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Dive Into CBR Book Club

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Ok fellow Cannonballers, it’s time to dive into CBR Book Club!

station-eleven_612x380_3[1]After several awesome reviews of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, we’re going to have a spoiler-heavy discussion of the book, and Mswas has asked me, faintingviolet, to moderate. We will be starting on Monday March 9th, to give those of you who have added it to your TBR one month to get it read before the discussion.

One of the struggles I had with reviewing this book was not wanting to discuss the themes and narrative devices for fear of ruining the experience for others, so if you haven’t read the book and want to go in completely clean, here’s the point where you exit, because SPOILERS possibly ahead.

Here are some of the themes/questions that we can discuss starting March 9th, and if you have more topics you want other Cannonballers to ruminate on in the meantime, please leave them in the comments. We will have a new post on March 9th to discuss all of the various things which affected us.

Happy reading, see you on March 9th!

Topics for Discussion:

  • Did you find the shifts between pre and post-apocalypse to be an effective storytelling technique? How about changing character perspectives?
  • Why do you think Station Elevenhas been so successful when there are many other novels in a similar vein out there right now?
  • Does the novel have a main character? Who would you consider it to be?
  • How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of Station Eleven, both the novel and the comic?
  • What is the metaphor of the Station Eleven comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?
  • Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, what point is Mandel making?
  • Different characters we meet have different opinions about teaching children about the pre-collapse world. What are the benefits of remembering, and of not remembering?
  • Because we don’t know what happened to Kirsten in her first year on the road, did it affect your experience of reading the book?
  • The novel ends with Clark, remembering the dinner party and imagining that somewhere in the world, ships are sailing. Why did Mandel choose to end the novel with him?

Note: Canadian Cannonballers can enter a raffle for one of three copies of Station Eleven. Visit Rafflecopter to get in on this March 11 drawing, sponsored by HarperCollins Canada.

Comments

  1. Awesome that we’re actually going to have a book club! With every year, I find myself spending more and more time on the group blog, reading people’s reviews, “conversing” in the comments. Having an actual book club discussion will be great. Since I have a week off next week, I shouldn’t even have a problem getting the book read, even with the reading list I’ve already set for myself in February. *does happy dance on the sofa*

  4. Of to the library to get this….

    As I didn’t read the spoiler section I apologize if this was covered and I missed it – how are we going to have this discussion? Is this a google hangout sort of thing? Online chat? Are clothes required, recommended, or purely optional?

  11. Has this happened? I’m leading a book club discussion this weekend and wanted to refer to this online conversation but can’t seem to find it.

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