Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I have to say, I HATE the cover of mine (second picture) and the last one with those ghastly white outfits...

Appropriately, The REAL Book Club (sadly sans Nat and Tim) met to discuss Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger's second novel after the Time Traveller's Wife, in the book-filled Library Bar near the viaduct. I didn’t take any notes so I can only remember in part what we all thought of it but I’ll give it a go... I think the general consensus was: a good enough, page-turning read that most of us fairly whizzed through but it *was* slightly disturbing and once they begin to plan Valentina’s staged death it all gets a little bit much. Niffenegger does a good job of making the whole ghost thing seem very believable but this was a step too far (and quite a large step at that)! I think mainly we all thought: surely there is an easier/safer/less dramatic way to break out on your own and live your own life away from your twin?! It just didn’t quite seem plausible. I don’t think we especially liked any of the characters either, apart from Martin & Marikje (sp?) which was a very sweet side story. And we though Elspeth probably planned all along to take over Valentina’s body... evil woman.

Our UK correspondent Tim added: " I liked Her Fearful all the way up until the end (I thought the end was a little weak). I agree, she didn't portray the bossy twin as bossy enough to make me believe that death would be the only way out. AND of course Elspeth knew all along that V would be too weak to take the body straight away. It took her weeks to be able to influence dust! As far as ghost stories go though, I liked it :)"

Ooh and of course, I just clicked, I think the title is a reference to a line from William Blake's poem "The Tyger":

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


Though not entirely sure of the exact connection, other than the general twin-ness which leads to rather fearful consequences...


Next book is: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - a nice (yet entirely serendipitous) segue from Her Fearful Symmetry as apparently Stella Gibbons is buried in Highgate Cemetery...  Actually we chose it coz it’s supposed to be funny and we felt that was sorely needed (and it’s on that 100 books list Nat!). I’m very excited, been meaning to read this for awhile. She was quite a prolific author and popular in her day but only Cold Comfort Farm (published in 1932) really seems to have been remembered, her other novels went out of print for a long time I think, though some have recently been republished. It’s funny, I can’t stomach a lot of chick lit from nowadays but I’ve developed a penchant for what is, I guess, ‘vintage’ chick lit ;-) (you could probably put Jane Austen in that category! FYI there are references to Persuasion in it too...).

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

This was another well liked and not liked book. There was a general good feeling about Oryx and Crake, with most of us preferring either the Jimmy or the Snowman story line, and kind of skimming the other bit a little. To be honest the Jimmy bit reminded me of the homo-erotic Frodo and Sam scenes from The Two Towers a little. Actually quite a bit. Everyone else, however, liked the Jimmy part, and especially wanted to know more about Oryx. There was a general consensus that she was very easy to read and had a good style that we all liked.

As usual, I didn't write down everything we talked about. While we really didn't come up with any profound revelations, we did come up with some ripper questions:

• Why did Crake do it?
• Did Crake base all the BlyssPluss effects on his jealousy of Jimmy?
• Is it really Oryx in Jimmy's picture? Or does he just wish it was her?
• What makes humans human? Especially giving reference to the Crakers, even though they had genes from cats, baboons, birds, were they still human? They don't love/hate/lust/envy/crave/pride/greed/sloth/wrath/gluttony, so how can they be human?

There was one thing we all agreed on (nearly all *cough* PIA! *cough*): The ending was stupid. 

Reminiscent of a wave of pretentious try-hard movies in the late 90's, it just... ends.

I should probably point out that the ending is apparently vindicated by the sequel. That's right, SEQUEL. Personally I think that's no excuse, but it does make me desperate to read The Year of the Flood.

Next month: we are reading Their Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. As Nat and I are probably going to the UK shortly after the next scheduled meeting (which is scheduled for the 1st of September, but that's only 3 weeks), we thought we should try to have dinner somewhere sometime. We'll sort it out over email though.

AND, EXTRA FOR EXPERTS! EXTRA FOR EXPERTS!

Read and or watch My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (see below for your teams).

Also, because y'all don't know what Rule 34 is, try this.

They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople) from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

Same-same But Different by Clive Cussler

July, 2011

Dick Lit. Jess the Younger insisted we read at least one Dick Lit book and in an inspired moment of brilliance suggested we should all read a different Clive Cussler novel we can then compare to see how similar they are. It turns out we all had different Cussler books and they were essentially all same-same but different. Collectively we covered 7 Dirk Pitt and 1 Issac Bell novels. About 3 of us didn't finish, either because they couldn't bring themselves to start, or because they couldn't bring themselves to finish! Actually I think Clive has secured his spot at the bottom of the collective favouritism list for this book club...

