OutReaders:2020-04
4/18/20 2-4 pm
Met online via Google Meet
The Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish
Robert Allen was the coordinator. 7 people attended.
We went over these items:
- Using Google Meet for the first time. (It worked out well, had good connections and everyone could use audio and video.)
- The book for May is Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
- Voting for the June book will be a little different than usual. Instead of deciding during today’s meeting, I will post a Survey Monkey on the Facebook group.
Book discussion recap:
This was our first high fantasy book. Some people like the genre, others not as much.
It was a long book (500 pages) and a bit of a slog. Only one person finished the book. The length had a lot to do with it, but interest in the book did too. Some felt that it could have been compressed into fewer pages.
The author did a lot of world-building -- histories, backgrounds, religions, etc. Some people like this, some don’t. But the world-building came in “info dumps” -- a lot of thrown at the reader at once. It would have been better if we had learned the history as the characters learned it.
The relationship between the male and female lead characters was a bit obvious and predictable. It didn’t seem particularly mature, more like a frat boy/frat girl relationship.
The characters are complex -- no one was particularly good nor particularly evil. They try to do good things but are flawed too.
The main character tortures himself a lot. He is filled with self-doubt and spends much of the book inside his head with his thoughts. Although this does help us understand him more, some of these parts could have been condensed.
Because only one person finished the book, we could not talk about the ending.
June Book Nominations (winner in boldface):
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - Robert
- Hild by Nicola Griffith - Wendy
- The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin - Leah
- Carry On by Rainbow Rowell- Brad
- A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky chambers - Brad
