Book Club

[elizabethl123]

IM READING  MITCH ALBOM   THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN     MY SECOND TIME READING IT LOVE IT

[Alter Ego]

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@LoriLori wrote:

@Alter Ego, love to know in a spoiler box how you feel about the info I posted, if that allays your problem with it or not.

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I tempered my thoughts so there’s not much of a spoiler after all.  But still, open at risk 

Spoiler

I’m SHOCKED that you said he didn’t name names!! I thought it was so clear, but maybe not.  It’s been a while and I only listen while driving, so it’s possible that I miss some things.  

I will say that it’s helpful to be reminded, because it just opened up a possibility that would have confused me otherwise if it were to happen.  In fact, I don’t even want to put my thought out there in case it is that obvious now and I’m right!  Plus, I can’t really remember character names anyways!  

Dang, now it’s hard to say anything! LOL

I will put the possibility out there that he finishes the book the same way, but add the names now.

[Catty2]

I'm reading The Muddied Murder by Wendy Tyson.  A woman moves back home to a small town in PA to help her grandmother take care of the family farm.  It's a lighthearted, somewhat romantic, murder mystery.  This is the first in a series so I hope there will be other books. 

[Catty2]

@DukeBlueNan

I read that book awhile ago and really enjoyed it.  She is a good author and I've read several of her other books, too.   

[LoriLori]

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@Alter Ego wrote:

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@LoriLori wrote:

@Alter Ego, love to know in a spoiler box how you feel about the info I posted, if that allays your problem with it or not.

---

I tempered my thoughts so there’s not much of a spoiler after all.  But still, open at risk 

Spoiler

I’m SHOCKED that you said he didn’t name names!! I thought it was so clear, but maybe not.  It’s been a while and I only listen while driving, so it’s possible that I miss some things.  

I will say that it’s helpful to be reminded, because it just opened up a possibility that would have confused me otherwise if it were to happen.  In fact, I don’t even want to put my thought out there in case it is that obvious now and I’m right!  Plus, I can’t really remember character names anyways!  

Dang, now it’s hard to say anything! LOL

I will put the possibility out there that he finishes the book the same way, but add the names now.

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@Alter Ego, you are right and I am 100% wrong.  I feel awful.  I never meant to gaslight you.  By way of explanation (not excuse), because I just finished "Beartown" for the second time this week  --  I can't read at night because I fall right to sleep. 

And during the day I sometimes have many stressful interruptions which cause me anxiety, and I'm told that  anxiety causes your short-term memory to get circuited.  Through no fault of mine it's been a very stressful week Chez Lori.  Nevertheless I'm very embarrassed.

I'm so sorry and here's the exact passage I misremembered and you remembered so perfectly:

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ "BEARTOWN:"

Spoiler

"In ten years' time the parking lot will be full of other people.   Kevin's wife will be pregnant.  Maya will be standing a few yards away, with every possibility in the world of ending his life.  She could walk right over and say what he is, humiliate and annihilate him in front of the person he loves most.

"She will have all the power in the moment, but she will let him go.  She will not forgive him, she will not pardon him, but she will spare him.  And he will always know that.

"When he drives away, sweaty and shaking, his wife will ask who the woman was.  And Kevin will tell the truth.  All of it.

"In ten years' time Maya will walk toward the rink.  The security guards will hold back eager hands and try to quiet the voices calling out to her, but she will stop patiently and sign everything that's handed to her, have photographs taken with everyone who asks.  On the sign above them the words "Sold Out!" will be flashing alongside the name of the performer who will be playing that night.

Her."

 BTW I also misremembered it as the end of the book, which it isn't.

