another great selection

I'm almost 100 pages into Wisdom of Whores already - it's excellent. Great recommendation, Pat! What she discusses is fascinating - particularly the warts of international bureaucracies like the UN and the less admirable sides of NGOs. I like her writing style, too - down to earth, not stuffy or dry.

Animal Dreams - themes & quotes I found provocative

page numbers are from the Harper Perennial paperback edition

Memory; truth, interpretation (and reinterpretation) of the past.

• Blurring photographs
• Inability to remember her childhood
• memory: Doc Home losing his, Codi regaining hers
• 294 “They don't want to see a Nolina when they look at me. They want a man they can trust with their children's ear infections. And I am that man. If you change the present enough, history will bend to accommodate it.” “No, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. What's true is true, no matter how many ways you deny it.”
• 303 My whole childhood. Most of it I had no idea was there. And most of it's happy. But Loyd, it's like the tape broke when I was fifteen, and my life started over then. The life I'd been living before that was so different - I don't know how to say this but I just couldn't touch that happiness anymore, I'd changed so much. That was some other little bright-eyed, righteous girl parading around trying to rescue drowning coyotes and save chickens from the stewpot. A dumb little kid who though thee sun had a smiley face on it.
• 336 I remembered every toy, every birthday party, each one of these fifty mothers who'd been standing at the edges of my childhood, ready to make whatever contribution was needed at the time.

Relationships, love and loss

• Loss of her child as a turning point
• Codi’s afraid to lose things that she cares about, so she tries not to care about them: "I almost think I could go to Denver. Carlo is safe because I don't really love him that much. If he stopped wanting me around one day, it wouldn't be so terrible. I wouldn't die." (206)
• I'd marked myself early on as a bad risk, undeserving of love and incapable of benevolence. It wasn't because of a bad grade on a report card, as she'd supposed. It ran deeper than that. I'd lost what there was to lose: first my mother and then my baby. Nothing you love will stay. Hallie could call that attitude a crutch, but she didn’t know, she hadn't loved and lost so deeply. (240)
• 243 I wasn't keeping to any road, I was running, forgetting what lay behind and always looking ahead for the perfect home, where trains never wrecked and hearts never broke, where no on you loved ever died. Loyd was a trap I could still walk out of.
• 303 “Codi, for everyone that's gone away, there's somebody that's come to you.” “you can't replace people you love with other people. They're not like old shoes or something.” “No. but you can trust that you're not going to run out of people to love.”
• 334Truly, I think they would have listened to me all day. It occurred to me that such patience might be the better part of love.
• 345 He understands for the first time in his life that love weighs nothing. Oh God, his girls are as light as birds.
• When Codi is talking to her father him she calls him "Pop", but when she's talking to anyone else she calls him Doc Homer.

community, acceptance, belonging, fitting in

• "I'm still that girl, flattered to death if somebody wants me around" (206)
• I think these are inaccurate self-assessments on Codi’s part: "I was suddenly disgusted with what I was doing. I'd go anywhere Carlo wanted, I'd be a sport for my students in Grace, I'd even tried to be a doctor for Doc Homer, just as I'd humiliated myself in the old days to get invited to birthday parties. If I kept trying to be what everybody wanted, I'd soon be insipid enough to fit in everywhere." (207).
• 243 It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to go looking for it somewhere else.
• 304 I could still feel a small, hard knot of anger and I held on to it. It was my wings. My exit to safety.

Motivation, orientation, hope

• 231 It's not some perfect ideal we're working toward that keeps us going...What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?" I didn’t look down from some high rock and choose cotton fields in Nicaragua. These cotton fields chose me.
• 231 I was getting a dim comprehension of the difference between Hallie and me. It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but of something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.
• 243 The thought of Hallie's last letter still stung me but I tried to think abstractly about what she wanted to tell me: about keeping on the road because you know how to drive. That morality is not a large, constructed thing you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands.
• 305 The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides. I can't tell you how good it feels. I wish you knew. I wish you'd stop beating yourself up for being selfish, and really BE selfish, Codi. You're like a mother or something. I wish you knew how to squander yourself.
• 344 “Hallie was a protagonist of history.” “She wanted to save the world.” “No, Pop, that's not true. She wanted to save herself. Just like we all do.” “Save herself from what?” “From despair. From the feeling of being useless. I've about decided that the main thing that separates happy people form the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or socket wrench”
• 344 He thinks people's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
• 334 You have to learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist of history rather than a spectator.

background info & discussion questions for Animal Dreams

Kingsolver on Animal Dreams:
"Animal Dreams was the first novel I wrote on purpose, so it's more calculated thematically than The Bean Trees. The question I began with was this: why do some people engage with the world and its problems, while others turn their backs on it? And why is it that these two sorts of people often occur even in the same family? I'm very curious about this because I'm a human rights activist myself. So I invented two sisters with apparently opposite personalities, and then I invested them with a family and began to work backwards to find the point in their shared history that would have pushed them into opposite directions."


