In the spirit of full disclosure, to choose this book I relied on advice from two great book club resources online: Reading Group Guides and Reading Group Choices. Besides being great starts for choosing books, they also have great discussion questions which I have read and will influence the questions presented here. Feel free to check them out for more thought stimulating ideas.
--
How do you feel about this book as a novella, longer than a short story but shorter than a novel? How would you have shortened or lengthened the story?
The author is known for his sly humor; what evidence of this do you see in the title of the novella and elsewhere in the book?
The notion of a Queen is foreign to us Americans. Could this book have been written with an American President as the main character? How would it have been different?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I've used those two websites before and they are great for coming up with group questions or just food for thought.
I liked the novella format. Even though it is short I like it as a book club selection since it celebrates reading :> If I had to do either I would make it a little shorter; the whole idea that reading had changed the Queen's perception was repeated a bit much.
It would be interesting to see the American version of this. But I'd think it would be different since the President really does wield power unlike the royal family figurehead and also since the protagonist would be male. Would reading have the same effect?
Novella format was fine for this story, it allowed for the development of four or five main characters and that was enough. More than the story's affect on reading, I enjoyed the inside glimpse of what it's like to be Queen -- the thought processes and all.
As for this being written about a U.S.President, I don't think it could work as well, because he/she would not have been brought up a position of royalty and all the trappings it brings.
Post a Comment