[LoriLori]

@Alter Ego,  Still sitting here feeling like a fool but  I just want you to know and everyone else following this conversation that knowing the information in the spoiler box above doesn't change or spoil anything in "Us Against You."  And though I'm only 20 pages in I'm sure of that.  Here's why:

BELOW IS A SPOILER FROM THE BEGINNING OF "US AGAINST YOU:"

Spoiler

The flash-forwards do not spoil "Us Against You" for two reasons: 


1)  because, as I said in my long post, the book takes place two months after "Beartown" and goes from that summer to the winter, and

2)  amd  this is a spoiler from very early in the book, because I'm only on page 20, sometime in the two months we see Kevin's family move away 


Ironically there are flash-forwards in the beginning of "Us Against You" but they don't name names and maybe that helped me get mixed up too although maybe not, anxiety is my shadow

[Alter Ego]

@LoriLori

Spoiler

Whew - at least I wasn’t crazy. That’s so nice of you to go back - my goodness, I hope you didn’t type all of that!!

BUT - I think you may be right about the other characters - the gay player and ...was he Muslim? Which opens up possibilities for the new story. Since you just reread the prior book, I believe he mentioned that someone is dead without telling who. Which may or not be foreshadowing.  Since we both haven’t read/finished reading, no way of knowing if relevant or not.

[beckyb1012]

An argumentation of historians : the chronicles of St. Mary's,

Jodi Taylor                                      

Book #9

[LoriLori]

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@Alter Ego wrote:

@LoriLori

Spoiler

Whew - at least I wasn’t crazy. That’s so nice of you to go back - my goodness, I hope you didn’t type all of that!!

BUT - I think you may be right about the other characters - the gay player and ...was the Muslim? Which opens up possibilities for the new story. Since you just reread the prior book, I believe he mentioned that someone is dead without telling who. Which may or not be foreshadowing.  Since we both haven’t read/finished reading, no way of knowing if relevant or not.

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@Alter Ego

I did type all that, it was the least I could do after messing you up

Spoiler

In "Beartown" he said at the very beginning someone would go in a forest and put a shotgun to someone else's head and pull hte trigger, implying someone was dead, then this is the story of how we got there...So he implied somebody shot another but we knkow it didn't turn out that way...This time he commmits, someone will run over someone else with their car, it will look like an accident but it won't be...

...and yes, all of the characters except Kevin return.  Including the ones you mentioned, Amat and Benji.   Most of the players and all the sponsors take their hockey sticks and loyalty and they go to play for Hed, and Beartown will have to build its own hockey team(s)  almost from scratch and again in the first 20 pages we see most of who goes and who stays and we see that teeny little girl at the end of "Beartown"...she shows up in the beginning of "Us Against Them" 

It is really like turning the pages of "Beartown."  There's no separation between the two books.  He begins at the end of "Beartown" and like Proust (I'm not comparing authors, only structure) whose single novel was so long it was published as seven novels because one would have been impossiblly long, this could really be one giant book because you're exactly back in "Beartown."

And it's already aired in Sweden as a miniseries.  Sigh, to be in Sweden.

Backman trivia, wife edition: 

His dedications to his wife make me melt and the new one is no diffferent...I looked up the foreign word in the dedication to "Beartown," "asheghetam."   I assumed it was Swedish -- it's not, it's Farsi (Persian/Iranian) and it means "I love you" and  also "I'm in love with you." 

Remember that wonderful Persian (Iranian) character Parvaneh in "A Man Called Ove" and the immigrants in every one of his full novels, including Amat's mom in "Beartown," and his sensiitivity toward them?   Backman's actual wife is a Persian (Iranian) immigrant.  I love him even more now.  

[abbalulu]

Been down with bronchitis lately and then we are having internet problems recently so it has been hard to get on here. I finally got enough of a connection today to get on, at least briefly.

I read China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan-the second book in the China Rich series. These books are a total fantasy of the lives of the very rich but they are light and fun so I will read the last in the series. The first book is coming out as a movie sometime later this year. The cast is good so I hope the movie will be too.

Then I read Lottery by Patricia Wood. I believe it was @sunala who talked about this book and she was so right. It was wonderful! How could you not like Perry? Or Per as my husband called him-he absolutely loved the book too and he is harder to please than I am when it comes to reading material. Anyone who wants to be sweetly uplifted should read this.