Annie1113

Interesting question. Now I'm not sure I can remember and I wish I could. Contenders: Madeline L'Engle, Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising. Probable first: The Witch Next Door or Gus Was a Friendly Ghost. Kids books, yes. But subject matter was what we're going for, and they fit. Definite first for horror: Night Shift by Stephen King. I was 8, and my parents had gone to visit the next door neighbor.

If you're looking for something very dark and involving demons or occult summoning, etc., I don't think you can go wrong with Graham Masterton. He is highly underrated, in my opinion. Have you ever read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend? If you've seen the new movie, you know the plot, to a certain extent, although the original was less hopeful, which may or may not be a good thing for you. Also, Suzy McKee Charnas' The Vampire Tapestry was a great vampire novel that I think few people have heard of. In the cultured vampire vein, but less teenage than Anne Rice's. Hope this helps. How is Clive Barker's Jericho? I've loved some Clive Barker creations - the Candyman movie, The Thief of Always - and wish I could find more computer games with interesting plotlines.

About the discussion questions: 1/2) I think my favorite character was Sonmi. I suppose because the odds were so stacked against her that it made me care more what happened to her. Did anyone else think her chapters were reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake? I don't know why, but to me they were. And I loved that book, so that's not a bad thing at all. I cared the least about Robert Frobisher. He was so unprincipled and only cared about himself, really. The fact that he realized it didn't make him any more lovable.The Sloosha's Crossing part was hard to get through, though interesting. I am hoping that in the case of a post-apocalyptic future, we won't all speak in Faulkner-esque dialect. I thought the gangster parts were kind of cliched. It made me wonder how many gangsters are out there at this minute, chasing down people with gambling debts and forcing them to climb down the fire escape. Because there certainly are enough of them to go around in a certain type of novel. So I think I've answered 1,2, and 4. On to 3) I think I would try another book by Mitchell. It was kind of hard work, making you angry at the injustices that people inflict on each other, and how persistent social inequality is, and that it seems futile to fight it, but fighting it is necessary... Sort of like reading a decently entertaining history textbook. Maybe that's unfair. But it makes me feel personally useless. There aren't any great injustices in the little world around me to fight against, though I know they're abundant in the world at large. And even if an ocean is "a multitude of drops", we drops would like to see that we're contributing in the here and now. Besides, it seems unfair that in the world of Mitchell, all the people of influence should be on the side of the slavers, so to speak. Kind of cliched, like the gangsters at the door. I mean, maybe it is 'realistic' that people with power prey upon those who have less of it, but the world isn't that unremittingly grim all over. Anyway, I think I'm giving Mitchell an unfair deal. It was a good story. And I liked the way it connected. Do you think that the people were actually supposed to be reincarnations, with the comet birthmarks and all? I thought so, until Luisa, because wasn't Timothy too old to be her incarnation? But then Luisa was the only one actually supposed to be fictional. It was clever how Timothy shouted "Soylent Green is people", and then the next story had Sonmi discovering that she was, essentially, eating Soylent Green. And then I suppose, there were the possibly cannibalistic Morioris too, so it all tied in together, and fits in with the whole people preying on each other theme, though I wasn't particularly thinking of that til just now. But I would read something else by him. Hope I haven't written too much. This is the first time I've ever done one of the reading circle books. I'm in withdrawal because my offline book club is splitting up. Everyone keeps moving away. Hope everyone else liked the book. Look forward to reading your opinions! Annie

Hi everybody, I'm new. I finished Harry Potter the weekend it came out, and I'm still thinking about it. It's terrible that there won't be any more books about Harry (except the encyclopedia) although endless sequels aren't usually a good thing for an author, so it's probably just as well. But did anyone else wonder -- if Harry can talk to Dumbledore's portrait, and certain wizards in portraits can travel from one to another and communicate/spy, why can't Harry talk to pictures of his parents? And I thought it was really a shame about Tonks and Remus. I was just starting to really care about them, and then they were gone, as practically a footnote. And I wonder too what happened to the other Weasley twin. And Dudley Dursley. Did he turn out to be a decent human being after all?