DragonFlight -- Thrown In & Style (Part 1)

Lasagna:
I don't think I read far enough into this to actually get anything, because this is one of those books where they just throw you right into it, and you have to think for a little bit about what it's talking about and then you'll understand it. I just didn't really get it.

Dande:

When I was reading it recently to reread it, it was different for me because—while I knew that all these cool, interesting, great things came later, and so I kept reading, but I was thinking that if I just started reading this book now, I probably wouldn't keep reading through it. The beginning would have totally turned me off. I must have been a more open reader five years ago when I read it for the first time.

Smiley:
In the beginning, you know when Fax, F'lar—I always say flare when I'm reading it, but I know it's F'lar—Fax, F'lar, and F'nor, you know when they're all talking, and after they say one sentence, it's like, "Oh, he directed this insult at him. Oh, he said it like this." That was kind of annoying to me to get past. If they said it once, "they said it insultingly," then OK, I get it. But they kept mentioning it throughout the whole dialog. "Oh, he said it like this, which was so insulting. Oh, he said it like that, which was so OhMyGosh."


[laughs]


Smiley:
It was annoying, in a way.

Wvskier:

In later books, she actually sort of changes her style. She doesn't do that as much, and she actually has the dragons talk directly.

Dande:
Yeah, I'm not sure if this was her first book overall, but it was definitely her first book in this whole series that lasted thirty years. So we could cut her some slack, maybe.

Smiley:

I don't think I was able to enjoy it as much because I was trying to read by today as a deadline.

Dande:
I gave it to you last week!

Smiley:

But I haven't read it since, like, today!

DragonFlight -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 2)

Dande:

Also, it was supposed to be a medieval culture—how were they so advanced to figure out a year is a Turn [and call it that]? We didn't figure that out until a couple hundred years ago.

Smiley:

Maybe they were smart.

Lasagna:

Didn't they come from Earth, or something? But they didn't know [it]?

Wvskier:

Well, they lost their technology over the years. Right now, there's no electricity or anything. They lost it because they don't have a fuel source.

Dande:

If you read the rest of the series, they were colonists that—

Lasagna:

It says that in the beginning of the book.

Dande:

It does?

Lasagna:

Yeah, it says something about how they came from Earth but they don't remember it.

Wvskier:

Now it's two thousand years later.

Walle:

They came here? Oh—I thought this was a completely different planet which developed humanity.

Dande:

No. Well, it's supposed to like that, in this book. This book is a fantasy book, and that's what fantasy books are: humans in a different world where they never were anywhere else. The series starts out as fantasy, and then it morphs into science fiction at the end.

* * *

Newhope:

What did you think about the different terms that meant the same thing, such as "Turn" and "year."

Smiley:

Yeah, yeah!

Newhope:

They said "year." So I'm like, "Then what's a Turn?"

Smiley:

Yeah, I was so confused. I'm like, "Is Turn their year?" But then they say "year."

Walle:

In the beginning, I thought a Turn was a day, because a turn is a rotation.

Smiley:

Yeah, I thought it was a cycle.

DragonFlight -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 1)

Dande:

Welcome to the second formal meeting of the Morris YA Book Club!

Smiley:

How many people have actually finished reading the book?

[about half]

Dande:

It's a good thing Wvskier is here, since she's read the whole series. I've read a lot of the books, but not all of them. I never tried to systematically go through them or anything. I just read the ones that were at the library.

Wvskier:

I have the six directly related to the Weyrs.

Smiley:

Do you want to begin?

Dande:

First impressions?

Walle:

I think that the author's writing style was a bit different. Sometimes, I had to read the sentences over again, because when you read it the first time I thought it was a fragment or something, and then I had to go back, and search . . .

Dande:

Well I noticed a couple that were fragments—but I think it was definitely different. I think it was partly because it was written so long ago that they had a different writing style back then. 

Walle:

Sometimes they used very hard words.

[laughs]

Newhope:

The vocabulary I didn't very much like—how they kept introducing terms but didn't really explain them.

DragonFlight by Anne McCaffrey

Dande here! This month the focus of this blog will be DragonFlight by Anne McCaffrey. DragonFlight was published in 1968 and is the first book in The Dragonriders of Pern series. The epic series contains almost two dozen books that take place at various times in the history of the planet Pern.

Overall, we enjoyed our DragonFlight meeting, but we intend to pick more recent books to read in the future, if only so that there will not be such an imbalance between those who have read later books and those who have not.

Our discussion revolved around a few key things: the dragging middle, the unique solution at the end, and the fact that many of our questions about the world would be explained later in the series. The two attendees who had read other books in the series agreed that the quality of the series improves as it goes on. We hope you enjoy eavesdropping on our discussion and contributing your own thoughts in the comments!

The schedule for DragonFlight posts is as follows:

• Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 1)
• Thursday, July 29th, 2010 -- First Impressions & Terms (Part 2)
• Friday, July 30th, 2010 -- Thrown In & Style (Part 1)
• Monday, August 2nd, 2010 -- Thrown In & Style (Part 2) & Threadfall
• Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 -- Firestone & Games
• Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 -- Middle Muddle (Part 1)
• Thursday, August 5th, 2010 -- Middle Muddle (Part 2)
• Friday, August 6th, 2010 -- Lessa and F'lar & Power
• Monday, August 9th, 2010 -- Thread & Title
• Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 -- Colors & Eggs
• Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 -- Politics (Part 1)
• Thursday, August 12th, 2010 -- Politics (Part 2) & Population Control
• Friday, August 13th, 2010 -- The Between, The End, & A Paradox
• Monday, August 16th, 2010 -- The Rest of the Series (Part 1)
• Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 --- The Rest of the Series (Part 2)
• Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 -- Bloopers: When You're Not in The Room
• Thursday, August 19th, 2010 -- Final Thoughts (Part 1)
• Friday, August 20th, 2010 -- Final Thoughts (Part 2)

At this meeting: Newhope, Dande, Walle, Wvskier, Smiley, Chair, Lasagna, Jolly

The Next Book: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

And We're Back!

After a very long hiatus, the Morris YA Book Club is happy to be back. Starting tomorrow we will begin our discussion of DragonFlight, which will continue through the middle of August. The DragonFlight meeting was actually held in September 2009, and was closely followed by an October meeting discussing Catching Fire, the sequel to our first book, The Hunger Games. Catching Fire is the next book that will go up on this blog after DragonFlight. While in normal circumstances we do not read sequels as a rule, we decided to make an exception for The Hunger Games trilogy, since we enjoyed the first book so much. To wrap it up, our very next meeting in September will discuss Mockingjay.

Besides the books above, we have an entire year of back meetings wating to go live on this blog. Until we catch up to the present, we hope to be able to offer content every weekday. This is an exciting time on the MYABC Blog, and we hope that you'll stick around for everything we have in store!