If only we could jump to the good parts and skip over the bad.We talked about this quote. While it seems enticing, we agreed that it was the “bad” that made us value and appreciate the “good.” Reminds me of the movie The matrix. When the electronic bad guys create a world for the minds of their baby batteries, the first word is rejected because it is too perfect, humans need an element of struggle.
Check out this site for an interesting essay: Discussion questions from site (and our responses) posted below (Questions 2, 7, 8 and 9 were particularly interesting).
1. If you could jump right into any novel with Ms. Nakajima, which novel would you choose to visit? What classic novel endings have left you unsatisfied? What endings would you change if you had the power to do so? We thought of several novels, including Romeo and Juliet; would it really have changed so much if they had faked their deaths and then disappeared into the night? What about Gone with the Wind? What if they had stayed together? We also thought being present during the events The Bible depicts would have been fascinating! To see first hand, maybe documents in English, and hide the papers with the Dead Sea Scrolls to be discovered 2000 years later! Could we change history, like the author Orson Scott Card does in Pastwatch: The Redemption of Columbus? If slavery had not built the U.S.A., what would have happened?
2. Acheron Hades claims that pure evil is as rare as pure good. Do you think either exists in our world? Serial child rapists and serial killers come to mind as “pure evil.” Can we think of “pure good” at all? Mother Theresa? How do you define “pure good”? When we thought more about it: Is “pure good” about never doing something wrong ever? Or does it include never being discouraged? There seems to be a selflessness in being “pure good.” Some people who came to mind were Oprah, but she gets profit, and The Dalai Lama, but he benefits from stature. When you benefit, can you still be “pure”? It’s easier to imagine pure evil within and without religious context, but it appears to be much harder to think of pure good without some religious, higher purpose.
3. Two of the main plot devices—time travel and book jumping—illustrate the infinite possibilities of alternate endings. If you could travel through time, is there anything in history, either in the broad sense or in your own personal history that you would go back and revise? If we could jump and change something in our past, we might have paid more attention in college, gotten together with someone we had said “no” to, applied to a college or program that we didn’t think we’d get into or that we avoided because someone or something kept us somewhere else, gone to a different college or taken a year abroad, or gone right through for a PhD. We noticed how much that time in our lives (decisions around/about college) are still on our minds which seems to confirm the importance of the choices we make about schooling.
4. If you could choose either Ms. Nakajima's ability to jump into novels, Thursday's father's ability to travel through time, or Acheron Hades' ability to defy mortality, which power would you choose to have and why? If we had one of the powers in the book, we’d like to travel through time (our choice, our place, our speed) or maybe travel through books and experience fantastical things. Then there was the possibility of being immortal and experiencing history as it is made but the loss of loved ones didn’t seem worth the gift of immortality.
5. Despite the fact that he is her one true love, Thursday holds a grudge against Landen Parke-Laine for over ten years because he betrayed her brother when they returned from the Crimean War. Who do you think Thursday's first allegiance should have been? Her lover or her brother? Do you think her decision to return to Landen comes out of weakness or strength? Does it matter whether Thursday chooses her lover or her brother? We’re still suspicious as to whether the brother really did it (especially with this type of time travel novel).
6. In the hands of villains like Jack Schitt and Acheron Hades, the Prose Portal could be exploited for villainous deeds, but it could also have been used to do good deeds such as producing a cure for terminal diseases. Would you choose to destroy the Prose Portal as Mycroft does without trying to extract good use out of it first? Do you think the risk of the destruction it could cause outweighs the possibilities for good? We just don’t get how the Prose Portal would work for good? If a book had the cure for cancer, then you could bring it back out? Maybe then it would be worth keeping.
7. Thursday's brother, the very Irreverend Joffy, tells her, "The first casualty of war is always truth." Do you think this is true? Why or why not? Of course truth is the first casualty of war. We thought that as soon as we read the line. Seems like a total truism.
8. Thursday says, "All my life I have felt destiny tugging at my sleeve. Few of us have any real idea what it is we are here to do and when it is that we are to do it. Every small act has a knock-on consequence that goes on to affect those about us in unseen ways. I was lucky that I had so clear a purpose." In a world where time is so pliable, can there be such a thing as destiny? Was there a defining moment in your life where you understood what your own purpose was? We were like totally not thinking about our purpose in life when we read this part.
9. Who is the worse villain, Acheron Hades or Jack Schitt? Which sentence do you think is worse—death by a silver bullet to the heart or an eternity trapped in Poe's The Raven? Being trapped in ANY of Poe’s work was THE worst punishment, for sure.
In addition to talking about these questions, we had other ideas. We were kinda hoping they would solve the “who wrote Shakespeare story,” and thought it was intriguing to bring it up. We figured that was her son at the end, right? We loved the twist about the “not the real ending, but it is” for Jane Eyre and thought we might want to read that book again! We loved how this book opened an imaginary door into interacting with literature. We couldn’t figure out if this was the 10th millennia (or the one before that) or 1984, some of the time references were distracting and confusing. The idea of having a future where books are incredibly valuable and special groups form to protect literature, as well as be “author groupies” was cool, and so not like today’s world. Below are more of the things we found quite interesting and funny.
The “Q” scene w/Mycroft (right out of James Bond) where Thursday (and the reader) learns about all the cool inventions.
• Cars change color
• Translating copy paper
• identity smell indicator
Futuristic ideas and how time was changed.
• Uber obsessive Fan clubs for authors and their work (the Milton group, Wordsworth people, Shakespeare family) who have clout when things “get changed.”
• Freeze time, but not yourself or the person to whom you are talking
• Hyper book worms which are encoded with books and eat extra prepositions
• Literotech – The “book police”
• Text forgeries
• Verse meter analyzer – breaks down poetry and compares to original (a new industry, how do you know the book/poem hasn’t been tampered with or plagiarized?)
• I have the manuscript and I’m not afraid to disrupt it (quote from book)
The puns and names were hilarious.
Acheron Hades
Ana Bana (banana)
Boden Cable
Comder Braxton Hicks
Felix Tabula Rasa
Goliath (company)
Helmut the Book
Here Helmut Byte
Irreverend Joffy
Jack Schitt
Jeff & Jeff Forty
Jones the Manuscript
Landen Parke-Laine (Land On Park Lane)
Snood is the boyfriend who becomes unavoidably detained (aged)
Martin Chuzzlewit
Mycroft
Spec Op (Special Operations)
The Prose Portal
Thursday Next
Victor Analogy
