The mastermind behind "The Road"

                Cormac McCarthy the author of this month's Readster book discussion was born in Rhode Island on July 20th, 1933. He was named after his father Charles McCarthy, and later renamed himself after the Irish King. While growing up in Knoxville, he attended a Catholic High School. Upon graduating he attended the University of Tennessee for two years majoring in liberal arts. The then joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953. During this time he was briefly stationed in Alaska where he hosted a radio show.

                After spending four years in the Air Force he returned to university. While attending he published two stories, "A Drowning Incident" and "Wake for Susan" in a student literary magazine. During the time he spent at university he won the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. He left the university shortly after that to work in Chicago as an auto mechanic while writing his first novel. After marrying his first wife Lee Holleman, they moved to Tennessee and had a son named Cullen. His marriages later ended.

     

           McCarthy received a traveling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, shortly before his first novel The Orchard Keeper, was published. In 1965 he took fellowship to visit the home of his Irish ancestors. During this he met an English woman named Anne DeLisle, and was married in England. The following year he received another grant this time from the Rockefeller Foundation. Cormac and Anne traveled in Western Europe and settled on in Ibiza. During this settlement he completed a revision of Outer Dark.

                The McCarthy's returned to America in 1967 and in 1968 Random House published Outer Dark. The following year the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing was awarded to Cormac. In 1973 he published Child of God and from '74-'75 he worked on a screen play for PBS entitled "The Gardener's Son." Between the finishing of the film and the premiere in January 1977, Cormac and Anne separated.

                His fourth novel Suttree took him over twenty years to finish and was published in 1979. Many critics say this is his finest novel. Cormac received the MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grant in 1981, which he used to live on while writing an apocalyptic western set in Texas and Mexico during the 1840's.  The turning point in his career is considered to be when he published Blood Meridian in 1985.

                In the early '90's under a new publisher he began working on a The Border Trilogy. In 1992 the first volume All the Pretty Horses was published. It became a bestseller and sold 190,000 copies in the first six months. The second volume The Crossing printed 200,000 for presale and a second printing of 25,000 in the first month. The final volume of The Border Trilogy is Cities of the Plain which was published in 1988. He remarried to Jennifer Winkley and had one child, John Francis, born in 1999.

                McCarthy published No Country for Old Men in 2005, and it was adapted into an award-winning film. In 2006 he published The Road which won the Pulitzer Prize for Litearture. The Road was featured on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, and also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The movie "The Counselor" which was released October 25th, 2013 in theaters was originally penned by McCarthy.

For more information about Cormac McCarthy visit: http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/

Readsters venture down Cormac McCarthy's Post-apocalyptic novel: The Road

                The New York Times Book Review says The Road is "vivid, eloquent...The Road is the most readable of [McCarthy's] works, and consistently brilliant in its imagining of the posthumous condition of nature and civilization." The Los Angeles Times Book Review says "One of McCarthy's best novels, probably his most moving and perhaps his most personal."

                So what is The Road? Amazon describes The Road as "The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
                A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
                The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, 'each the other's world entire,' are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

                Copies of The Road are available for check-out at the library.

Paying off a debt

As we finish SOLD, this week, the book might leave you with many questions. While Patricia McCormick keeps you interested from page one, the fact is that Human Trafficking is real. It does not just take place in countries such as India, it takes place here in the United States, even in Kansas. For more information I have listed links below.

1. Why do you think that Lakshmi never gives up hope?
2. Would you trust the Americans after everything the other girls have told you?
3. Why do you think it was so hard for Lakshmi to move during the last raid?
4. What do you think about the ending?


Links to more information about Human Trafficking
http://www.ksufreedomalliance.org/
http://ag.ks.gov/childrens-safety/human-trafficking
http://www.humantrafficking.org/
http://www.polarisproject.org/

Week 3 of SOLD

This weeks discussion questions comes from pages 131 to 201. Remember if you have missed a week, it is not to late to go back and comment on the discussion.

1. How does Mumtaz gain control over Lakshmi? What tactics does she use to own her both physically and emotionally? What punishment does she exact on girls who disobey or betray her?
2. For the festival of brothers and sisters, Harish gives Lakshmi a new pencil. This small act of kindness undoes her. Why do you think this "undoes" her? How do others reach out to help one another at the brothel?
3.What does despair look like? How does Lakshmi prevent her own despair from destroying her hope? Is it destroyed in others? How?
4. What happens when Monica leaves the brothel to return to the family she has supported? Do you think Lakshmi's own ama would treat her the same way upon her return? What about her stepfather? What makes you think so or not?

Week 2 of SOLD

This week we will be discussing pages 65-130. If you have missed last weeks discussion questions, there is still time to catch up. SOLD is an easy read, and very engaging. Books are still available at the library for check out.

1. What things does Lakshmi wonder about on her journey? What ordinary objects fascinate her? What does this tell you about her?

2. At the bottom of page 81, Uncle Husband tells her not to speak to anyone because they will recognize she is from the mountains and take advantage of her. Do you thing he is trying to protect her or himself?

3. In the chapter "Disgraced" what do you think the girl really did?

4. Did you suspect bad intentions on the part of the "auntie" and "uncle" who escorted Lakshmi? Why do you think Lakshmi herself was not suspicious? What does this show you about her character?

5. Describe how the last few pages of the this weeks reading made you feel?

Welcome to the SOLD discussion!

The pages set for this week's reading are pages 1 through 64. Below are the discussion questions over these pages. You may leave your comments in the comment box below.  Just a word of warning, it will be hard to put the book down once you get to page 63. The questions below are to start the conversation, feel free to answer all, some, or none. If you had other observations please share those as well.

1. Judge a book by its cover! What is your first impression of SOLD?

2. On page 16 what do you think this line means: " 'Simply to endure,' she says, 'is to triumph.' "

3. If your family promised you to someone for marriage, could you fall in love with that person?

4. What is your first impression of the woman talking to Lakshmi, in the chapter Possibility?

5. Look at the dialogue at the bottom of page 61: " 'Is it true that all the roofs are covered in gold?' 'Where did you hear that' she says. 'In school.' I want Auntie to know that I am not a backwards girl. I am educated." Do you ever feel the need to declare your credibility just because you live in a rural location?

6. What is Lakshmi's life like in her mountain home? What events cause her to go into the city?

SOLD by Patricia McCormick

The first book for the Readsters book club will be SOLD by Patricia McCormick.

SOLD is described on Amazon as: "Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope.  But she soon learns the unthinkable truth:  she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning.  She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt—then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape.  Still, she lives by her mother’s words—Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world.  Then the day comes when she must make a decision—will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs."

Books are available at the Independence Public Library for check out.  At the beginning of each week discussion questions will be posted over a set number of pages. These questions are meant to guide you through your reading and allow you to contemplate the questions as you read. The average number of pages to be discussed each week for SOLD will roughly be 60 pages. Don't worry if your life ends up getting busy and you  miss a week, the blog post will still be up when you have time to catch up!