Game of Thrones - Book 1

Book Club #5!

About the Book:

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

Summary: 

A super long book with a ton of characters from different families with various forms of family drama all somehow cross paths in this fantasy novel involving power, battle, incest, and dragons. Most characters are located in the Seven Kingdoms. Told from the view points of different characters, each person is mostly trying to not get killed and possibly be in some ruling leadership position. Members of the former ruling family, Targaryen, are exiled but seeks to return to the Seven Kingdoms and reign again by marrying into a nomad Dothraki tribe. If only they had some more dragons. Within the Seven Kingdoms, the King's right hand is no longer and the patriarch of the Stark family is requested to fill the role. The many children of the Stark family each have a wolf as a pet that come in very handy because many people seem to want to harm them. Though the noble Eddard Stark seems to be a man of integrity, the new position ties the Stark family to the Lannisters who hide a secret. Many characters get killed in the process but then new ones get introduced.

Characters:

• Not even going to try...

Questions:

1. Who was your favorite character?
2. What did you think about the language?
3. Did you like the author's use of different characters' points of view to tell the story?
4. What were the different character's motivation?
5. What does it mean to play the game of thrones? Is it possible to be moral and have integrity?

Conversation Summary:

Discussion topics:

• author's writing style 
• character analysis 
• fantasy genre
• favorite characters - all the outcasts, khal drogo, dany, jon snow, arya
• character motivations and integrity
• being in a position of power and integrity
• where the characters start and end up
• favorite characters murdered, many characters murdered
•  book should include a summary/index of all characters
• sansa willing to harm family for a boy
• this book was very long, it's hard to finish a 800+ page book

2/3 bears unable to finish book. 3/3 happy to watch the tv show.

References:

1. George RR Martin to Taylor Swift's Blank Spaces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qhp3wnKyKA

2. George RR Martin on SNL Weekend Update
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-george-rr-martin/2770803

3. Seth Myers brings Jon Snow to dinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BabsgCQhpu4

09.2015 All the Light We Cannot See

Introduction:

A Pulitzer winning novel! All the Light we cannot see.

Book Jacket:

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Book Details:

Length: 545 pages
Publisher: Scribner
Published: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 1400032717
ISBN13: 978-1400032716

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