The tFS Book Club (please see rules/guidelines in post #1)

[ChrissyM]

i've made it through the first three chapters...
still trying to make sense of it and waiting for more revelatory tidbits

 

[Belowen]

3rd book suggestions were:

Into The Wild - 4 vote
The Book Thief - 3 votes
A Child Called it - 5 votes

So the next book will be "A Child Called It" by Dave Pelzer.

Note: The reading deadline for Never Let Me Go is this Monday, feel free to discuss before then but remember to place your review in white writing to avoid spoilers. After the 20th, feel free to post your review as normal.



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[Belowen]

So what did everyone think of Never Let Me Go?

I was a little bit disappointed with it to be honest. I mean, I had vague ideas that it would be quite a gentle and slow-moving sort of book, but I found it painfully anticlimactic. I did like the character development though, and found myself picturing Carey & Keira in the roles of Kathy & Ruth (perfect casting, IMO) throughout the entire book. All in all I did enjoy the book, but I think it may have been slightly overhyped - at least for me. 5/10

Shall we set a cut off date for A Child Called It? I've already read the book, and it only took me a couple of days - so shall we say the cut off date is next Monday the 27th of September?

Also, feel free to send in nominations for the fourth book. I am going to nominate Blindness by Jose Saramago.

 

[Teja]

I read Dave Pelzer's book when I was 12 or something and it was a bit too much for me. It was good but I was still a child so it touched me even more. I'm gonna read it again now. Can't wait.

 

[snowqueen]

ordered .. I love this book can not wait to re-read it.. dave pelzer is a true inspiration on how to be strong

 

[Alvedansen]

i'm still reading "never let me go" i def need to hurry up, but maybe i'll start reading "a child called it" as well, that one's really short

i've already read "Blindness"...i liked it but def not re-read worthy

 

[Alvedansen]

sorry for the double post, just wanted to nominate a book

never read a book by him, but just bought this so selfish as i amlol i'm gonna go with
In cold blood by Truman Capote

With the publication of this book, Capote permanently ripped through the barrier separating crime reportage from serious literature. As he reconstructs the 1959 murder of a Kansas farm family and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, Capote generates suspense and empathy.

 

[papa_levante]

Capote is amazing! That gets my vote.

 

[Pulp Fiction]

i'm still reading "never let me go" i def need to hurry up, but maybe i'll start reading "a child called it" as well, that one's really short

i've already read "Blindness"...i liked it but def not re-read worthy

i loved that book, really sad but a good story.

 

[Alvedansen]

just finished Never let me go
i liked the premise of the book but felt so much more could have been done with it. i felt the whole reason why they were donors was extremely anticlimactic and doesn't even make any sense.
i liked the characters and like Belowen i always pictured Keira and Carey and also have to agree that it's great casting.
i felt the narration was a little difficult to follow at times since she always drifts off in her thoughts and once she gets back to her main story you could barely remember what she was talking about. it was very slowmoving at times, but i still enjoyed it
3/5 stars

 

[Islandili]

Never let me go was beautiful. I didn't watch the trailer until now, and I'm glad I didn't. I think Keira is an amazing choice for Ruth but I imagined Kathy differently.
I liked the atmosphere of the book. And I loved Tommy, his drawings and breakdown moments.
And somehow I've always felt Tommy was supposed to be with Ruth.

 

[Islandili]

I think the deeper meaning of the book is that by not knowing how long we're going to live and by not knowing our exact purpose, we are blessed.

 

[*Bianca*]

Well, I finally finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being I've been pretty busy and to be honest I had to force myself to pick it up whenever I was bored.

Like others, I felt the language didn't flow, nor the ideas, and I didn't like Kundera putting himself in the book.

I did feel for Tereza though. She's the only character I really connected with and cared for, as well as, of course Karenin. I cried during the last section... it reminded me of losing my own pet, and how strong and real love between a human and an animal can be.

It was a book I expected to gather many quotes from, but unforunately, it wasn't. This quote, however, I did keep:

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists in its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.​

 

[tuetre]

I think the deeper meaning of the book is that by not knowing how long we're going to live and by not knowing our exact purpose, we are blessed.

^ I like that. I enjoyed the book quite a lot, it was beautifully written. I love the way the author portioned out bits of detail slowly, keeping you on your toes waiting for more the whole time. It was a little too slow-moving and gentle though, it took too long until I finally understood what was going on with the whole donor business.

 

[tigerrouge]

I liked the way the book was a splice of genres - boarding school crossed with mild horror - but I suppose I was disappointed that it didn't really seem to go anywhere. I found it rather flat - I was always hoping that there would be a real twist in terms of the narration, or in the character of Kathy, after we'd come to 'know' her through her words. Perhaps the lack of precision about the exact nature of the donations was supposed to stimulate our own imagination into filling in the details, but that didn't work for me.

However, I really do look forward to seeing it at the cinema, and how they evoke the situations and the emotions, it's probably very beautiful as a film.

 

[ChrissyM]

I look forward to seeing the film too...
I felt like the novel was sort of "delicate"... very quiet and soft sort of tone and prose...

Definitely felt that the ending was a bit anticlimactic...
and that the emotions throughout were a bit stilted and repressed...
which i guess sort of made sense..
these characters were almost always imitating what they thought were the emotions they should have been having..

i found the character of ruth to be a bit infuriating at times actually...
and was kind of hoping and waiting for the moment that kathy would finally explode on her and expose her... but i suppose that wouldn't have been true to the tone of the novel

The concept of donations was interesting... and a bit twisted
i found myself wondering what was being taken at each donation

i liked the way that things were slowly revealed and hinted at though...
definitely kept me interested..

and, i'm rambling, so i'll stop now

 

[eternitygoddess]

I would describe Never Let Me Go's mood with the word melancholy. I read a critic summing it up as "buried anguish" - which I agree with wholeheartedly. It's a pain that exists beneath the surface, throbbing like a bruise. There is a bleak, lingering sadness that perpetuates throughout the novel. It's reminiscent in all of Ishiguro's works. He isn't a writer that pulls the pow-wow-climax-gimmick.The steadiness, and the almost ambivalent way in which the entire truth was revealed at the end made me more horrified and terrified than any fast-pace climax could've done so.

Why should we not have souls?

 

[Alvedansen]

don't want this thread to die
so my thoughts on a child called it
it kinda left me cold yeah, if everything described happened the way it did it's more than horrible, but i just couldn't get into the writing style. i know it's supposed to be written by a child, but it was just one terrible thing after the other, there was no real story or flow. to me there was too much description in what happened but not why it happened or how he really felt.
i also couldn't understand the sudden change in his mother. it seemed like she woke up one day and decided to be bad to that one child of hers, of course he couldn't really know the reasons as a child, but as a reader it seemed very sudden and weird. one day they were a picture-perfect family and the next hell on earth?!
i'm not sure what, but something was missing for me.

so is anyone still interested in this book club? what about the next book? shouldn't we decide on one soon?

 

[Islandili]

I am.
I'm in for the next book, I had to skip this one because of school.
So what would you guys like to read?

 

[NakedIfIWantTo]

Has everyone already read Lost Horizon by James Hilton?