Rachel’s Comments (group member since Aug 31, 2015)

Rachel’s comments from the Operation Book Club group.

Posting this now because I'm going out of town this weekend and will inevitably forget. Discussion day for All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld is on Sunday, October 8 - see you there!

Verena wrote: "Would the setting be more believable for you if it were set in, say, another century in the future?"

Definitely! A huge factor which impeded my ability to suspend my disbelief (which is admittedly something I struggle with quite a lot, and why I don't read a whole lot of fantasy) was the quick timeline. I think if El Akkad had presented just a few elements of this society and posited that this was 75 years into the future I might have been able to buy it, but that really isn't a very long time at all, and the America of his narrative was just completely unrecognizable to me.

I'm definitely not going to pretend I'm an American Civil War expert, but I thought this review did a really good job at explaining the parallels with the ACW and why it felt odd that race wasn't addressed more by this narrative.

The exclusion of technology struck me as odd as well! I was picturing the Chestnuts living in their little house with no electricity, but then when they were at Camp Patience and they mentioned some people had televisions and tablets I was like..... 'wait, what?!?!?'

Anyway, thanks for your perspective, Verena, I do see where you're coming from. I think it's cool that we have opinions all across the board here.

Hey guys! Apologies that this will probably be brief, I'm on vacation and typing this on my phone.

I wanted to love this book, but I really struggled with it. I felt like the world building appears more clever at a glance than it is when you dig deeper. It left me with A LOT of questions, namely: (1) how does one region of the US continue the use of fossil fuels in a global economy? (2) how did the Mexican annexation come about? (3) how did the Middle East come together to form a republic in the span of 50 years? If anyone has any ideas about any of these, I'd love to hear them.

I also wasn't sure what to think about true fact that El Akkad constructed a post-racial society when there's nothing in our current American social climate that suggests that we are moving in that direction. I didn't like that he drew so much from the first American Civil War but ignored race and the question of slavery in his narrative.

I didn't think the inclusion of 'historical' documents was done well at all. I had to skim those sections if I wanted to keep my reading momentum up.

I'm glad you had a better experience with it, Verena! And I do agree with a lot of the points you make, especially regarding the ending. I was really hoping for something that would be powerful and hard hitting, but it left me for the most part either bored or frustrated or both.

Hey guys! Discussion day for American War by Omar El Akkad is going to be on Sunday, September 3. We hope to see you there! Happy reading!

operation book club is back in action!

… after our unplanned 2 month hiatus. sorry about that!!!

and we’re going back to the basics. if you were with us in the beginning you’ll remember our book selection process, and that’s what we’re going to be doing again.

if you weren’t with us then, to recap: if there’s a book you think would make a good book club read, submit the title and author to our Tumblr ask box (http://operationbookclub.tumblr.com/ask). you can submit as many titles as you want (try to keep it reasonable, i guess anywhere from 3-7 would be great), with the following criteria:

- all genres accepted!
- just try to stay away from really obvious choices. e.g., for classics: to kill a mockingbird, pride & prejudice. for YA: the hunger games, the fault in our stars. basically skip the ones you think everyone has read by now. get creative! but also, not so creative that the book is impossible to find.
- try to keep it 500 pages or less
- that’s it really

please submit your suggestions by july 15. after that, the mods will compile a list of everyone’s suggestions with a brief summary, and you all will vote for which one you most want to read. we will be doing one book a month for the time being. we’ll also try to rotate genres, i.e., if a historical fiction book wins for august, then for september we’ll make sure a historical fiction book doesn’t get selected again, etc.

we are also starting from scratch, so we won’t be using the old google doc that we used to have. if you had a suggestion on there that you’d like to submit again, go for it!

thanks & enjoy! we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Sorry I'm late, it's been a busy couple of days. But I loved this play! I was fascinated by the group psychology dynamic of it, as well as the way Rose was able to build and maintain tension, as Chelsea said. I was on the edge of my seat reading it. The confrontation at the end of act 1 culminating in "you don't really mean you'll kill me, do you?" was FANTASTIC, it was one of those moments where I can hear the vague sound that !!!!! makes in my head. I actually do read a lot of play scripts, which is always so hit or miss - sometimes you really need to see a play performed to get the full experience, but I thought this is one of those plays that can just as easily be read in order to get a lot out of it. Though I'd love to see it performed one day.

