Welcome to the Douglas Fir Reading Circle:1  2006

During the current academic year we will be discussing the books below. For each title you will find a brief summary of the plot.

 

Your task is to create one (1) thoughtful, personalized and innovative question to one of the books that you read during first term, & then respond to one other posed by your classmates, using your Reading Response Journals as a guide. Both your questions and your responses should be thoughtful and demonstrate a close familiarity with the novel. The questions should challenge you to create interesting, analytical responses to the novel you are reading. Showing evidence of reflective thinking and connections to your experience in the wider world.

 

 Enjoy, Julia Beck

 

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Bertagna, Julie. Exodus 

 

"The waters are rising because of global warming and much of the world has sunk. The inhabitants of the island Wing are forced to escape and travel to the New World City, New Mungo. But problems arise when they get there and Mara Bell, the one who led them there has to search frantically for a way inside the vast city."

 

 

 

Blackman, Malorie. Noughts & Crosses/continued in Knife Edge  

"It is about Callum and Sephy who are desperate to be together, but can't because of the upside down world they live in which is run by the crosses. However, Callum is a nought and Sephy is cross. Callum is a caring, determined nought, while Sephy is cross who doesn't understand the world they live in because she has everything unlike Callum. The heartache in the story is from Callum's mum who has to see her whole family fade away. The Liberation Militia have to be blamed for it all."

 

 

Card, Orson, Scott. Ender's Game     

 

 

"In the future, the citizen's of Earth live in constant fear of the Buggers. The Buggers are aliens who have already attempted to invade the world twice, and the second time they were barely stopped. The International Fleet, or I.F., is racing against time to build a great enough army to turn back the inevitable third invasion. However, they realize that in order to win, they need a truly brilliant commander and they have taken to breeding military geniuses in order to find the perfect commander. They believe that they may have finally found this commander in Ender Wiggin. Ender is taken away to Battle School, where children are trained to be soldiers, where he does better than any student in history. He is smart and talented enough to save the Earth. But can he stop himself from turning in to the thing he hates the most: a cold-blooded killer?"

 

 

Buchan, John. The Thirty Nine Steps      

"In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), the best-known of his thrillers (made into a popular movie by Alfred Hitchcock), John Buchan introduces his most enduring hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an "ordinary fellow," is caught up in the dramatic and dangerous race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. In this, the only critical edition available, Christopher Harvie's introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spy-master and propaganda chief."

 

Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With the Pearl Earring    

 

 

"Set in 17th-century Delft, this historical novel intertwines the art of Johannes Vermeer with his life and that of a maid servant in his household. From the few facts known about the artist, Chevalier creates the reality of the Netherlands. The parallel themes of tradesman/artist, Protestant/Catholic, and master/servant are intricately woven into the fabric of the tale. The painters of the day spent long hours in the studio, devising and painting re-creations of everyday life. The thrust of the story is seen through the eyes of Griet, the daughter of a Delft tile maker who lost his sight and, with it, the ability to support his family. Griet's fate is to be hired out as a servant to the Vermeer household. She has a wonderful sense of color, composition, and orderliness that the painter Vermeer recognizes. And, slowly, Vermeer entrusts much of the labor of creating the colored paints to Griet."

 

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

 

1. Peering into 17th century Delft shows a small, self-sufficient city. Where do you think the many-pointed star at the city's center pointed toward? What was happening elsewhere at that time?

 

 2. In many ways, the primary relationship in this novel appears to be between Griet and Vermeer. Do you think this is true? How do you feel about Vermeer's relationship with his wife? How does that come into play?

 

 3. Do you think Griet was typical of other girls her age? In what ways? How did she differ?

 

[Posted by J.Beck]

 

 

Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

"This novel, written in 1927, is considered the best and most successful of the early mysteries. It met with no small outrage when it appeared, as it uses a plot device many readers thought "unfair." There is a full complement of characters populating the cozy English village of King's Abbot: Major Blunt, Colonel Carter, Miss Gannett, the butler, the housekeeper, the narrator, Dr. Sheppard, and his know-it-all sister (the precursor of Miss Marple, according to Christie), and, of course, the redoubtable Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells. There are clues with a capital C to mislead us, and the listener gets so involved with these red herrings (or not) that the very simple truth eludes the puzzler. "

 

 

 

 

Clarke, Arthur. Childhood's End

"Childhood's End was first published in 1953, a time when the cold war was in full form and people were beginning to truly look towards the stars for other life and possibilities for exploration. "Childhood's End" tapped into that fertile imagination to craft a story of profound scale and meaning. It begins one day when numerous spaceships suddenly appear in the sky above Earth. They are flown by an alien species referred to as the Overlords. The purpose of their journey to third planet of the Solar System is subject to much speculation and fear. These aliens seem to be a benevolent race that only wants to help humanity solve the problems that plague it. In fifty years, these Overlords will end ignorance, poverty, war, and disease. To what end do they do this, though? The absence of any obstacles and struggles renders humanity complacent and inert. Is this designed to make Earth pliable for invasion, or is there a greater, more benevolent purpose behind these actions by the Overlords?"

 

 

 

 

Farmer, Nancy. The House of Scorpion

"A scientist brings to life one of 36 tiny cells, frozen more than 100 years ago. The result is the protagonist at the novel's center, Matt a clone of El Patron, a powerful drug lord, born Matteo Alacr n to a poor family in a small village in Mexico. El Patro n is ruler of Opium, a country that lies between the United States and Aztl n, formerly Mexico; its vast poppy fields are tended by eejits, human beings who attempted to flee Aztl n, programmed by a computer chip implanted in their brains."

 

 

Haddon, Mark.  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

"Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested."

 

 

 

 

Monk Kidd, Sue. The Secret Life of Bees

"In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest."

 

Marsden, John. Tomorrow When the War Began    

 

"Australian teenager Ellie and six of her friends return from a winter break camping trip to find their homes burned or deserted, their families imprisoned, and their country occupied by a foreign military force in league with a band of disaffected Australians. As their shock wears off, the seven decide they must stick together if they are to survive. After a life-threatening skirmish with the occupiers, the teens retreat to their isolated campsite in the bush country and make plans to fight a guerilla war against the invaders."

 

 

Satrapi, Marjan. Persepolis

 

 

"Marji tells of her life in Iran from the age of 10, when the Islamic revolution of 1979 reintroduced a religious state, through the age of 14 when the Iran-Iraq war forced her parents to send her to Europe for safety. This story, told in graphic format with simple, but expressive, black-and-white illustrations, combines the normal rebelliousness of an intelligent adolescent with the horrors of war and totalitarianism."

 

Sutcliff, Rosemary. Eagle of the Ninth  

    

"Is the first in a bestselling series concerning ancient Rome by Rosemary Sutcliff, the famous and award-winning author of many historial novels and re-tellings of ancient myths. In the prologue of this novel Sutcliff tells her inspiration for this novel - the mysterious disappearance of the Ninth Legion who marched north to deal with the Caledonian tribes in 117 AD and were never heard of again, and the remains of a wingless Roman Eagle that was uncovered in modern times at an excavation at Silchester. The Eagles of Roman Legions were of up most importance to the soldiers within them, as the eagle symbolised their strength, their union and Rome itself. In the wrong hands it could spell disgrace or loss of moral should it ever be marched against Rome. For this reason Romans went to great lengths to protect the Eagle, even at the cost of their lives, and often an 'eagle-bearer' would march with the troops in order to protect and care for the precious token."

 

Wiesel, Elie. Night

"Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died."

 

 

Source of cover art: http://www.amazon.com