Book Club//When You Reach Me

­­­­Welcome to this month’s edition of Book Club with YA Bookologists. This is a feature where I talk about what the book club I attend discussed. I do this to perhaps share new insight into popular books that you might’ve read before.  Recently we read When You Reach Me by Rebeca Stead. Here are some of the points we came up with. SPOILER ALERT

•  The lack of defining time travel was very frustrating as we have no explanation for how the essence of the book works. This is distracting from the main focus of the book which are relationships.
• The homeless man (old Marcus) should not have to die in the end because of all the others way possible to save someone from a truck. The ending of the book was rather sudden with no real closing for Marcus.
• The romance in this book was disastrous. Simply perplexing. Miranda and Collin have short, snippets of kissing and followed by several, longer paragraphs of being friends. Without the romance When You Reach Me still would’ve been completely realistic.
• New York City in this book was very realistic. The description a setting of only a few square blocks resonated with many of us in the book club. There were details about which places to avoid, bad landlords, and tips on how to live in the city all really brought the setting alive. 

Book Club//December: A Christmas Carol

Another really cool week passed with book club where we read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Basically the story centers around Ebeneezer Scrooge haunted by his old business partner and ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Some of the off topic things we discussed [WARNING SPOILERS]:

• A character change as dramatic as Scrooge's is often for the worse, and is often not something that keeps for the rest of their life. However, life changing models like this sometimes have profound impacts.
• The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future are a lot more creepy than we would actually think. The lockboxes on Marley were nice touch of symbolism.
• Tiny Tim isn't as central a figure as we thought he was going to be (thank you to the Disney movie).

Book club was really fund because we also got to watch the movie of it later at a friend's house. There was pizza, blankets, and cinnamon rolls. Overall just a fun atmosphere.

//Amelia

Book Club: Moon Over Manifest

The big news: my school has an 8th grade book club. How cool is this?! I was dead excited that we get to talk about books over lunch once Friday a month with some great muffins. The past month we read Moon Over Manifest.

One of the downsides of blogging is that you hardly ever, if ever, get to have a live discussion about a book. What I love about our book discussion is that we got to talk with my friends over a YA book in a facilitated discussion.

SPOILER ALERT for Moon Over Manifest

Some Points We Came Up With

• The three story lines of Moon Over Manifest (Abilene, Ned and Jinx's letters, Hattie Mae's newspaper column all enriched the story and without it the book would have been dreadfully boring.
• The background characters were not fully integrated into the story meaning that you would not remember them. When reading the book the characters seemed rather fluid and not entirely concrete.
• Shady was the ideal criminal for Abilene. He showed that even if one had done committed a crime of bootlegging a criminal could still love. Shady didn't become his crime, but rather he was a person.
• The Newberry Medal changes some people as writers. It is about finding a unique children's book, yet it is chosen by a bunch of adults.

The Book Club: Graceling

The big news: my school has an 8^th grade book club. How cool is this?! I was dead excited that we get to talk about books over lunch once Friday a month with some great muffins. The past month we read Graceling. The book choice disappointed me a bit since I had previously read the book and detested it.

One of the downsides of blogging is that you hardly ever, if ever, get to have a live discussion about a book. What I love about our book discussion is that we got to talk with my friends over a YA book in a facilitated discussion.

SPOILER ALERT for Graceling

Some points we came up for after all reading Graceling

•          The characters are pretty shallow, but may be developed better throughout the series. You can tell because it is very simple to predict Katsa and Po’s reactions. There was also the classic romance formula of “boy loves; girl has resistance or anger, but gives in at the end.”

•          Romance didn’t exactly help the book, but without there would be no plot otherwise. The romance was also a bit rushed for the fact they had sex the first they kissed.

•          The idea and setting were very original in terms of high fantasy.  Yet, we almost always see jealous kings and several kingdoms.

•          We all wanted to be graced though. I was, of course, the only person grace with killing, though according to the quiz in the book you could be grace with relationship, intellect, fighting, and calming.

•          Bitterblue would’ve been a complex character to know with her trauma and recent events. Without the influence of Katsa and Po we could’ve seen a little more of the girl, and what it was like to save her. (There is a companion book called Bitterblue)