The basic structure, we summarised, goes like this:

• Start with a lengthy prologue involving some kind of accident involving a vehicle crash, wreck, sabotage etc. usually in the past.
• Introduce the main characters, either starting or ending with the hero.
• Ensure all women are drop-deap gorgeous, and spend several paragraphs at various stages highlighting how extraordinarily beautiful they are.
• At some stage, the hero has sex with the amazingly gorgeous woman.
• Throw in a plot twist. This can be unexpected, but only if you're in the mood.
• Hero saves the day.
• The end.

As always, feel free to chastise me if I have grossly misrepresented the groups feelings here!

NEXT MONTH: We are compensating for our literary sins by reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

The BFG by Roald Dahl

June, 2011

• June's book was The BFG by Roald Dahl, and as promised I went low tech on the minutes so I wouldn't lose the juice. Turns out that was a good thing as Jess The Younger and Pia were notably absent. Some lame excuse about flu or something... The first ten minutes was spent admiring my scar and hearing Elder Jess talk about how awesome I am!
• Down to business: The BFG was enjoyed by all of us, in fact it was the target of the most collective enjoyment so far. It was chosen because Anna said she wanted to read a children's book as an adult and think about the things you remembered from reading it as a kid and also the things you didn't pick up on until you were a growed-up. Some of this things came up:

1. Dahl is influenced by his time as a pilot and paints them in the same light as pilots the world over still paint themselves, "He was very proud of his moustache. He was also quite fearless and he loved adventure."
2. We were quite surprised at the depth of some of the themes in the book, including, but not limited to, vegetarianism, "That is what the little piggy-wig is saying every day." And war, "Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind." (Not strictly true, but we all know what he meant.)

• Next we talked about how there is so much more to Roald Dahl than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the world needs to realise this fact! One thing we all loved about Dahl's books is the importance of language - there is always something other than strictly English in there, the made up words, onomatopoeia in a way (no doubt the various English majors will correct me). If you had to decide which of these two words was preferable to the other, which would you chose: winksquiffler or trogglehumper - It may seem a tough choice at first, but if you think about it I would rather have my wink squiffled than my troggle humped, any day.
• For some reason I wrote in the margin of my notes the words, "Almost like being brain washed" so whom ever's idea that was, please remind me why?!
• As always, please leave comments below to fill in the bits that I have missed! (It's like having blank pages in the back of your atlas!)

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sallinger

May, 2011

• Unfortunately I didn’t save what I was typing on my iPhone last week, so these are largely from memory. Next time I’m going low-tech (you can’t delete a piece of paper...)
• Catcher in the Rye – Universally loved and hated! Holden is an archetypal depressed teen, but fundamentally a nice kind of guy. No-one really liked him, but rather felt sorry for him. Of the several interesting things we talked about the one or two that stand out were
• The red hunting hat, being symbolic of how he sees himself in his role as the catcher, and found it interesting that he gave it to his little sister who ended up ‘catching’ him...
• The other thing was the damn ducks, and what they symbolise. We had various theories, but seriously for the life of me I can’t remember! Please post comments to kick me in the pants!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

April, 2011

• We read and discussed Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) - we liked it (well we think we did...). There were definitely aspects of the writing style in particular that we all found frustrating - the banal acceptance the characters have of their fate, the lack of empathy extracting scenes...
• We didn't really get on to the QUESTION of whether we think they do actually have 'souls' based on the evidence/suggestions in the book... for me it hinges on the definition of soul...
• More importantly, we followed it up by watching the movie, thus completing an official "Book-Movie". I guess the majority of the group liked the book better, but there were some definite movie preferences. For example, how the movie actually made you get a little emotional, whereas the book purposefully seemed to avoid being emotional, as if to make a point.
• And who can forget, Keira Knightly! We ALL love her. Every one of us.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

March 2011

• Persuasion was unanimously enjoyed and despised. Except for Andrew, who just didn’t really like it.
• The best movie version was agreed to be the ITV version, with the HHHot (that's hot with three capital Hs Captain Wentworth, RN.
• Book-Movie vs Movie-Book. The teams are out! There is totally no pressure, but if you get a chance watch-read or read-watch the book-movie My Sister's Keeper. Then, when everyone has watched and read it, we can compare.
• Book-Movie: Nat. Anna. Christine. Lynnette.
• Movie-Book: Tim, The Jesses, Pia.