Discussion Questions:

http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=5311&isbn13=9780060921149&displayType=readingGuide

1. Why are Hallie and Codi different? What happened that caused them to take such different life paths? How and why does Codi change? Why does she become more engaged with the world?
2. One theme of the novel is the relationship between humans and the natural world. What does the novel have to say about the difference between Native American and Anglo American culture in relation to nature? How do creation stories, such as the Pueblo creation legend and the Garden of Eden story, continue to influence culture and behavior?
3. .How do you feel about Doc Homer? What kind of parent was he, and why? In what ways did his strange point of view serve as a vehicle for the novel's themes of memory, amnesia, and identity?

http://bookclub.meetup.com/422/messages/boards/thread/1795513

1. How would you characterize the relationship between Codi and the women of Grace since her return as an adult? How do you think the early loss of her mother affects these relationships?
2. Near the end of the book, what do you think made Codi decide not to leave Grace after all?
3. Do you agree with Loyd Peregrina's belief that animals and humans dream about whatever they do when they're awake? Why do you think the author chose Animal Dreams as the title?

Book Club Schedule

Book club discussions (as decided 6/28)

Sun 7/20 Animal Dreams

Sun 8/10 Wisdom of Whores

Sun 8/31 Oryx and Crake

Sun 9/21 Walk in the Woods

When are we discussing?

I've already forgotten...

Can we list the books we are going to be reading and when our projected discussion dates are for each one?

Very hard to put down indeed!

I found Animal Dreams very hard to put down and it was a pleasant distraction. I started reading it yesterday to avoid research deadlines and ended up finishing this morning...then totally cramming to get my write-up done minutes before it was do. The story was pretty compelling.

I was a bit skeptical about it at first and didn't think I would like it from summaries/reviews, but I found it pretty enjoyable. It sorta reminded me of a supermarket romance novel that I guiltily read once but was infinitely more well-written. I liked the character development and thought the message was worthwhile.

I look forward to discussing it with all of you!

Shila

Finished Novel 6/6

A few thoughts I'm jotting down before I forget everything I read:

I really liked the novel and definitely put aside other important things to read.

Codi's character bothered me. I know she was grappling with a lot of issues and was probably traumatized from being pregnant at 15, but I think she was really selfish. I was in love with Loyd, and she was so standoffish but seductive at the same time! She obviously didn't know what to do with herself, but all the moping and self-pity was irksome.

The interspersed commentary from Doc Homer was great. It was like this lens into the mind of someone losing his mind. The jumbledness, etc. was really enlightening.

**Teehee...I forgot to post this!

Hello everyone! I've already read Animal Dreams a couple of times. It isn't that common for me to re-read books anymore, so that is saying something. It seems like a very simple story though, and I'm not sure quite what about it drew me in so much. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts. I'm quite a fan of Barbara Kingsolver. My grandmother is always reading terrible murder mysteries or Mauve Binchy, and I managed to convince her to read some Kingsolver, (Pigs in Heaven I think), which she really enjoyed.

I've been in my post-school, reading for the sake of reading phase of things. This means I basically read as fast as I can just to be reading something, because my brain wants to be entertained all of the time. I just finished Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, which I really enjoyed. It's good escapism, because the book places you in such a different world and is wonderfully plot-driven.  I'm about to make the plunge into another book, and I haven't quite decided what. Does anyone have recommendations for California history? I need to educate myself a bit for my job I think.

I've been trying to think what times might be best for the gchat thing. I realistically probably can't do any time before 7pm on weekdays, which might be a bit late for East Coast people, but then weekends seem tricky because people might have commitments. I suppose we can just commit to a day on some weekend and make the effort to be there. Any thoughts?

Missing you all already...

Hard to put down...

I don't know how far you guys have gotten in the book, but I started it on the metro Monday morning. I'm one of those people who, when I like a book I drop (almost) everything and read! It's really a fantastic book, and I've been recommended to read Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Nicole Wires! I'll add that to my mile-long list. Hope everyone is faring (spelling?) well!

-R

Side Dabbling

My list includes:
- Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
- The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak