people. Kyle is probably the most confused of the characters and the one thing that seems to capture the essence of anyone coming to terms with their sexuality when they realize that they may not fall conveniently into a socially-acceptable norm.
The book deals with some very universal truths that anyone can understand and connect with... mainly, "The Crush". Who hasn't had a crush on someone? Who hasn't wanted to be with someone or been with someone that made their mind and heart race? Especially during the teen years? We all connected with this book on that issue alone.
Older teens may find it a bit to young for their reading level, but the enjoyment of a quick read is still worth offering this book on a reading list. Plus it remains one of the stronger GLBT books out there with a positive outlook. There is a lot to consider and think about within the mere 185 pages of this book!
Our leader for our book discussion actually developed a wonderful set of discussion questions that we hope to post soon.
Ok, fellow bookclub members... that's my wrap on the book. Have anything else to add? Please do! See you at the next meeting...
Next book: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
Thursday, July 5, 2007
What bloggers need to know...
Worried about blogging... Here's a very helpful article.
http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/
By the way - the link above is a "deep" link, but I in no way have anything to do with the content at this site. See point number two of the article for why I'm making this perfectly clear that the article is not part of our site and is indeed operated by another group altogether! You can check out the rest of their website at http://www.avivadirectory.com
Enjoy and Happy Blogging.
http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/
By the way - the link above is a "deep" link, but I in no way have anything to do with the content at this site. See point number two of the article for why I'm making this perfectly clear that the article is not part of our site and is indeed operated by another group altogether! You can check out the rest of their website at http://www.avivadirectory.com
Enjoy and Happy Blogging.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Celebrate! Good times!...
We celebrated some of our members graduating from CSC with their new MLIS this past May!
Congrats, Ladies! We're all very proud!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Abundance of Katharines by John Green...
We had a good meeting the other night. Those who attended all enjoyed the book greatly. We discussed the theme of "mattering" and "not doing". Interestingly, we talked about how "mattering" wasn't just a teen-angst issue, but that many people struggle with the concept well into adulthood. "Not doing" was the other primary theme we saw. All three main characters were in some way "not doing" something. We all really liked Hassan's character. Some of the best "throw away lines" come from his character. Catch phrases and one liners that spoke a truth without dwelling on it caught our attention. Such as Green's comment when Colin discusses wanting to like coffee and that Katharine "liked her coffee the way she liked her boyfriends... bitter". We felt the characters were treated respectfully, but not necessarily reverently. Footnotes were an added part of the story. People felt that they went easily into the story and didn't pull you away from the storyline. We all really liked that the core relationships in the books really focused on friendship rather than romance (even though there is some of that too). We felt this book was emotionally real. We also liked the fact that the book basically begins and ends with a road trip. The one disappointment to the book we decided was the cover. It either gives the impression of a self-help book or a chic lit book, of which it is neither.
Group members - Did you miss our meeting? Did I miss something you want to include? Please add your comments to this post.
Group members - Did you miss our meeting? Did I miss something you want to include? Please add your comments to this post.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Recap of NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST
This recap is from Kate P. after the group discussion on April 30. More comments to this post? Please add.
A good and interesting light read for older teens; we universally liked the romance aspects of the story. We thought it would be a good audio presentation or even a stage presentation to get the full effect of the numerous songs. Check out I-tunes and the Nick and Norah website for some song lists!
A good and interesting light read for older teens; we universally liked the romance aspects of the story. We thought it would be a good audio presentation or even a stage presentation to get the full effect of the numerous songs. Check out I-tunes and the Nick and Norah website for some song lists!
The pacing was frenetic in keeping with the punk/club scene and we debated the positive and negative aspects of the intriguing 2-author writing. In the beginning the voices of Nick and Norah were quite separate, then they blended as the story unfolded: a bit too blended for most of us. We also discussed the story taking place in one (albeit long) night and felt overall that it could have been drawn out more for realism.
All in all, not an overly "discussable" book but a good one~ not great, but good.
Recap of January 2007 meeting...
In which we read Witch of Blackbird Pond and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Feel free to post your own comments about these books to this posting.
Sent January 2007:
We had a cozy little meeting last night with Kate, Leah, Camille & Jenn T. sitting around the fireplace and sipping hot cider and eating cornbread and other snackies. Thanks to Camille for hosting and Kate & Leah for braving the cold to join us. As usual we had a good discussion of the books and felt that both had some interesting similarities with themes - prejudice, intolerance, family. An interesting theme that came up for Roll of Thunder was Quiet. We also discussed how these books, though written as historical fiction, really related to issues that were current at the time they were written: McCarthyism vs. witch trials; Civil Rights vs. Post-Slavery/Depression era issues.
Sent January 2007:
We had a cozy little meeting last night with Kate, Leah, Camille & Jenn T. sitting around the fireplace and sipping hot cider and eating cornbread and other snackies. Thanks to Camille for hosting and Kate & Leah for braving the cold to join us. As usual we had a good discussion of the books and felt that both had some interesting similarities with themes - prejudice, intolerance, family. An interesting theme that came up for Roll of Thunder was Quiet. We also discussed how these books, though written as historical fiction, really related to issues that were current at the time they were written: McCarthyism vs. witch trials; Civil Rights vs. Post-Slavery/Depression era issues.
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