September and October Book Club

I realized that I needed to get caught up on the last two book club books.

For September's Book Club meeting we read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

This book is super popular at the moment and has something like 1100 holds on it at the Johnson County Library.  Gone Girl is the story of a woman who goes missing in what seems to be either a murder or a kidnapping.  The book is written where the chapters trade off between diary entries of the missing woman and the perspective of her husband.   Even though the majority of my book club enjoyed this book a lot, this was the only book that I wasn't able to finish.  The story was definitely very interesting and creative, but the writing style bothered me as well as the language and sex.  There is supposedly a movie in the works which I would be interested in seeing, though.

For October, we decided to go a bit more classic and read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Fahrenheit 451 has a soft spot in my heart because it's one of the first books that I taught as a student teacher back at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, IL (home of Wayne's World).  This is a futuristic story of a society that has outgrown and banned books.  The novel follows Guy Montag whose job is a fireman, meaning he burns down houses where the owners have been hiding books.  He eventually starts to question things and attempts to change the status quo. Discussing this book brought us back to a question that we seem to ask over and over again: How is technology changing our world and the world of our children? And is it a good thing or a bad thing?

This last book club marked our 12th book:

Fahrenheit 451

Gone Girl

The Paris Wife

Room

The Glass Castle

The Handmaid's Tale

Hunger Games

Omnivore's Dilemma 

The Forgotten Waltz

The Joy Luck Club

The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian

The Book Thief

One year of Book Club!  Yippee! Next month's book is Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen.