Sorry everyone! It’s been such a hectic month. The end of the school year, the beginning of summer … and lots of reading. I think I’ve been on a reading binge & I’ll try to profile some of the great books I’ve read over the past few weeks.
In the A.M. group discussion of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, we talked about how easy it is to look at this novel and apply our “modern” perspective to events from 1964 and judge David harshly. Did the culture of the time play a role in his decision? We never really resolved any of this – but we had a good discussion.
I had the opportunity to hear M. T. Anderson speak at the 2007 Printz Awards on Monday evening. He accepted a Printz Honor award for his book The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. In his acceptance speech, he talked about how we have a tendency to look back at events in history and say “I would never do that” when we can’t really say what we would have done. When I find a copy of his speech online, I’ll post a link because it was incredibly powerful.
The P.M. group read The Glass Castle. The discussion for this book was both lively and thought provoking. It is always amazing to me that 20 people can share a book and have such different interpretations. When I first read this book, I kept thinking that these parents really loved their children but were just ignorant or didn’t take care of them the right way. I thought that maybe love wasn’t enough. One thread of the discussion centered on this. One member disagreed with the idea that Jeannette’s parents loved their children. She insisted that their behavior was not love. Very interesting discussion.
