January Book Club Update:Scythe and When She Woke

The semester is well underway, and so are Book Clubs.  Both clubs (junior high and high school) have met twice in 2018, with really great meetings.  I LOVE this part of my job.  OK, so it's a fantastic job and I love most of it, but book clubs are super rewarding, and fun too.

High school book club is teeny tiny this year (3 stalwart members, with a couple more who sometimes come), but we're picking up steam.  We generally meet on Friday afternoons, when fewer clubs and activities are competing for time, and in January we met the first Friday after coming back from the holiday break.  Our book for January was When She Woke, a future-dystopian riff on The Scarlet Letter.  It's the second novel by author Hillary Jordan, whose first novel, Mudbound, is the basis for this year's Oscar-nominated film.

I contacted Hillary in December (we were in the same year at college) and she generously agreed to Skype with us at the January meeting.  Book club members, plus Caroline and Kristi from Admissions, and English teacher Marianne Hines, had a great 30+ minute conversation with Hillary on a snowy (in New York) Friday afternoon.  My favorite answer was to a comment that the last part of the novel seemed to wrap up quickly without a lot of development.  Hillary said that by that point, she'd said what she wanted to say, her characters had learned what they were going to learn, and she was basically ready for it to be done!  I love that, because not only does it remind me that accomplished authors are real human beings, but that they are creators with the power to choose and build their stories however they want.  And that's how it's supposed to be.

When asked if a movie version was in the works, she said of course, that's always a hope, and that it's been under option a couple of times.  Her vision of a TV series caught my imagination.  The story of Hannah, Aidan Dale and the "red" crimes is complete and ready to go, but a future world where the convicted criminal is punished, not by incarceration but by a genetically-induced identifying skin color (red for murder, yellow for misdemeanors, blue for violent crime) and released into society, promises any number of riveting multi-part stories.  HBO, Netflix, Amazon Video,  are you listening????

Junior High Book Club's January discussion of Neal Shusterman's new series starter, Scythe, was fabulous!  Sometimes, there's just not that much substance to talk about, even if everyone actually enjoyed the book, but Scythe was not one of those.  In fact, the whole group loved it AND we talked about it for the entire 60+ minutes of the meeting!

Scythe explores many of the same basic if/then ideas as Shusterman's earlier Unwind dystology -- if society evolves and advances in a certain direction, then what happens??  In Unwind, the resolution of a war between anti-abortion and pro-choice factions is the absolute banning of all abortions, BUT, if a child isn't working out for the parents by age 12, they can release her/him to a government Harvest Camp for "unwinding" (being separated into constituent donor parts for transplant procedures).  So sanitary, so thoughtful, so gruesome in its reality.  Death and government and ethics, all in one fast-moving page turner!  Unwind has been a lit book and a Reading Bowl book in the junior high for several years.

Scythe begins with a different if/then proposal. IF advances in technology have made death irrelevant (complete revival is possible even for the "deadish," and turning the clock back on physical age is always an option), THEN how does society make room for the newly born?  In a nod to The Giver,  a revered and feared select group, a kind of priesthood of ordained Grim Reapers, carries this responsibility for society.  In an ideal world, the best person for this job is the person who least wants to do it, but a small and growing faction of new-order Scythes believes there's no harm in enjoying "gleaning," and in meeting their quotas in increasingly flashy and bloody incidents. Two teen-aged Apprentice Scythes are caught on either side of this dangerous political and philosophical rift.

Sanctioned assassins, a perfect virtual government, immmortality, and the ethics of life and death.  Big ideas for 12 & 13 year olds.  One student said that when she told her dad about this book club choice, his response was "I think my daughter is reading the wrong book!"  I'm pretty sure it was the right book, though, because the conversation and the questions were thoughtful, deep and numerous.

• Imagine the power and responsibility a Scythe would have.  
• How does this book resemble The Giver? (a few have to carry an unpleasant burden for the many)
• If living forever means you get so bored, you make yourself "deadish" for fun, who would want to live forever? (the Tucks certainly weren't crazy about it in Tuck Everlasting)
• Is it right or wrong to enjoy your work, if your ordained work is killing?
• The Thunderhead is just "the cloud" super-advanced. Who's got stuff in the Cloud? (Google Drive, Amazon Music, Instagram, email?) Think about that!

In February, Junior High book club read Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski (after a routine flu shot, everyone in a 10th grade homeroom can hear other people's thoughts).  High School book club read a fascinating memoir, Thirty Days With My Father, by Christal Presley, a former Grady High School teacher, and Skyped with the author during the meeting. More on that later.

Coming up in March - 

• Junior High -- Every Day  by David Levithan (in time for the movie release)
• High School -- My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry  by Fredrik Backman

What have you read lately?