Twilight it is!!

The final tally is for Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, so add it to our reading list for this year!

Let's get those votes in!

Here's some titles that were mentioned at our last meeting. If you have others, add them to this list so we can vote by next Wed.

Twilight-Meyer
Alice in Wonderland-Carroll
The Glass Castle-Walls
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time-Haddon
Abarat-Barker
The Kindness of Strangers-Kittle

Does the end justify the means

My comment is partially based on someone else's thought from a prior post. I don't think anyone will deny that Carrie is definitely a victim of horrific abuse; not only by her mother, but by virtually everyone else who has ever come in contact with her. Does this abuse justify the total havoc that Carrie creates, courtesy of her TK ability, on most of the student body and the entire town?

I was trying to imagine how the story might have developed had Carrie not "erupted" after the events at the prom. For instance, she might have developed individual plans-of-revenge for each person she felt wronged her and gone about her destruction in a more subtle manner. Looking at it from the psychological/medical point of view, had she lived, she might have become a "lab rat." You know, labeled insane and then institutionalized so that her TK ability could be better studied and documented. This could be much worse than anything she experienced in h.s.!

In some ways, I think King gives Carrie the easy way out in this story. She learns about her TK ability, but never learns how she might use it constructively. She's never punished for her actions, and she's never given the chance to become something better than her mother or how her classmates view her.

TK-real or fake?

In this story, King presents TK powers as an ability that is accepted by the scientific and medical community. What's your vote? Can someone really have TK?

what if?

Did you pick up the hint that Tommy was kind of attracted to Carrie? If the pig blood prank had not happened do you think there might have been a chance for them? Would the people who know them "allow" it to happen?

girls locker room

Wow! The whole locker room incident packs quite a punch, eh? This has to be one of the worst incidents of bullying I've ever read. If you'd been in the room when this happened, would you have participated, even if you didn't want to, just so you'd be "like everyone else," or would you be brave enough to run and get help? Would you come to Carrie's defense? King's reaction of all the different girls in the room, including Sue and the teacher, really made me think about this.