Thank you very much to everyone who came to last night's Christmas meeting; Oryx and Crake was a popular choice that provoked much discussion, and the food wasn't bad either.
In honour of our five year anniversary (our very first meeting was on December 13th 2006 in Warnham), I am listing the 56 books that the South Down Bookworms have read and discussed in that time:
Andrea Levy Small Island
Audrey Niffenegger The Time Traveller’s Wife
Louis de Bernieres Birds Without Wings
Sebastian Faulks Birdsong
Beloved by Tony Morrison
Vanishing Acts Jodi Picoult
Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Interpretation of Murder by J Rubenfeld
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Stasiland by Anna Funder
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka
Life of Pi by Yann Martell
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway
The Savage Garden by Mark Mills
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Tell it to the Skies by Erica James
Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
The Island by Victoria Hislop
The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Steierstad
Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunnant
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
The Corner of her Eye by Dean Kroontz
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Suite Francais by Irene Nerimovsky
Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
Belle de Jour – Secret diary of a London call girl
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Tales of Beadle the Bard by JK Rowling/The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Blood River by Tim Butcher
Wedlock by Wendy Moore
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffinegger
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
The Sea by John Banville
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Saturday 17 December 2011
Thursday 15 December 2011
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The South Down Bookworms' Christmas meeting this year takes place in Billingshurst on December 16th 2011. It also coincides with the fifth anniversary of our first meeting! Please find discussion questions below:
1.Science-fiction, or ‘speculative-fiction’ as Atwood terms her own work, often works best when it is a plausible fictional world that has been created. How plausible is the world of Oryx and Crake?
2.How effective and/or reliable a narrator is the Snowman? Is the nickname he gives himself justified? And how successful is the narrative structure of the novel?
3.One aspect of the novel's society is the virtual elimination of the middle class. How is this situation created? Where would we find ourselves in the world of Oryx and Crake?
4.Discuss the importance of Jimmy’s mother within the context of the novel as a whole.
5.Snowman soon discovers that despite himself he's invented a new creation myth, simply by trying to think up comforting answers to the "why" questions of the Children of Crake. In Part Seven-the chapter entitled "Purring"-Crake claims that "God is a cluster of neurons," though he's had trouble eradicating religious experiences without producing zombies. Do you agree with Crake? How do Snowman's origin stories reflect on spirituality and the way it evolves among various cultures?
6.Do you always believe what Oryx says?
7.Why does Snowman feel compelled to protect the benign Crakers, who can't understand him and can never be his close friends? Do you believe that the Crakers would be capable of survival in our own society?
8.In the world of Oryx and Crake, almost everything is for sale, and a great deal of power is now in the hands of large corporations and their private security forces. There are already more private police in North America than there are public ones. What are the advantages of such a system? What are the dangers?
9.The pre-contagion society in Oryx and Crake is fixated on physical perfection and longevity, much as our own society is. Will these quests lead to the inevitable downfall of our own society? Does the novel provide any answers or alternatives?
10.Is there a feminist slant to this novel?
11.In what ways does the dystopia of Oryx and Crake compare to those depicted in novels such as Brave New World, and 1984, and in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale?
12.The book has two epigraphs, one from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and one from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Why do you think these were chosen?
13.What did you think of the ending? What interpretations might it offer?
1.Science-fiction, or ‘speculative-fiction’ as Atwood terms her own work, often works best when it is a plausible fictional world that has been created. How plausible is the world of Oryx and Crake?
2.How effective and/or reliable a narrator is the Snowman? Is the nickname he gives himself justified? And how successful is the narrative structure of the novel?
3.One aspect of the novel's society is the virtual elimination of the middle class. How is this situation created? Where would we find ourselves in the world of Oryx and Crake?
4.Discuss the importance of Jimmy’s mother within the context of the novel as a whole.
5.Snowman soon discovers that despite himself he's invented a new creation myth, simply by trying to think up comforting answers to the "why" questions of the Children of Crake. In Part Seven-the chapter entitled "Purring"-Crake claims that "God is a cluster of neurons," though he's had trouble eradicating religious experiences without producing zombies. Do you agree with Crake? How do Snowman's origin stories reflect on spirituality and the way it evolves among various cultures?
6.Do you always believe what Oryx says?
7.Why does Snowman feel compelled to protect the benign Crakers, who can't understand him and can never be his close friends? Do you believe that the Crakers would be capable of survival in our own society?
8.In the world of Oryx and Crake, almost everything is for sale, and a great deal of power is now in the hands of large corporations and their private security forces. There are already more private police in North America than there are public ones. What are the advantages of such a system? What are the dangers?
9.The pre-contagion society in Oryx and Crake is fixated on physical perfection and longevity, much as our own society is. Will these quests lead to the inevitable downfall of our own society? Does the novel provide any answers or alternatives?
10.Is there a feminist slant to this novel?
11.In what ways does the dystopia of Oryx and Crake compare to those depicted in novels such as Brave New World, and 1984, and in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale?
12.The book has two epigraphs, one from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and one from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Why do you think these were chosen?
13.What did you think of the ending? What interpretations might it offer?
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