the list for book club and our first book choice

[whiteadder]

Now not available from kindle store - title is under review

[Zaf]

I wonder why

[Munchroom]

Picked it up yesterday for £1 at a bookbarn.... a place like heaven on earth! Its bery old and has no back cover mind!  Will get reading tomorrow x

[Zaf]

That sounds a fab place :)

[Munchroom]

That sounds a fab place :)

It really is Zaf... we go to one just outside of Bath, not sure how many there are dotted around the country. It is literally a barn with bookshelves and MILLIONS of books. Around 70% of them are quite old, whn I first went, I picked up a copy of the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a handwritten note dated Christmas 1899! And the best thing is ALL the books are £1.... wether they are classics over 100 years old with ornately carved bindings or an old windows pc manual from 1998!  Its amazing....

[Zaf]

I'm going to have to see if we have one locally :)

Z x

[whiteadder]

Not at our library either -hmmph

[Zaf]

Will happily lend mine if that would help?

[Zaf]

Oh knickers, my first bit of review has disappeared

[Zaf]

From what I can remember:

I took an almost immediate dislike to most of the characters, partly because they seemed to stand for what I already thought was disgusting about the we treated the people and resources of the countries we colonised.  I also found it all rather over descriptive which I found irritating, I really struggled with the first couple of chapters but did keep going, more observations later......

[Munchroom]

Posts I made yesterday have dissapeared too....

I'm on chapter 4 and am not really struggiling but I think I need to get into it a bit more efore I start to enjoy it. The racism and the way Flory treats his 'woman' is quite shocking though....

[XSqueakX]

i agree with you Zaf there wasn't one character that I liked in this book. The racsim in this book is eye opening to how black people were treated in them days, which was revolting. But what struck me was what the native charcters thought about themselves, how inferior they thought they were to white people.

[Zaf]

I realised there was a lot of inequality but it shocked me too just badly the native people were treated and thought of, really no better than animals.  The book really highlighted and reinforced my pre-conceived opinions of the horrible misdeeds carried out during the process and years of colonialism.

Basically we raped and pillaged in a 'civilized' way imo

[XSqueakX]

Well to tell you the truth this was my first insight into the whole colonial rule with the British Empire I don't know much about the history of it all. But I can pretty much guess what was involved and the cruelity of it all.

What did ypu's think about Flory and Elizabeth relationship?

[Zaf]

I'd guess other countries that colonies were as bad but looking back on what we did disgusts me, I found the description of the shoot particularly awful as we slaughtered millions of animals for fun too.

I'd guess the relationship between Flory and Elizabeth was considered not unusual in the time period and setting, especially the aim to marry off female dependents to the most eligible man, but looking from a modern day perspective it struck me almost as desperation on both their parts.   

I hated the description of the shooting of the dog too as it was incredibly realistic