Moving ahead to The Looking Glass Wars

The Lower School Guys Read group met on March 1 and discussed Michael Grant's book Gone.  One of the members had recently read The Prince and the Pauper, which led to a discussion of books involving twins.  The treatment in Gone is about as different as you can get from the Mark Twain book, but the guys are about the same age.  Everyone liked Gone and said it was their favorite book club book so far.  It's been followed by Hunger, and at least two more books are set to be published about the FAYZ, where everyone over the age of 14 suddenly disappears.  An older book about twins that you might want to read is The Other by Thomas Tryon. It has a great, scary movie counterpart.

For March, we'll be reading the first book in a new series by Frank Beddor:  The Looking-Glass Wars.  No one had really heard much about Steampunk, but I had brought up the new genre because of the Scott Westerfeld book Leviathan.  Seamus nominated the Beddor book, and now it turns out that there's a bit of Steampunk action in this book--it involves robotic creatures and contraptions during Victorian times.  On top of that, it's well-timed to coincide with the opening of Johnny Depp's new Alice in Wonderland movie.  But this book has a lot characters you won't see in the movie:  Hatter Madigan, Dodge Anders, someone named Redd, and the generals Doppel and Ganger.  (Yes and someone named Alyss....)

Part of the fun of this book club has been the fact that almost all of our choices have been made into movies, after we read them.  It's fun to compare the books and movies, and it's challenging to keep up with all the comments made by our garrulous members.  Next meeting is planned for Friday, March 26.