I also thought the lack of names made it a bit confusing at first, but I actually didn't go to the effort of flipping back and keeping track of who said what, I sort of just decided to power through, and by halfway through the first act I think I was able to keep track of everyone. (It probably helps that I have a good memory for numbers.)

While I was reading this I was thinking about whether or not it would be possible for modern productions of this play to incorporate women (apparently some do under the title 'Twelve Angry Jurors' - thanks for that tidbit, Chelsea) but I couldn't help but to feel like masculinity was actually a really prominent theme in this story. I'm not even sure if Rose intended for it to be - it's possible that as a male author he wasn't even thinking about going out of his way to portray stereotypically masculine behavior, but I just couldn't imagine women behaving with the same kind of performative aggression that the men in this story display.

I watched the film adaptation a few hours after I read it, and I was mostly really satisfied. It followed the original script very closely, though I agree with Chelsea about a certain lack of subtlety. While I think that in both the play and the film Juror 8 is clearly meant to be seen by the audience as the voice of reason, this is done maybe too overtly in the film. I also wasn't sure why at the end of the film they made a point of having Jurors 8 and 9 introduce themselves with their real names, it felt very beside the point, I think a lot of the power of the play is the fact that we don't know the jurors' names.

Hey guys! It's discussion day! Here's the discussion thread for Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose.

We also encouraged everyone to watch the film adaptation if you got a chance, so feel free to comment on that as well.

First of all: I'm sorry so many people had trouble getting their hands on this book! In the future I'll make a note of the publication date of any recently published books that are suggested in the poll, and ask everyone to keep in mind the book's availability while voting.

Anyway, this became one of my all-time favorite books when I was only a couple of chapters in. I loved every minute of it. Like you, Sharon, I didn't actually know very much about the Japanese annexation of Korea, but I found it fascinating. It made me really want to get my hands on some nonfiction about this subject. I thought Min Jin Lee did an exceptional job at weaving the historical context into the story - I learned a lot, but the story was never bogged down by historical detail. History and fiction complemented one another so nicely here.

I loved the characters in this book as well. Usually with multi-generational stories, what will happen is one character or one generation will emerge as the most interesting, but I thought the characters were well-developed all across the board here. I loved Sunja, I thought Hansu was a great, complex villain, I loved Isak and Noa and a ton of the minor characters as well.

Toward the end I started thinking about the significance of the title Pachinko, and came to some vague conclusion about it having to do with the Korean characters living their lives like pachinko balls: bandied about from place to place without much agency, in a machine of sorts manufactured by Japanese society. Does anyone have any thoughts on the title?

My biggest criticism about this book has to do with Haruki and his wife (sorry, I don't remember her name, I read this in February). I was intrigued by Haruki's character and I didn't think as much was done with him as it could have been, and then that whole plotline with his wife was just... oddly incongruous with the rest of the story, and we never really followed up on it, which seemed especially odd in this story where loose ends were mostly tied up so well.

Has anyone here read Steinbeck's East of Eden? I couldn't help but to notice a lot of similarities - aside from both being multi-generational family sagas set in the 20th century, they're both heavily focused on religious themes, and then there's the obvious parallel between Noa and Cal struggling with the question 'is it possible for me to be truly good when that's who I come from'. Anyway, I'm just curious if Min Jin Lee was influenced at all by Steinbeck's narrative, despite the very different historical backdrops.

Hey guys! Discussion day for Pachinko by Min Jin Lee was technically yesterday, but I don't think very many of us finished the book on time. I do apologize for posting this late though.

