Tag: book club

Book Review: Station Eleven

Lauren2 Comments

Our monthly book club met last night and I finished this book on my lunch break because I enjoy procrastination.  I don’t think I’ve ever cut it that close, but it wasn’t for lack of enjoyment as much as it’s because I’ve been watching too much TV lately.  But I finished and then I vowed to cut back on TV this summer.  More reading on the front porch to come!

Station Eleven

A quick aside: this author’s name is Emily St. John Mandel?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen St. in a name before — is that a thing??

Anyway.  The basic premise of this book is that 99% of the population has been wiped about by the Georgia Flu and all that’s left are small communities of people that weren’t infected and are now surviving in a world that has devolved to a very primitive state.  The main character (or is she??) is a girl named Kirsten, who’s part of a traveling symphony that performs music and Shakespeare for the surviving communities.  There’s also a dangerous prophet in their midst.  And all the characters are connected by a character who (SPOILER) dies in the opening pages.

I’ll be honest, I hit 70% on this book and was worried because it didn’t seem we were near a climax, let alone any sort of conclusion, but things actually wrapped up pretty well and I ended up really enjoying this one.  Actually, I kind of wanted more of it!  Post-pandemic novels are so interesting because the author can take the plot in SO MANY directions and there are SO MANY things to consider but I thought Mandel did a fairly good job keeping it both focused and thought-provoking.

There were characters I wish had gotten more attention, but for the most part, everyone was well developed and realistically portrayed.  I’m always so blown away by the discussion at book club and last night’s meeting was no exception.  We talked a lot about human nature and the way different aspects of it were depicted by the characters.  Breaking News: human nature isn’t always pretty.  Another huge topic of conversation was what it would be like living without all the luxuries we’ve come to expect in life.  A world without iPhones?? Noooooo!

I could keep going because there was just so many layers to this book, but I’ll just let those thoughts roll around in my own head and let you read it for yourself 🙂

What are you reading right now?

Do you like post-apocalyptic/sci-fi lit?

Could you survive in a world without technology? 

Recent Reads: I’ve been holding out on you!

Lauren4 Comments

On Tuesday, I finished up a book during my lunch break, decided I should write a post about it, then realized I’d finished five other books since the last time I did a book review post!  I don’t know how or when that happened by I’m simultaneously feeling pleased (for reading lots!) and disappointed in myself.  Let’s fix that today!*

*Today, as in the Rockies Home Opener!!!  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know Joey and I look forward to this day ALL YEAR LONG.  As is tradition, we will be lunching at Biker Jim’s, drinking beer in the sunshine, breathing in that Coors Field air, taking note of everyone’s walk up song and rooting for our dear Rockies to be less bad than last year.  Happiest of Fridays!

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light

Okay, don’t get me wrong I really liked this book, but I had heard SUCH good things about it that I think I expected to like it a lot more.  I’m even having a hard time pinpointing what I didn’t love about the book.  I just can’t really put my finger on it.  I guess I should just focus on what I did like, which was the effortless back-and-forth interweaving aspect of how the story was told, a totally new perspective of what it was like to be a young boy in Nazi Germany, the indisputable love a father had for his blind daughter, the fact that Marie-Laure was never painted as helpless and the language.  It read like poetry and there’s nothing better than literature written like that.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane

Wait, you don’t re-read Victorian lit for fun?  Me neither…  In all honesty, I started this in December and though I flew through the first half, Part II took me FOREVER to get through.  Partly because I was reading other things and partly because Jane’s life without Rochester is boring as can be.  Come on, we knew it and she knew it too.  I did finally make it through (and gave myself a pat on the back), but I think it’s safe to say I probably won’t be reading that again any time soon.  I swear I liked it the first time around!

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

Grownup

This was our March book group pick and it was all of 60 pages long.  I read it in less than an hour, then made Joey read it so we could discuss.  It made a few mentions of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and it did have that same eerie appeal to it in the beginning, but then Gillian Flynn fell into her pattern of writing a book with three twists and it felt all too predictable.  The feminist in me wants to love a successful female author, but the English major in me says her writing is formulaic and far too concerned with shock appeal.Read More »