Anyway, feel free to discuss at your leisure! And if you haven't read the book I'd highly recommend doing so, because it's really fantastic.

Thanks guys!

Did you immediately assume everyone was guilty or innocent? Or a mix of both? Did any of the characters surprise you with what they did?

(again I watched the show first, but) I assumed it was a mix of both! ones like Tony and Lombard were obvious that they were guilty, but with Vera in particular, I was sure at first that she was innocent.

Did you think anyone did/did not deserve their fate?

I think one thing that's interesting about this book is how Wargrave equates death with justice. as someone who doesn't condone capital punishment, I don't think any of these characters deserved their fates. I think they all deserved to go to jail (maybe with the exception of Emily and MacArthur...? whose roles in the deaths were more abstract than the others...) but no matter how terrible their crimes, I wouldn't want to subject anyone to that kind of sadistic torture.

I was struck by the irony when Vera claimed that "She didn't want to die. She couldn't imagine wanting to die...Death was for - the other people." [72] ...and yet, she's the one who takes her own life in the end.

I love that observation! Vera's suicide is especially fascinating from a psychological perspective - obviously there was enough guilt weighing on her that it was always going to be a possibility, but like you said, Dawn, what if she hadn't done it? but then I also wonder if she had decided to live and tried to make it back to shore, wouldn't she have been hung anyway, as the presumed murderer of 9 people?

I think I read a review that pointed out something that bothered me while I was reading it: there is some classism when it come to Rogers.

that's a great point too, I also noticed that! they knew someone was murdering them but still had no problem telling Rogers to cook their food...? actually a lot of things they did made absolutely no sense to me, like continuing to split up as their numbers dwindled. but yes, I agree that class definitely played into the way they interacted with and dismissed Rogers.

(oh, and don't worry about being late!)

guys, I actually think Ashley cracked the da Vinci code with this one. we talked about this more at length last night, and I realized how much evidence there is to support a reading of the narrator being gay. this is all stuff Ashley noticed, by the way, not me, but these are a few observations that helped convince me: Joe Bell's bar is described as having a mirror that faces the street, which was a common feature of early 20th century gay bars; and early in the novel there's a throwaway line like 'if men don't like baseball and horses, they don't like women,' and later when 'Fred' is at Holly's apartment he's noticing that all of her books are about baseball and horses, and he's not interested in them. (the character also has the same birthday as Capote, so maybe we're meant to assume he's a stand-in for Capote?)

I just googled this and I'm seeing it mentioned in a fair few articles (x), (x), (x), (x)

this would definitely add a lot of depth to what I initially considered a pretty shallow story. since it's ultimately about the ability to invent and reinvent oneself, and I think a discussion about how that ties into sexuality in the 20th century is definitely more interesting than any other discussion this book provokes.

ohhhh that's such a good call comparing it to Dexter (which I could never really get into, but I've seen a bit of it) - I knew this discussion reminded me of something!

I guess in a historically set piece with mostly male main characters, I liked seeing a woman who remains mostly collected throughout the story

so we actually rewatched the BBC series this weekend, and one thing I LOVED about it was how vera's hysterical tendencies in the book were given to armstrong in the show - like armstrong being the one to have the hysterical fit after rogers' death. it's great that they decided not to play up the hysterical woman trope.

I actually liked the Vera/Lombard relationship, I'm usually not a fan of random heterosexual relationships being thrown into everything, but I think it worked for the characters and I loved the extra level of drama it added to Vera killing Lombard. though on second thought I would have been fine with Lombard/Blore or Armstrong/Blore being a thing - if they were really committed to doing Blore's backstory the way they did it could have been an internalized homophobia thing? or they could have just stuck to perjury. I'd have been fine with that.

in the show I really loved the reveal that Vera had purposefully murdered Cyril - this information was withheld for a fair amount of time in the book too but in the show it's this real OH MY GOD moment that makes you reevaluate everything you'd thought of her character until that point.

so all in all I really liked the show too! great performances, and Charles Dance in particular and the girl who played Vera were amazing. I do think it was a bit slow paced at times especially compared to the book which was so fast-paced, but they did well to get the atmosphere right.

that's super interesting about the movie! I've never seen it though I've heard it's very different from the book. it did surprise me after reading it that it's such a famous story - I never in a hundred years would have read that book and said 'I think we should make a movie out of this' - even a movie that's drastically different from the original.

and that's a great point about gender of the reader, Sharon. there was something about this story that just felt a little male-gazey to me, but I'm wondering if we're more sensitive to that as female readers...?

I only read the first of the short stories, the house of flowers was it called? and I wasn't really wowed by it. I did want to read the other two but didn't get around it to them before it was due back at the library.

this is the first Agatha Christie that I've ever read! and I loved it, so I know it's definitely not going to be the last. wow Sharon, that Christie shelf is awesome!

unfortunately I made the mistake of watching the television series first (a year ago or whenever it came out) so I already knew the twist :( but I guess the fact that I loved the book anyway is a testament to her talent. and I did love being able to pick up on the clues, knowing who the killer was. the whole time I kept thinking 'well OF COURSE it's him..... but would I have been able to figure it out if I didn't actually know??' this is going to haunt me. (I can't remember who I thought it was when I was watching the tv series, but I definitely was not able to guess it from that.)

I just love the setting of this story, the atmosphere of a huge abandoned house on an isolated island. it was so creepy and one of my favorite things was when she'd slip into different people's thoughts, and you'd have one person thinking 'where did the revolver go?' or 'how are we going to get out of this?' and then it would switch to Wargrave, and without knowing his identity we'd read someone thinking 'not long now, stay focused, no one suspects you' - so chilling, I loved it so much.

I really liked Lombard as well; him being so unflinching about his crime compared to the rest of them was really interesting. for that reason when I was watching the show I automatically assumed it wasn't going to be him, that would have been way too obvious, but it was interesting how so many characters considered him below them for being so unapologetic, when he was really the only one who was never lying to himself. there's also that thread of decorum that runs through this story - how most of them still try to act in socially appropriate ways and hold onto that mask of etiquette that they'd surrounded themselves with, even when it was clear it was too late for that.

What do you think of the morality and ethics of "helping along justice" in places where it can't be brought before the law? (Though, maybe not in quite such a sadistic way...)

this is SUCH a great question and one of the truly incredible things about this book is that Christie was able to come up with TEN instances of crimes which are morally reprehensible but unable to be punished by the law. it's such an interesting theme because it makes you think, at what point do someone's crimes become completely unforgivable? because all of these people did terrible things, and yet, for the most part, we're still rooting for them. the psychology behind this story is so fascinating, and I love stories like that that examine the role of the law in enforcing justice, because for as much as we equate those two words, law is a man-made and man-enforced concept, and doesn't always necessarily dovetail with true justice. Wargrave seeing himself as the True Enforcer of Justice was so fascinating and really made him the perfect choice for the killer.

to those of you who've seen the BBC adaptation, what did you think of some of the changes they made? (notably I'm thinking: the heavy focus on Vera as the main character; Blore being accused of homophobia rather than perjury; the relationship between Lombard and Vera; the way Wargrave is revealed to be the killer, etc....) and did you like it as an adaptation?

I completely agree, Sharon. I wasn't really a fan of this one.

I did read In Cold Blood when we read it I think in January of last year for book club? and it remained one of my favorite things that I read all year. I thought it was a really extraordinary feat of storytelling, to not only capture as many details as he did about the murder, but to show a perspective which managed to humanize the killers, to almost an uncomfortable degree. it was such a bold book and I couldn't stop thinking about it for ages after I read it.

so especially in contrast to that, I was really disappointed with Breakfast at Tiffany's. I just didn't get much from it? something I tend to dislike in fiction is when a novel has a certain narrator, but the story is about someone else, to a degree where the narrator almost becomes irrelevant. (i think there's a name for this POV - ashley and I were talking about it a few weeks ago so I looked it up, but now I forget.)

anyway, so with that in mind, I just didn't like the way the story was approached. I guess that the Point was that Holly was held at an arm's length from the narrator who never fully knows her, but it did strike as me a bit of a manic pixie dream girl story, and Holly wasn't an intriguing enough character for me to want to get to know her.

I do really like Capote's prose, he's definitely a good writer. I just didn't get much from this story, personally.

Here's the discussion thread for Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Discussion is open-ended but feel free to ask questions if you have any.

I've got one to start: for those of you who read both Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, how did the two compare for you?

It's discussion day! Here's the thread for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (there will be spoilers in this thread, for those of you who haven't already finished). We're going without discussion questions again, but feel free to ask and answer some of your own if you have any.

Enjoy!

Hey guys! Here are the options for our March book:

- Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
- I'll Be Right There by Kyung-Sook Shin
- All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North
- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Vote HERE by Tuesday, February 28.

Thanks!

alright, to atone for my sin of forgetting about the discussion yesterday I will go first.

okay I WILL BE HONEST GUYS I really hated this book. a solid 1-star read from me. I'd never read any roxane gay but I had really high expectations because of her reputation for feminism, but this was........ not good. I've actually read a lot since I finished this book so apologies if I forget any specifics, but my main complaints essentially boiled down to:

- I thought the prose was terrible, it was very melodramatic and had a very annoying staccato rhythm, it actually reminded me a bit of the first #iconic paragraph of my immortal lmao. and the dialogue was so cringe-y!!!

- I thought michael and miri's relationship was very immature. I'm okay with reading about people who I don't find personally likable, but there were so few redeeming qualities to them that I just could not bring myself to care at all. I also didn't think anyone in this novel acted like a real human being at any point. like, miri is kidnapped and she sings to annoy her captors...?? I found myself rolling my eyes a lot more than I wanted to.

- the gratuitous rape scenes were just too much for me. I honestly don't understand what purpose those served. it felt uncomfortably voyeuristic, and shocking from a feminist writer. this is the kind of thing I expect from game of thrones.

- the way race relations were handled..... I didn't get half as much nuance or insight here as what I expected from this novel. my main complaint here is michael's mother: at the beginning of the novel she's an unapologetic racist and at the end she becomes the hero?? does she overcome her racism or is mireille just ~an exceptional black girl~?? I found this whole element kind of tasteless. also the depictions of haiti in general as this corrupt and lawless place which is 'untamed' in contrast to the US...? kidnapping is a huge problem in haiti, but I felt like gay's exploration of this subject managed to malign the culture of the entire country.

- the scene with mireille seeing the commander in that restaurant in miami at the end...?? does anyone have any insight about what exactly we were supposed to take away from this?

things I did like:

- I thought gay's unsparing depiction of ptsd was excellent for how she encapsulated the messiness of the healing process. there was a line toward the end that mireille's therapist says to her about how she's never going to be the same person she was before, and I've never seen that particular painful truth discussed in a novel before so I thought that was good to include.

- I think there was something else maybe but I can't remember.

IDK, this was just such an important book, subject-wise, that I really wanted and expected a lot from it. roxane gay did not deliver. maybe she's one of these writers who's more suited to nonfiction than to novels. I'm willing to give some of her nonfiction a chance at some point, but I think I'm going to keep away from her fiction in the future.

HEY GUYS I am so sorry I'm posting this thread so late. This somehow managed to slip all three of our minds and I'm not confident I would have remembered at any point this evening so THANKS CHELSEA for saving the day!

Alright, now onto business. Here's the discussion thread for An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. Discussion day is technically today, Sunday, but since it's already evening we'll probably end up carrying this into tomorrow or later this week, so that's cool.

Also, as a result of our recent participation poll, we've decided to forgo discussion questions and see how this goes. Asking and answering questions is still encouraged from you guys if there's anything in particular you'd like to discuss, otherwise, talk about whatever floats your boat.

Enjoy!